On Monday, the Texas Democratic Party announced the largest voter registration program in the history of the state. This massive effort will be done in conjunction with Fair Fight, a voting rights organization started by Stacey Abrams.
“Fair Fight is proud to partner with the Texas Democratic Party to fund, train and support a robust voter protection initiative through our Fair Fight 2020 initiative,” Seth Bringman, a spokesperson for Fair Fight, told ABC News. “Republicans in Texas have, for a long time, sought to make it harder to vote, particularly for voters of color, and it takes a dedicated voter protection team on the ground well before Election Day to make sure all Texans’ voices can be heard.”
Abrams was the Democratic candidate in the 2018 Georgia governor’s race. She is the first African-American woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in U.S. history. Abrams lost in a close and controversial election, with reports of widespread voter suppression. Since then, Abrams has been leading the charge to defend voting rights across the country. Fair Fight is focused on countering voter suppression in 20 battleground states in the upcoming election, including Texas.
Texas has a notoriously poor track record on voting rights, especially after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. As a result, Texas lags behind the rest of the nation in voter turnout, although there has been positive progress in recent years.
To get Texans voting, the Texas Democratic Party and Fair Fight will seek to register 2.6 million potential new Democrats through machine-learning-based models, a year-round voter assistance hotline, hundreds of thousands of registration applications sent by mail, and 1,000 organizers and canvassers on the ground.
In addition, the Texas Democratic Party, along with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, are taking legal action to prevent the GOP from suppressing the vote.
With Texas now the largest battleground state in the country, getting out the vote will be a major part of Democratic efforts to win big this November.
Photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images
William serves as the Washington Correspondent for the Texas Signal, where he primarily writes about Congress and other federal issues that affect Texas. A graduate of Colorado College, William has worked on Democratic campaigns in Texas, Colorado, and North Carolina. He is an internet meme expert.
