Democrats launch Texas voter registration for Biden’s victory
The Democrats have launched Texas Voter Registration Week for Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election in November.
The move was disclosed during an inaugural event on Monday August 31, 2020.
The event was pioneered by the state party in collaboration with major political campaigns and other groups that register young people.
Voter expansion director for the Texas Democratic party, Luke Warford, said that Democrats would consider a massive effort on voter registration in Texas.
Texas state is crucial for Republicans if they want to retain the presidency, so the Democrats are hoping the young and people of color can help them to victory.
Although analysts see Donald Trump as still favored to win the Lone Star state, a number of recent polls show the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is fanning long-held leftist ambitions of turning the famously red stronghold blue.
“There literally is not a path to the White House for Donald Trump without winning Texas, so we think we can register [enough] folks and flip the state for Joe Biden, and yes, that would secure a Biden presidency,” Warford said.
Their combined goal is to contact a million unregistered voters – the most extensive weeklong voter registration push in Texas Democratic party history.
“We’re excited our volunteers are working across Texas to register so many new voters,” MJ Hegar, the Democratic nominee challenging incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn, said in a statement.
“By mobilizing millions of Texans this November we will elect servant leaders up and down the ballot who embody Texas values,” Hegar added.
This week, a legion of phone and text “bank” operators – telephonic campaigners – are reaching out to likely Democrats, focusing especially on communities of color and young people.
Unregistered voters in Texas skew disproportionately Democratic, said Warford;
With Texas’s 38 electoral college votes seemingly in play, there are an estimated 2.6 million to 3.5 million unregistered Democrats statewide.
“If the electorate was reflective of the diversity of the state today, Democrats would be in power in Texas,” Warford said.
Since November 2018, when Beto O’Rourke, from El Paso, the border city in the west of the state, lost a US Senate seat by fewer than 215,000 votes, the state’s electoral rolls have picked up about 600,000 voters, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Texas Democrats have mounted their largest voter registration program to date, and committees dedicated to electing Democrats are funneling unprecedented investments into the state as it becomes noticeably competitive.
“We’re in the battle basically for the soul of America. The election’s gonna belong to those who show up,” senior Texas operative in the Biden campaign, Brooklynne Roulette Mosley said.
Texas has a record of low voter participation; in 2016, only 51.4% of the voting-eligible population cast a ballot, according to the United States Elections Project, one of the most deflated turnouts across the country.
During the 2018 midterms, Texas still ranked among the bottom 10 states in terms of the turnout rate among eligible voters, despite a double-digit spike compared with four years earlier.
Despite the public health crisis, attempts by Texas Democrats to expand eligibility for mail-in voting ahead of election day have proved unsuccessful, and meanwhile, critics believe Trump is intentionally handicapping a faltering USPS to sabotage mail-in ballots.
“I think ‘early’ is the theme of the 2020 election, right?” Warford said.
“We’re really just encouraging people to try to do everything early, just to make sure there’s enough time,” he said.
Even with an uphill climb to the White House, the race will be tight in Texas this year, Mosley predicted, and reaching out to eligible voters could help to shore up victories for Democrats.
Texans are eager to get registered, and a lot of people want to register others as well, according to Warford.
“They’re ready to go to the polls, and try to defeat Donald Trump,” he added.
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