What Texans need to know about helping people register to vote or cast ballots

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As efforts to get Texans to vote ramp up ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5, state officials have launched investigations into how some people are registered, executed search warrants over how some ballots have been cast and touted the removal of about 1 million people from voter rolls.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office launched a probe after a Fox News host made claims — which have since been debunked — that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility.

Paxton’s office also searched the homes of a Texas Democratic candidate and a legislative aide as part of an investigation into allegations of illegal vote harvesting. No one has been charged in connection with the probe and Latino rights activists have called it an effort to intimidate voters in the mostly-Latino Frio County.

Without providing evidence, Paxton told conservative media personality Glenn Beck that President Joe Biden’s administration wants to “fix the election” with policies and practices that eventually allow undocumented migrants to cast ballots. Other high-profile figures, like Elon Musk, have echoed those assertions.

Gov. Greg Abbott in August announced the state removed roughly 1 million people from its voter rolls since 2021, though election experts said existing laws already required voter roll maintenance, and the governor’s framing of the routine process could be used to undermine trust in elections.

Voting fraud has generally been found to be rare. Local elections officials say Texans can help other citizens register to vote and cast ballots, but there are rules and procedures that need to be followed. The Legislature in 2021 also crafted new requirements about how people can assist voters.

U.S. citizens in Texas can register to vote if they will be 18 or older by Election Day. Under Texas law, however, citizens can’t vote if they have been convicted of a felony and are still serving a sentence, including parole or probation.

Registering to vote in Texas typically requires submitting a paper registration form to the voter registrar in the county where the voter lives. Texans may also be able to register through the Texas Department of Public Safety while renewing their Texas driver’s license or state ID. They can also register with a county-trained volunteer deputy voter registrar.

The voter registration form requires voters to check the eligibility criteria listed on the form and sign an oath acknowledging a penalty for perjury for lying.

Once a person submits a voter registration application, local and state officials verify the person’s eligibility based on various sources of information, including from counties, DPS, vital records and courts.

For example, county election officials will review the application to make sure the submitted address is a residential address within the county, said Remi Garza, the elections administrator for Cameron County. They then input the information and share voter registration records with the state daily. The state also reviews the voter registration before it becomes effective 30 days after it was submitted.

While there are some federal provisions on election fraud, including who can and can’t vote, election processes and what is considered fraud is mostly outlined by individual states, said Matthew Weil, the Democracy Program executive director for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank. Paxton in August issued an election integrity advisory that reiterates key aspects of Texas election law. The advisory includes a tip line for people to report suspicions of election violations like fraud.

There are more than 100 different election-related criminal offenses listed in the state’s election code, according to the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

Illegal vote harvesting in Texas includes paying someone or being paid to interact with voters while they are in the presence of their physical ballot with the intent of delivering votes for a particular candidate or ballot proposition, according to the state’s election code. A group of three or more people are considered a vote harvesting organization when they collectively break certain election laws — even if they don’t know each other’s identities or have arm’s length relationships, the code said.

The election code says election fraud is committed when “a person knowingly or intentionally makes any effort” to do any of the following:

• influence the “independent exercise of the vote” of a person “in the presence of the ballot or during the voting process,” including by altering a ballot.
• cause a voter to register to vote, obtain a ballot or vote under false pretenses.
• cause any false or intentionally misleading information to be provided to an election official, on a mail-in ballot or any election-related document.
• prevent an eligible voter from casting a ballot.
• casts a ballot for someone who is dead or ineligible.
• causes or enables voting more than once within the same election.
• discard or destroy a voter’s completed ballot without their consent.

Other election-related criminal offenses include perjury on a voter registration application or forms typically required when a voter receives assistance.

A person facilitating voter registrations also cannot receive performance-based compensation.

“You can work for an organization, you can be a paid volunteer helping people register to vote, but it's just that if it's almost like on a quota basis or one-for-one deal,” said Remi Garza, the elections administrator for Cameron County.

Candidates and campaigns cannot send voter registration applications that are already filled out to people who may be eligible voters. They are allowed to send applications for a mail-in ballot with some information already filled out.

Penalties for election violations range from a misdemeanor to a felony.

