Cameron County is one of several that have been sued over their rejection of electronic signatures for voter registration cards. The local application is incidental, as the issue affects every voting district in the state.
The issue is the state’s requirement that voting credentials contain “wet ink” signatures. Under current election procedures, voters present their voter cards to a precinct worker and sign a roster of voters. The worker compares the signatures as part of the voter verification process.
This step, however, virtually precludes the state from utilizing modern technology such as electronic voter registration.
Lawmakers charged with addressing state voting laws in the current special legislative session should recognize the need to move toward, rather than away from, advancing technology.
Electronic registration actually is permitted in this state. However, during the recent regular session, the Legislature passed House Bill 3107, an unnecessary and restrictive law that requires new voters to provide an hard-copy voter registration form with an original signature within four days of electronic registration. How this affects those who register as part of normal transactions at driver’s license offices and other public venues is unclear, but it appears to render electronic applications invalid without delivery of the physical document, and therefore redundant.
The lawsuit by Vote.Org alleges the requirement for the signature violates the First and 14th Amendments as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Texas Democratic Party has filed a separate federal lawsuit against the state, challenging the “wet signature” requirement.
State law already recognizes the validity of electronic signatures. The Legislature in 2001 enacted the UETA Electronic Transactions Act that gives electronic signatures legal force, and all contracts containing electronic signatures are considered valid.
Electronic signatures by public officials including court judges also are deemed legitimate.
“If a law requires a record to be in writing, an electronic record satisfies the law. … If a law requires a signature, an electronic signature satisfies the law,” the State Code provides.
As a practical matter the practice of comparing signatures itself is growing less necessary even as the state seeks to place more hurdles before voters. New legislation requires voting records to include state-issued ID or driver’s license numbers as well as voters’ Social Security numbers. Any of these also can be compared, as well as the physical photo ID that also is required. Each of these makes actual signatures mere overkill.
We trust that the litigants will be able to show that other states’ elections function just fine without the need for actual signatures, and that the courts will agree that modern technology makes the requirement unnecessary.
Better yet, we hope our representatives in Austin will realize that they can’t stop progress, and learn to incorporate electronic registration into our voting procedures, as other states already have been able to do.
