The Texas House is going to discuss two topics at an Elections Committee hearing on August 3 at 11AM. Did you know you can submit comments up to and until they gavel the committee hearing adjourned?
The two topics are:
Technology in Elections: Study the growing role of new and rapidly evolving technologies in the election process and political communications.
Voter Registration: Study the state’s voter registration processes and
systems by conducting an inventory of the systems used by counties that
are offline and analyzing the impact of supporting multiple software
systems across the state. Recommend ways to streamline voter-roll
maintenance and improve efficiency.
Here are my submitted comments under Voter Registration:
Our county previously used a vendor that gave us years of voter history in an Excel format. It included the following fields for TEN years of voting: Election Code (date), Election Party Code (Rep, Dem), Election Vote Type (E, A, P). First, middle & last names were separate fields. It was simple to create 4 of 4, 3 of 4, 2 of 4 etc lists. It was easy to create Head of Household, targeted, election mailings. Then we were forced to use the SOS list. First and last names were one field. To split them in Excel is tedious and time consuming for thousands and thousands of voters. Voter history is worthless as it only shows the “date last voted”. Who cares? That could be 10/29/2020, 3/2/2024 or the like. ONE DATE. That does us no good at all in trying to determine voter history, which directly translates into who will actually vote in an election. It’s impossible to create a 4 of 4 or 3 of 4 list for any purpose: mailing, block walking…. any campaign or PAC needs. Vote History Reports out of the current state system are often incomplete or inaccurate and are limited to a single election. Incorporating vote history as described above into to the “Voter List” would be much more usable. I’ve written the SOS office about this. I’ve discussed this with Senator Schwertner and his office staff. I’ve provided copies of each spreadsheet in 11/2025: the sheet from our former county vendor and the one from the SOS. I’d be happy to provide that information to the committee. My background is 50 years in IT, 35+ years in the political world, including running 13 of my own races and serving 10 years in elected office. If everyone is required to use the SOS database, it needs to be designed by people who understand what those of us in the field do with the data. This needs to be fixed ASAP.