Battleground Texas and eleven Texans who were disenfranchised during the 2014 election are calling on the Texas Secretary of State today to fix systemic problems with the state’s voter registration rolls. In a letter submitted this morning, the eleven Texans are urging the Secretary of State to take immediate action to remedy registration issues that kept them from casting regular ballots in last fall’s nationally-watched gubernatorial election, even though they each attempted to register to vote through the Department of Public Safety (DPS). Otherwise, the state may face legal action in the coming months.

Texas is required by the National Voter Registration Act and related state laws to give eligible residents an opportunity to register to vote at state motor vehicle offices when they apply for driver’s licenses or other forms of ID. Yet the disenfranchised Texans cited in the letter – who had registered to vote through DPS and believed that they were registered when they went to the polls in 2014 – were not permitted to cast a regular ballot either because their names were not listed on the registration rolls or because their address information was outdated. Several of the voters cast provisional ballots with mixed results on their votes being counted, and one was unable to vote altogether.

“I felt that my voice was taken away from me when my vote wasn’t counted,” said Totysa Watkins, an Irving health insurance rep and mother of two. “Voting has always been something I value and is a right I have instilled in my children. Texas should not be able to take that away.” “I have lived in over a dozen different locations, and I don’t believe I ever missed voting in a major election,” said Donovan Cooper, a Dallas County small business owner who thought he was registered to vote but was compelled to cast a provisional ballot. “Some people may ask how much difference does one vote make. It makes a difference to me.”

Battleground Texas, the grassroots organization that is working to engage Texans in the democratic process and make the state more politically competitive in the coming years, helped identify these voters during the 2014 electoral cycle through its statewide voter protection program. Taken together with the thousands of reports submitted to the Secretary of State in the past two years, the experiences of the disenfranchised voters provides strong evidence that Texas is systematically denying voters their voice at the ballot box.

During the 18 months between September 2013 and February 2015, the Secretary of State’s Elections Division received more than 4,600 complaints from voters about voter registration practices at DPS.

This included more than 1,700 complaints by voters who had checked “yes” they wanted to register to vote when they applied for a driver’s license at DPS but subsequently did not appear on the voter rolls.

It also included more than 1,800 complaints by voters who updated their address online with DPS and mistakenly believed that their voter registration file was updated too.