AUSTIN, Texas. — Nearly 9 million Texans voted in the 2016 presidential election, but more than 4 million eligible voters couldn’t cast ballots because of problems with identification, registration or other barriers. 

The findings come from a recently published report by the Texas Civil Rights Project.

The report analyzed data collected from the 2016 Texas Election Protection Coalition and from provisional ballot data for five of Texas’ most populous counties.

Among the other problems documented: polling location changes, long lines and voter intimidation.

“Unfortunately, we are not shocked,” given Texas’ history of voter confusion, discrimination and intimidation, said Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the Voting Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C. 

Cassandra Champion, one of the Texas Civil Rights Project staff attorneys who authored the report, said a total 4.4 million eligible voters were excluded.

Joseph Fishkin, a University of Texas School of Law professor who researches voting rights and electoral systems, said one of the hard things about getting elections right is “a lot of mundane stuff that’s not cheap to fix,” such as additional voting machines.

Even in place like Palo Pinto County, which has just over 17,000 registered voters, the cost of replacing the county’s 12-year-old electronic voting machines is estimated at $300,000 to $350,000, Judith Evans, the elections administrator said.

One way to help enfranchise more voters, Fishkin said, would be allowing voters to register on election day.

Currently, applications must be received in the county voter registrar’s office or postmarked 30 days before an election for Texans to be eligible to vote in that election. 

Fishkin said that’s not likely to change, given the politicization of Texas voting laws, which continue to be the subject of an ongoing battle. 

According to the report, federal courts in Texas have this year “found that Texas intentionally discriminated against Black and Latino voters when it passed the strictest voter ID law in the country and when it gerrymandered several districts in the state in an effort to dilute their voting power.”

The report cited several counties that posted “misleading or inaccurate information suggesting that a photo ID was still necessary to vote.”

Other barriers to voting include a law that makes it a misdemeanor to help register a voter without being a certified volunteer deputy registrar, which requires formal training. 

Certified volunteers may only register voters in the county where they were trained.

That “hinders voter registration drive efforts, which disproportionately affects racial minorities and young people,” according to the report. 

Texas also fails to comply with the federal National Voter Registration Act, or “motor voter law,” because the state is not applying it to online transactions, which make up an increasing number of registrations, Champion said. 

Ruling in a lawsuit aimed at making Texas comply, the court recently found that the state’s procedures are “inconsistent with the plain language” of the 1993 federal law that requires states allow those who are eligible to register to vote when applying for or renewing driver licenses. 

Also widely ignored: Texas’ high school voter registration law, which mandates opportunities to register for eligible private and public school students twice a year.

According to the report, less than 15 percent of high schools requested voter registration forms for use in 2016.

Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed Senate Bill 5, aimed at loosening access to voting. 

The law allows those lacking photo IDs to vote after showing documents that list their name and address, such as a paycheck, utility bill, bank statement, government check or voter registration certificate.

Those without a photo ID must also sign “declaration of reasonable impediment” which says they couldn’t get a photo ID for one of several reasons. 

Lying on the declaration could bring up to two years in jail.

Meanwhile, Rosenberg, one the attorneys who’s challenging Texas’ 2011 voter ID law for intentional minority discrimination, said the state’s new law falls short of rectifying systemic problems.

“It is based on the same architecture as the old statute,” Rosenberg said, “and continues to burden those who have been discriminated against.”

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.