In what it’s calling its biggest week-long registration effort in history, the Texas Democratic Party is trying to contact one million unregistered voters in the span of a week.
Through phone calls and text messages, they’ll direct people to a party website to get the registration process started. Voters can enter their information and then receive an application form in the mail.
“We know people don’t have a printer, so we print out their application for them,” Luke Warford, the state party’s director of voter expansion, said. “We know a lot of people don’t have a stamp or an envelope, so we send them a postage paid pre-addressed envelope.”
Fewer than 10 states, including Texas, do not have online voter registration. The Houston Chronicle reported in July that Texas had 16.4 million registered voters, up 15% from 2016.
Warford said there’s no master list of unregistered voters, but they’re using datasets of people who have recently moved and consumer data to find people to contact. They will especially target younger voters and voters of color.
The deadline to register to vote in Texas is October 5. Early voting starts the following week.
“Folks we talk to this week will mail their forms in up until the deadline,” Warford said. He didn’t give a goal for what percentage of the one million people they hope will actually follow through with registering.
The Republican Party of Texas didn’t respond to a request asking about their voter registration goals.
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