Editorial Board

This is an editorial: An editorial, like news reporting, is based on objective facts, but shares an opinion. The conclusions and opinions here have been derived by our Editorial Board and are not associated with the news staff.

Texas is being sued in federal court because it won't accept electronic signatures on voter registration applications. Texas also is one of only 13 states that don't allow online voter registration. It's the only state among the nation's eight most populous not to offer electronic voter registration.

Texas isn't being sued for its failure to offer online voter registration — at least, not directly. So, why bring it up? Because if Texas had online registration, the lawsuit would be moot. Online registration can't happen without acceptance of electronic signatures.

The electronic signatures at the heart of this lawsuit were part of an effort to offer eligible voters a convenient substitute to online registration. Vote.org, a website dedicated to promoting voter participation, offered a registration form for applicants to fill out online, which it then printed and mailed to vote registrars. The state rejected more than 2,400 applications submitted by Vote.org in 2018 because the signatures were not in-person originals.

According to the lawsuit, Texas' signature rule imposes “an arbitrary requirement that limits access to the franchise.” Those assertions are so easy to prove that we could save the courts the trouble:

On the question of arbitrariness, consider that electronic signatures have been around awhile and are not considered a security risk in this day and age. They work just fine for the 37 states that offer online registration. You'd have to be arbitrary to a fault to reject them.

As for whether the rule limits access to the franchise, note that it accomplishes one thing quite well — making it harder to register to vote. You can't refuse to accept electronic signatures without also limiting access to "the franchise."

As of this writing, the state hadn't responded to the lawsuit or commented about it. The best we can do to offer insight into the state's position is to quote this warning issued in 2018 by then-Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, the state official in charge of voter registration and elections:

"Any website that misleadingly claims to assist voters in registering to vote online by simply submitting a digital signature is not authorized to do so. All Texas voters should be extremely cautious when handing over personal and sensitive information to any unknown third party."

While Pablos didn't name names, if we were Vote.org, we'd have felt slandered. He also pointed out that Texas doesn't offer online registration — but didn't say why.

WHY NOT REGISTER VOTERS ONLINE?

Good question. There appear to be no downsides to its many upsides. It promotes voter participation by making registration easier and cheaper for eligible voters. It helps people in rural areas register without having to cover large physical distances to do it in person — this would be especially helpful in Texas. And it's cheaper for the states that do it. According to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2010, Arizona spent 83 cents per paper application and 3 cents per online application. You'd think the potential cost savings alone would be reason enough for Texas to do it.

WHO'S SUING?

Democratic Party officials at the state and national levels filed the lawsuit Monday in San Antonio.

IS THIS PARTISAN POLITICS?

Theoretically, no. Voter registration and encouragement of greater voter participation are not, by definition, partisan issues.

But, in practice, the Republican Party in Texas and nationwide has pursued policies that discourage voter registration and limit voter participation, such as overly strict voter ID laws that specify pricier or hard-to-get forms of ID, consolidations of voter precincts that effectively put the polling places farther away for many voters, reductions and rollbacks of early voting, and resistance to convenient innovations such as online and automatic registration.

And there's no getting around that the plaintiffs are Democrats and the defendants are Republican state officials.

WHY THIS IS URGENT

If you're not registered to vote and you want to vote in the March 3 primary, you'd better hurry up. The deadline to register is Feb. 3. Go to this site for information on how to register: https://www.votetexas.gov/register-to-vote/you-must-register-by.html

BOTTOM LINE:

Texas should aspire to lead the nation in voter participation. It should embrace rather than reject or delay technological innovations such as online registration that make it easier for people to participate.

What is Texas afraid of? That's a rhetorical question with no acceptable answer. But we will not let it go unaddressed.

This article is the start of a series called Barriers to the Ballot Box by the Caller-Times and the USA TODAY Network in Texas that examines the impediments to full participation in the democratic election process faced by people of color, youth and others in the Lone Star State. Throughout this series we'll explore solutions to improve access to the polls, expand voter registration and make every Texan’s vote count.

Learn more about automatic and electronic registration here: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/automatic-voter-registration-and-modernization-states

And here: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/electronic-or-online-voter-registration.aspx

This story has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.