AUSTIN, Texas — The Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar is inviting residents to become deputy registrars.
The office will host three training sessions in August for interested volunteers. People just have to be at least 18 years old, a U.S. citizen and a Texas resident.
The training sessions are free to attend and last one hour. At the end of the training, volunteers are sworn in as volunteer deputy registrars, meaning they can officially help people register to vote and are responsible for turning in voter registration cards.
"We want our democracy to be robust and one way to have it be robust is to make sure people use it and are actively engaged," said Bruce Elfant, the Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar. "The sad thing is that the United States is about 100th in the world in voter turnout and Texas is about 47th among the states in voter turnout. So we're just about the worst of the worst."
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Elfant said Travis County generally has 6,000 deputy registrars but currently there are only 2,000.
The available trainings for August are:
- Saturday, August 3 at 10:30 a.m. at the Travis County Tax Office at 5501 Airport Blvd. Signup sheet: https://forms.gle/8291H3bpuiJVTmUm8
- Thursday, August 15 at 10:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at the Travis County Constable Precinct 1 Community Room at 4717 Heflin Lane. Signup sheet: https://forms.gle/8291H3bpuiJVTmUm8
- Saturday, August 17 at 10:30 a.m. at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin at 4700 Grover Ave. Signup sheet: https://forms.gle/JeaabdEmzaRLyC6QA
Texans have until Oct. 7 to register to vote in the November 2019 election.
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