It’s time for the state of Texas to join the 21st century, and the rest of the country, and provide online voter registration to every eligible voter in Texas.

This week, Texas Monthly reported that since September, Texas election administrators required more than 11,000 Texans to provide proof of citizenship or lose their freedom to vote. The procedure the Secretary of State’s office has been instructing county officials to use appears eerily similar to the one used by former Secretary of State David Whitley.

While we are grateful for the involvement of the federal government, what we need to stop the five-decade cycle of having to take legal action every ten years is for Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act.

Today, Common Cause announced Jacob Wiant, 21, of Bedford, Texas as the second-place winner of the 2021 Artivism Contest. The competition was designed by the Common Cause Student Action Alliance to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Common Cause and the passage of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

Today, Governor Greg Abbott signed racially and partisan gerrymandered district maps for Texas House of Representatives, Texas Senate, the State Board of Education, and Congress into law. The maps, designed to deny voters fair representation and equal say in government, will determine the outcome of the state’s elections for the next decade.