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Last month, cars snaked through the parking lot of San Antonio’s AT&T Center as volunteers in bright yellow MOVE Texas t-shirts directed traffic through the sprawling complex. Some of them wore face shields and carried clipboards as they bounced between cars registering people to vote. The Spurs Coyote even wore an Uncle Sam getup for the occasion, posing for photos with organizers and newly registered voters.
Ahead of this year’s pivotal election, the threat of contracting COVID-19 scuttled traditional voter registration drives and in-person campaigning across the state. The virus complicated get-out-the-vote efforts for groups like MOVE Texas, a progressive nonprofit that has spent the past several years trying to boost historically dismal turnout among young people, who could soon make up one in three voters in the state. As voting rights groups got creative, organizing drive-through registration events and phone banking to try and boost turnout, they also urged Texas leaders to adapt.