Although voter fraud has been documented in Texas and the U.S., it is very rare.

According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank which tracks voter fraud cases by state, there were 103 cases of voter fraud in Texas from the years of 2005 to 2022. But there were over 107 million ballots cast in the state over that timespan, including 11 million ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election, according to the nonpartisan think tank Brookings Institution. That means fraudulent ballots in Texas likely amounted to about 0.000096% of all ballots cast in 2020 alone. The Texas Secretary of State’s office also found few discrepancies or issues in the initial results of an audit of 2020 election results in select counties.

“I think some people would say any is too many,” said Matthew Weil, the Democracy Program executive director for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank. “But you know, again, we're talking about percentages that are so many decimal points below 1%. It’s hard to create a system that has no weaknesses, no failure. It is still a human system.”

In instances where fraud is detected, sometimes it’s simply a mistake caused by confusion or a lack of knowledge about rules, said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School. One example, he said, is when a mail-in voter has someone else return their ballot, which is regulated differently by individual states. In Texas, a person assisting a voter in mailing an absentee ballot must fill out required information.

“Even when people mistakenly don’t follow those rules, that doesn’t say anything about the person who was eligible to cast a ballot,” he said. “The rules about who can drop off your ballot don’t really speak to fraud because there’s nothing wrong with the ballot.”

Despite the rarity of voter fraud, state lawmakers in 2021 passed additional voting regulations, including new ID requirements for voting by mail and how people can assist voters.

Proponents of the legislation have said they wanted to protect voters and prevent fraud.

“There’s been testimony about people who are claiming to assist the voters in fact are voting for them, voting against their will, telling them how to vote when the voters do not want them to,” state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, said during the 2021 debate over Senate Bill 1. “That’s what this provision is about.”

Democrats say the added regulations restrict voters’ access to voting.And a court in 2022 blocked parts of the law restricting voter assistance after declaring it violated federal law.

“It's totally unnecessary,” said state Rep. Chris Turner, a Democrat from Grand Prairie.

Eligible voters still have the right to get help registering to vote and casting a ballot, including interpretation. If a voter cannot physically sign or mark a form, they can choose someone to be their “witness” and print their name for them.

However, various state rules outline how much help can be provided or who can provide the help.

“The best rule of thumb if you're going to be an assister or witness is that the voter themselves asks for assistance,” said Jennifer Doinoff, the Hays County elections administrator.

The person providing assistance must usually disclose who they are and may have to sign an oath. Assistance can generally come from an election worker or a person of the voter’s choosing. Voters cannot get assistance filling out a ballot from their employer or an agent of their employer or union. It’s usually recommended for the person assisting to be a family member or someone the voter knows and trusts.

Registering to vote:

Anyone can help share information about the voter registration process and share applications to register to vote. But only deputy voter registrars can collect and submit the registrations under a specific process in which they must give receipts to the person seeking to vote and the county voter registrar’s office. Otherwise, the person seeking to register must generally submit or mail the application themselves.

Elderly and disabled voters:

Voters 65 years or older and voters with a disability may also get help voting by mail or with curbside voting if they cannot enter a polling location. Voters don’t typically need to prove they have a disability or need assistance.

Voting by mail:

An application for a ballot by mail requires a witness if the voter cannot sign the application for themself. A person can serve as a witness only for one application, unless additional applications are for their parent, grandparent, spouse, child or sibling. Early voting clerks or deputy early voting clerks can also serve as witnesses for multiple applications for ballots by mail.

And while an assistant can help mail a mail-in ballot application or ballot, they cannot deliver it by hand in person to a county elections office, Doinoff said. Generally, only the mail-in voter themselves can return the ballot in person to the early voting clerk’s office with an approved ID on Election Day.

In some circumstances, voters may be able to correct election-related forms or their ballots, but county elections officials recommend that voters not familiar with voting or assistance processes call their local county elections office if they have any questions.

“It is our desire for people's votes to count, so we want to make sure that everybody's doing it correctly the first time, so that we can ensure that their ballot will be counted,” Doinoff said.

Find more information about assisting voters through the Texas Secretary of State’s office, Disability Rights Texas or the Tribune’s voter guides.

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