Texas officials have turned over the state’s voter roll to the U.S. Justice Department, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, complying with the Trump administration’s demands for access to data on millions of voters across the country.
The Justice Department last fall began asking all 50 states for their voter rolls — massive lists containing significant identifying information on every registered voter in each state — and other election-related data. The Justice Department has said the effort is central to its mission of enforcing election law requiring states to regularly maintain voter lists by searching for and removing ineligible voters.
Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune that the state had sent its voter roll, which includes information on the approximately 18.4 million voters registered in Texas, to the Justice Department on Dec. 23.
Texas does not have party affiliation on the voter registration form or ID card, and we have open primaries.
But we can only vote in one party’s primary for any given election cycle, including runoffs, so it serves as a defacto registration.
Yes but that affiliation is automatic when you vote in a primary and expires at the end of that calendar year, to ensure you can only vote in a primary runoff if you voted in the original primary.
You affiliate with a party in order to even get a primary ballot.
https://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/advisory2020-05.shtml
The affiliation is automatic when you tell the election official which primary you want to vote in, it’s not a separate action you have to take ahead of time like voter registration is. And it expires at the end of the same calendar year. It’s so you can only vote in a primary runoff if you voted in the original primary.
Which gets recorded to the roll so they can enforce that.