I want a voice in Texas’s political future – but will my state even let us vote? | Alexandra Villarreal

When my partner and I moved to Austin in 2020, I faced numerous obstacles in registering to vote. There is no state where it's harder to cast a ballot than Texas

My partner and I moved to Austin from New York in the summer of 2020, when the US was in the throes of what felt like the highest-stakes election of our lifetime. As a freelance reporter for the Guardian, I wrote about voting rights and how Texas's byzantine laws disproportionately disenfranchised Black, Latino and young voters, even as I - a Latina in my mid-20s - was registering to vote.

As experts walked me through Texas's complex web of voting restrictions for articles, I simultaneously took note of exactly what I needed to do to participate in the upcoming election. I had to be registered roughly a month before election day. Texas had no real online registration, so I would need to send my application through the US Postal Service. Well before the early October deadline, I carefully filled out and posted my voter application. Then, I waited.