HARVEY RICE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
GALVESTON – Volunteer voter registrars are fearful of new laws that impose criminal penalties for improperly filling out voter registration forms or turning them in late, a Galveston County deputy registrar testified Monday.
“You’re afraid that if you made a mistake there was an implied prosecution,” testified Estelle Holmes of Hitchcock, a volunteer deputy registrar for more than 30 years.
The penalties enacted by the 2011 Legislature are being challenged by Voting for America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to registering minority and low-income voters nationwide, and two Galveston County residents in a lawsuit against Texas Secretary of State Hope Andrade and Galveston County Tax Assessor-Collector Cheryl Johnson. The lawsuit asks U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa to declare that Texas voter registration laws violate the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, improperly prevent inspection of voter registration applications and violate the organization’s constitutional speech rights.
Voting for America, an affiliate of Project Vote, argues that Texas laws make conducting large-scale voter registration drives impossible.
The lawsuit also asks the judge to keep Johnson from enforcing the state law requiring photo identification to vote until a U.S. district court in Washington, D.C. rules on whether the law violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Justice Department has already rejected the law, saying it discriminates against Hispanic voters.
Faded civic pride
Defense attorneys argue that only the state’s right to regulate registration is at issue and there are no constitutional questions.
Holmes testified that a sense of civic pride she once had for her voter registration efforts has faded since criminal penalties were put in the election code for deputy registrars who fail to deliver an application to the registrar within five days or deliver an incomplete form. Violation is a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $500.
“We could not do a voter drive in Texas because it is inevitable that people will have incomplete applications,” said Michael Slater, Project Vote executive director.
Under questioning by attorney Chad Dunn, Slater ticked off a list of election laws that kept Voting for America from registering Texas Voters, including laws preventing out-of-state organizers from overseeing registration drives, that prevent the copying of registration forms so that Voting for America can make sure registrars are properly handling the applications, and that prevent the organization from mailing in batches of completed registration forms.
Unregistered voters
The law also prevents Voting for America from paying canvassers by the hour. Slater said volunteers are impractical because they are difficult to fire or discipline, two key requirements for ensuring quality and quantity.
Slater said none of those laws help alleviate fraud.
He said Voting for America wanted to register Texas voters in 2012 because census data show that Texas has about 2 million eligible but unregistered Hispanic voters and about 750,000 eligible but unregistered black voters.
“When a new set of laws were passed we decided there was no way we could do voter registration work without the risk of prosecution,” Slater said. Read more.