San Antonio-based voter-mobilization group MOVE Texas wants to sign up 50,000 Texas voters between the ages of 18 and 30 ahead of this year’s midterms to offset a new Republican-backed law making it harder to vote in the state.
Texas’ Senate Bill 1 includes a raft of new voting restrictions including ones barring local elections officials from offering conveniences such as drive-through and 24-hour voting. The new law’s confusing vote-by-mail guidelines have also forced elections officials statewide to reject hundreds of applications in recent weeks.
“SB 1 has created mass confusion, and it’s eroding trust in voting by mail, I think, intentionally,” said Claudia Yoli Ferla, MOVE’s executive director.
Nonpartisan MOVE’s primary focus is on registering and educating younger voters, especially voters of color who have been historically marginalized by the Lone Star State’s restrictive voting rules. Texas, for example, one of just 11 states that doesn’t offer any form of online voter registration.
If MOVE’s 2022 goal sounds like a tall order, it’s one the group has hit before. The organization registered more than 50,000 young voters ahead of the 2020 election. Beyond that, officials said the ones it registered were 9% more likely to head to the polls than young voters in general.
Ahead of Monday’s registration deadline for the March 1 midterms, MOVE was already hard at work, Ferla said. Staffers mailed 52,000 voter registration cards to young Texans and followed up with phone, text and in-person inquiries to answer questions and give them a reminder to return their forms.
“Organizations like MOVE Texas are doing the work that our state government has failed to do,” Ferla said.
Stay on top of San Antonio news and views. Sign up for our Weekly Headlines Newsletter.
Related Stories
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 8, 2022.