{"id":12379,"date":"2020-11-12T18:19:52","date_gmt":"2020-11-12T18:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=12379"},"modified":"2020-11-12T18:19:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T18:19:53","slug":"texas-voters-get-new-tool-to-track-their-ballots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=12379","title":{"rendered":"Texas voters get new tool to track their ballots"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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If the current rate continues, the United States will experience the highest percentage of eligible voter turnout since 1909.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Photo: AYoungoldsoul\/facingsouth.org
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By ROZ BROWN
<\/strong>Texas News Service<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Citizens of Texas are going to the polls in numbers that make it clear they want to vote, and a new tool allows them to track their ballot after it\u2019s cast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VoteAmerica<\/a> has launched TXBallot.org<\/a>, which allows Texas voters to find their ballots with either their voter ID number or their name and county information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debra Cleaver, founder and CEO of VoteAmerica, says the pandemic, which has led many to change the way they vote, has also created new interest in the voting process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people are very new to voting by mail and don\u2019t necessarily have a lot of faith in the process,\u201d Cleaver observed. \u201cAnd one of the ways that you increase faith in the process is transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polls show a tight race between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump in Texas, a state that hasn\u2019t voted for a Democrat for president since 1976.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, no state has seen a bigger gain in youth voting than Texas, where the vote by young people is up by more than 600% from the last presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While 46 states have adopted a free way for every voter to track their ballot, Texas lawmakers have not approved a similar measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cleaver says the new tracker created by her nonprofit is also a good way to identify if anything is breaking down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you see that all these people from a particular county have mailed their ballots back but their ballots aren\u2019t being counted, then it alerts us that there\u2019s a breakdown in the process,\u201d Cleaver explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cleaver says in addition to TXBallot.org, VoteAmerica has partnered with Google and Slack to offer a free voter text helpline that connects voters in all 50 states with volunteers that are trained to answer questions about voting locations and other issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voters can text HELPLINE to 48298 to be connected with a VoteAmerica volunteer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ROZ BROWNTexas News Service AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Citizens of Texas are going to the polls in numbers that make it clear they want to vote, and a new tool allows them to track their ballot after it\u2019s cast. VoteAmerica has launched TXBallot.org, which allows Texas voters to find their ballots with either their voter ID number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12380,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions\/12380"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}