Texas leaders don’t want younger, diverse San Antonians to vote in November

This piece was originally published in the San Antonio-Express News.

I’m the type of Texan, a voter in Bexar County, whom our state leaders don’t want to vote.

The population in San Antonio and across the state remains young and diverse. And state officials keep making it apparent they do not like that. They are afraid of what will happen if more Texans feel empowered to vote this election season.

Nevertheless, that won’t stop me from casting a vote in our presidential election on Nov. 5 and — equally important — in the many downballot races that will shape our future in this city.

When Bexar County recently tried to make the voting process more accessible for eligible residents by mailing out registration forms, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued to try to prevent San Antonians from receiving them. Paxton knows that more accessible voter registration means a more diverse group of Texans voting, but he would rather keep the process inconvenient and hard to navigate.

While almost every other state has moved to online voter registration, in most cases, Texas still requires hard copies of registration forms to be mailed or hand-delivered to elections offices. Anti-democratic actors in the Legislature have added more criminal penalties to the election process and purposefully complicated election regulations.

Overwhelmed driver’s license offices that require an appointment to renew your license or receive an election identification certificate are creating bureaucratic nightmares for would-be voters who need to show an ID when they cast a ballot, an outcome that was foreseeable given the Legislature’s underfunding of driver’s license services last session.

The message is obvious. Lawmakers don’t want voters of color, voters with disabilities and young voters to hold them accountable for how they’re using our $32.7 billion budget surplus.

Continue reading at San Antonio-Express News.