NotDrewBrees

Dallas County deputy registrar here. When did you mail your Tarrant County application? It's possible that the Tarrant County registrar team hasn't yet processed it. Your registration goes effective 30 calendar days after your application is postmarked. Make extra sure that your address is actually in Tarrant County and not in Denton or Parker Counties. Some towns like Azle and Mansfield have overlap between two counties.

If you live in Tarrant County, check your registration status here. Your name will show up as well as your residence address.

The good news for you is that you still have about two weeks to get your registration up and running in your new home county.

Edit: The fact that your registration shows that you were cancelled out of Travis County is possibly a good sign. Tarrant County has to send Travis County a cancellation notice once they receive your application. So it could be that they just haven't added your name to the right database. Keep checking and don't be afraid to send in a new application if you aren't sure.

Good deal. You're good to go. Just remember to bring your driver's license.

Also, don't forget about the early voting period! Tarrant County has a good number of early voting locations that will be open from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM every day from October 22nd through November 2nd.

This PDF has a list of those locations. You can stop at any one of them when they're open - you don't have to stick to your local precinct. The lines are nonexistent during early voting.

Politicians aren't just looking at what party you vote, but also what groups of people vote.

If 75% of voters over the age of 65 vote consistently in every election, politicians will tailor their policies to placate them first and foremost. If 15% of voting-eligible twentysomethings vote, then there's no indication that pushing a policy that might benefit the younger electorate will actually achieve anything. And worse, it could backfire against the older voters who want the politician to cater to them. Politicians who don't cater to their largest groups of constituents don't get re-elected.

If you and your friends care about a particular issue above others, then voting in every election will prove to future candidates that you're serious about it. Making noise in social media doesn't sway actual policy. Consistently voting does because it proved to candidates that you're an informed group demanding action from your representatives.

It's not hard to register per se - it's just the 'cooling down' period between when you send it and when it goes effective. So if u/sweetpea122 gets their registration application delivered to Tarrant County by September 29th, they begin voting no later than October 29th.

You and I both know why that 30 day cooling period exists. It's to cut off the period when election season is most active, and when voters are most likely to check their registration status. Younger voters are less organized and experienced when it comes to registering to vote and figuring out the 'how' and 'when' to vote. Older voters (read: Republicans) have been around the block for a while and usually aren't moving to new addresses every year like most 20 somethings do.

I've spoken to a few elections administrators in Texas, and you're pretty much right - it's boring spreadsheet and database work. The rolls are never perfect - residents die, move away, have inaccurate addresses, and in some cases have no official date of birth on record if their registration status is particularly old.

In Lamar County, TX, for example, many older voters who registered before voter registration was synced up with driver's licenses have Dates of Birth as January 1, 1900. Seriously, there's thousands of them. And there are many duplicate entries within that registration list - in essence, an older voter can have two records in the voter roll. One without a valid DOB and one with a valid DOB.

Don't worry, though. In every case in which one of those older voters checked in to vote, they only did so once. They wouldn't be able to 'vote twice' using both records. The systems are pretty good about checking that information.