The 2022
Our Vote Texas
Year In Review
Our Vote Texas is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to advancing voter education and good public policy in Texas through advocacy and outreach.
Our organization began in January of 2017 and our nonprofit was founded in August of the same year.
In our report below you will find our 2022 Year In Review which includes the advocacy work we accomplished this year and the work we are committed to continuing in 2023.
The 2022 Election Year’s Challenges and Voter Education Efforts To Combat Them
This year bore the fallout of restrictive new voter law SB 1 and the voter confusion around recent changes to vote by mail in the lead up to the 2022 primary elections.
Voting rights groups and advocates warned Texas lawmakers that some of the SB 1 changes could be difficult to implement and effectively educate the public on. Our Vote Texas opposed SB 1 during the 2021 legislative session and made efforts to provide up to date voter education to Texans about the law’s changes during the election period for both the primaries and the November 2022 elections. Our Vote Texas also received feedback from Texas voters during these elections about difficulties they experienced either trying to vote or trying to source helpful voter information ahead of their vote, which we will take a look at later in this report.
Our ongoing voter education efforts include videos, social media, printed resources, educational events both online and in-person and voter registration work.
Voter resources ship out across the state to vdrs and voter outreach advocates
Our Vote Texas was able to ship out 2,500 printed voter rights educational resources to Volunteer Deputy Registrars (VDRs) and voter outreach volunteers in 8 specific counties in 2022.
El Paso County
Cameron County
Travis County
Galveston County
Hunt County
Harris County
Montgomery County
Victoria County
To date, Our Vote Texas has shipped out nearly 17,000 copies of printed voter rights educational material to 22 counties (and growing!) across the state. These materials help VDRs and volunteers working with Texas voters share crucial information with their fellow Texans about our rights at the polls. We have been able to keep this program going through the support of charitable donations, volunteers and Our Vote Texas advocates.
For the 2022 election cycle, Our Vote Texas received nearly $1700 in donations to go toward printing and mailing these resources. This also allowed us to cover shipping costs for all VDRs we partnered with.
How Texas Voters Experienced The 2022 Elections
And What SB 1 Reinforced For Texas Voters and Voting Rights Groups
During the course of the 2022 Primaries in March and the General Election in November, Our Vote Texas received feedback from voters in Williamson, Gregg, Galveston, Harris, Travis, Bexar, Dallas, Polk, Brazoria, Montgomery, Tom Green, Comal, Guadalupe, El Paso and Bell County.
Voters reported experiencing problems with
Voting machine equipment
Failure to adhere to or enforce electioneering prohibitions
Difficulty finding helpful voter information about candidates and various races
Difficulty finding polling place information online
A lack of COVID safe practices in implementation (in part due to the failure of the Texas Secretary of State’s office issuing any kind of revised county guidance on such policies)
Failure to post appropriate signage directing voters of a polling place location
On the matter of finding helpful up-to-date voting information for Texas, we know that this is an ongoing problem. Over the past decade Texas has seen some significant changes to our voting processes as well as new restrictions on voting. We examined those changes as well as the lack of sufficient statewide voter education and the burden that all of this combined creates for Texas voters in our October 2022 published report: The Texas Vote - Understanding The Value Of Public Voter Education In Texas.
A Big State Like Texas Requires Bigger Voter Education Funding
Our Vote Texas is now in its fifth year of working to make voter education and voter rights resources accessible for more Texans and one of the top concerns we hear repeatedly from voters in various areas around the state is that information about voting, voter rights and elections continues to be difficult to come by for people in their community.
Going forward, Texas will need to significantly grow its efforts in public voter education to meet the needs of a growing and varied population.
Project Civic Act Continues To Add Learning Resources
We are continuing to build out the collection of learning resources and materials for Texas educators and students, adding a new lesson module this year focused on how art has played a role in protest movements throughout history and the ways in which it continues to be a key element of mobilizing people around civil rights and justice issues today.
PCA will focus on advocating for legislation that protects students, protects teachers and upholds whole history and strong civic education in the 88th legislative session in 2023.
Advocating In Texas And Beyond
Our Vote Texas News & highlights In 2022!
March - Our Vote Texas was pleased and honored to add Carl Blair to the Board of Directors. Carl’s commitment to working in service of Texas voters and fair elections is unstoppable and we are so excited to continue advocating alongside him in 2023.
May - We joined democracy groups to call on social media companies to combat election disinformation ahead of midterms. Our Vote Texas, along with more than 120 civil rights and democracy groups, joined in a letter to call on social media companies to take pro-active measures to combat election disinformation across platforms ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
May - Our Vote Texas joined with a diverse coalition of groups including family safety advocates, civil rights organizations, and tech groups in an amicus brief at the Supreme Court to oppose Texas' anti-content moderation law, HB 20. Read more about that here.
October - We joined over 40 of our friends and allies, voting rights groups in the state of Texas, in a letter to the US Department of Justice urging the DOJ to deploy federal observers to monitor the 2022 election. This was in response to the Texas Secretary of State’s letter notifying the Harris County Election Administrator of plans to send "a contingent of inspectors to the county" for observation of the November midterm election along with a task force from the Texas Attorney General's Office. Read more about that here.
The Our Vote Texas network continues to grow in numbers, having seen a 10% growth this year. We hope to continue to mobilize Texans around voter education and voter rights advocacy as we head into an important legislative year in 2023.
Texans can plug into working alongside us a number of ways and we’ve listed them out HERE!
Some of these ways include joining our #TXLEGE Action Alerts Crew, learning more about Our Vote Texas leadership roles and starting an Our Vote Texas Chapter in your part of Texas. Take a moment to sign up to join our network HERE!
Expanding Our Efforts In 2023
It is our goal to continue to partner with VDRs and voter rights advocates in 2023 for in-person and virtual voter education events related to the 88th legislative session as well as general voting information when it comes to Texas elections.
We will also continue to seek out opportunities to support voter registration work in various parts of Texas. If you would like to partner with us for an Our Vote Texas sponsored voter registration drive, please take a moment to fill out our form here.
You can also support our work with a donation! Your contribution helps us continue the fight for Texas with voter empowerment and strong civic engagement.
“Our goals are straightforward:
We will support good public policy and legislation that benefits Texans.
We will promote voter rights education and civic participation.”