Going Postal

The pandemic gives the gop a whole new way to squash the vote.

- By Ari Berman

H.DREW GALLOWAY executive director of move Texas spends his life trying to register young voters. Typically, in the spring of an election year, Galloway would be overseeing a staff of about four dozen who, before classes end for the summer, register newly eligible voters on 55 college campuses and at dozens of high schools.

Last year, move Texas signed up more than 25,000 new voters. It reached nearly 8,000 more this year before the state’s March 3 presidential primary. But then the coronavirus outbreak scattered students, and move Texas, like every other political group, suspended in-person registration drives. “We’ve gone from registering 2,000 people a week to registering maybe 100,” Galloway told me in April. “Voter registration is decimated in Texas.”