Big Super Tuesday prizes a study in contrasts

The two biggest states participating in Super Tuesday represent another story aside from what happens in the Democratic primary: Voting rights.

California and Texas are the most populous states in the nation and the biggest delegate prizes on Tuesday for the presidential contestants. They also present a stark contrast in voting laws.

Deeply Democratic California has taken several steps in recent years to make it easier to register and vote, including preregistration for teenagers, community dropoff centers for early voting and the ability to register on Election Day.

While Texas has early voting, the Republican-controlled state also has policies that make voting more challenging. Those include a voter ID law that allows handgun licenses but not college IDs, and restrictions on how and when people can register. Last year, Texas officials also sent letters to 95,000 registered voters to tell them they may not be eligible because they’re not citizens — only to find serious flaws in the list.

The two Super Tuesday giants illustrate how the ability to easily register and cast a ballot depends in many ways on where voters live. In the last presidential election four years ago, 75% of registered California voters participated. In Texas, it was 59%.

“You have America moving in two very distinct directions. On one hand, you have these states that fully embrace and believe in democracy,” said Carol Anderson, an Emory University professor who has written a book on voter suppression. “On the other hand, you have states that treat it as a privilege that only those who can jump through a maze of tunnels, obstacles and bridges ... can vote.”

California is one of 16 states with a version of automatic voter registration, in which those who are eligible to vote and do business with the state Department of Motor Vehicles also get registered unless they opt out.

The program, in place since 2018, has caused some headaches; an error in the system in its first year caused about 23,000 people to be registered with the wrong party affiliation, for instance. But it also has been credited with leading to a surge in voter registration.

California also is one of 14 states where teenagers can preregister to vote once they turn 16. Texas is among the most restrictive, allowing teens to sign up only two months before they turn 18, the national voting age.

And if elections arrive and California residents still haven’t registered, they can sign up that day at a vote center. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have laws allowing Election Day registration.

In Texas, voters must be registered 30 days before an election.

The result has been a dramatic spike in voter registrations in California. The number of registered voters has grown 21% since 2012 while the state’s population has budged only slightly, growing 4%. Voter registration also has grown in Texas as its population has exploded, but not as much relatively as California. The state has grown by 11% since 2012 while the voter rolls have increased by 19%.

Officials in Texas, as in other states with policies that make voting more difficult, say the changes are intended to address voter fraud, a problem much discussed but with relatively few actual cases. Many of the Texas measures also have been put in place since a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision that undid a key provision of the 1964 Voting Rights Act. Until the ruling, states and counties on a list of places with histories of discrimination, like Texas, had to first get voting law changes approved by the U.S. Justice Department.

Voting advocates say the impact of voter ID and other laws is that they make it harder to vote, especially for minority, young and lowerincome people.