I support the adoption of online voter registration for Texas and urge the Texas legislature to pass legislation to ensure our registration systems are secure, accurate, and cost-effective.

Online voter registration follows the same process as traditional paper-based registration. But instead of filling out a paper application, it gives voters the option of registering themselves online, directly and securely. This system empowers voters to use their driver’s license or state-issued identification to register online, directly and securely, after first instantly verifying their identities against Texas’ drivers license database.

• Secure: A single paper registration is handled by no less than five people before being verified as a valid registration. An online system could take advantage of existing security measures to ensure a secure way to confirm a user’s identity. A single registration online would then check a registrant’s identity against the Department of Public Safety’s database including: driver’s license number, birthday, last four digits of SSN, and driver’s license audit number. Since being adopted in 38 other states, millions of American voters have registered online, and there are zero reported instances of security breaches.
• Accurate: Election integrity requires accurate and up-to-date voter registration lists, to ensure that only eligible voters can vote and vote only in their place of residence. Due to outdated paper registration, the Texas voter rolls are full of inaccuracies and duplicate registrations. Nationally, about one in eight registrations is inaccurate or no longer valid. An online registration system avoids the sloppy handwriting, incomplete applications and data entry errors that plague paper registration. Online voter registration will clean up Texas’ voter rolls.
• Cost-Effective: Our current voter registration system is incredibly costly, requiring counties to spend significant amounts on printing, postage, and paper -- as well as expending valuable resources for manual data entry, verification of illegible or inaccurate information, and processing provisional ballots because of delays or problems with registration. An online registration system dramatically cuts these costs, saving up to $2.34 per registration compared to paper procession. In the 38 states that have implemented online voter registration, up to 70% of eligible voters choose online registration over paper. Texas would join these states in saving millions of dollars each election cycle, with only a one-time cost to implement the system of less than $250,000.

I support Online Voter Registration, which increases the efficiency, accuracy and security of our elections.