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Today, with less than 50 days left until Election Day, marks National Voter Registration Day. And while each state’s deadline to register is coming up fast, there is still time left to get on the rolls, and a lot of ways to do it.
Some articles and social media posts, including Taylor Swift’s, direct readers to places like Vote.gov — a federal government website that links to government-run voter registration sites in every state. Others direct people to nonprofits like Vote.org.
As in all things, which site you should choose to use or recommend varies by state. In some cases, external options like Vote.org are preferable because your state may not, for example, have a website that works well on mobile devices, and that’s what you have at your disposal. There are isolated incidences of third-party nonprofit websites having incorrect information or incorrectly processing requests, but the vast majority of people who use them do so successfully.
And for most voters, either option is probably just fine.
But I’ll offer some advice that I try to offer every year: The closer we get to Election Day, the more important it will be for you to rely on your local election administrator’s website directly as you try to register and make a plan to vote. Why?
For a few reasons. First, as Votebeat has written about recently, there’s a defined push to limit voter registration options right now. In Texas, for example, the attorney general has sued counties preparing to send unsolicited voter registration cards, and is investigating third party registration groups. Other states, like Florida and Kansas, have also tightened restrictions on these groups.
Second, information changes, right up to the deadlines. Relying on the people who are responsible for managing those changes and processing the flood of voter registration coming in right now will ensure that — as the clock ticks down — you get the most updated information.
Third, you want your vote to count. In states like Texas — one of eight states that don’t have online voter registration — going through a county elections office to register means that you will be creating records of your attempt to register. If you show up on Election Day, and workers tell you that you aren’t on the rolls, the provisional ballot they give you is more likely to be counted, because of those records.
For example, back in 2018, Travis County, Texas, was flooded with registrations in the days before the deadline. That means lots of paper, and clerks responsible for hand-entering your information onto the voter roll. Time is limited, and humans make mistakes. “We’re kind of in the 18th century when it comes to registration here,” Bruce Elfant, Travis County’s tax assessor and voter registrar, told me then. “It’s an expensive, inefficient process.”
Texas has not modernized since, and the same problem persists. Going directly to a county election office means that you are skipping the middlemen, and that the county is more likely to create records of your attempt to register by the deadline. You might still have to cast a provisional ballot when you show up at the polls, but your effort to register directly with election officials will boost the likelihood that a provisional ballot will be successfully counted.
The same advice applies when voters are trying to find out where to cast their ballot.
For most voters, the polling location that is listed for you when you first check online is going to be the location you should go to on the day you vote. But that’s not always the case. If a location had to change at the last minute, your local election official has the most up-to-date information.
Especially in large cities, it’s tough to keep every polling location exactly where it’s supposed to be. It means ensuring that over dozens or maybe even hundreds of locations, not a single water main breaks, not a single emergency takes place, and the weather is cooperative. When emergencies do happen, the people responsible for determining how and where voting should continue are going to be local officials moving quickly.
It’s best not to wait until the last minute to register or to make a plan to vote. But if you have to, at least make sure that you get the information you need through a primary source.
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.
