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After lawsuit threat, Texas agency changes voter registration policy

Austin American-Statesman - 2/22/2018

Feb. 22--Responding to a threatened lawsuit, the Texas Workforce Commission has agreed to offer voter registration help to Texans with disabilities who receive job-training help from the agency.

Disability rights advocates had accused state officials of violating the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which requires state agencies that help people with disabilities to also offer help with registering to vote or updating voter registration information.

That registration aid was no longer offered when job training duties were moved from the state Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, which was phased out in 2016, to the workforce commission, lawyers for the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities said in a warning letter, sent Feb. 12 to state officials, that threatened a lawsuit if the policy was not changed.

In a reply letter dated Wednesday and signed by Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos and Larry Temple, executive director of the workforce commission, the officials said work had begun toward offering voter-registration services as part of the agency's job-training mission.

"Both TWC and SOS share your commitment to ensuring that disabled individuals and all eligible Texans have all the resources they need to exercise their rights to vote at the polls," the letter concluded.

Beth Stevens, the voting rights program director with the Texas Civil Rights Project, applauded the action.

"By implementing voter registration services in its vocational rehabilitation program, TWC will more closely live up to our society's promise of democratic participation for everyone, regardless of the disabilities they may have," Stevens said.

State figures indicated that at least 74,000 voting-age Texans with disabilities were not being offered voter registration help annually, according to lawyers with the Texas Civil Rights Project, Disability Rights Texas and the Austin law firm of Norton Rose Fulbright.

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