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Brazos County officers on Tuesday will consider restoring an early-voting location to Texas A&M University’s flagship College Station campus amid fierce criticism about its elimination within the lead-up to November’s midterm elections.
Since July, college students at Texas’ largest college have challenged the Brazos County Commissioners Court for shifting an early-voting web site from the Memorial Student Center to College Station City corridor — a call college students say would suppress the youth vote. County commissioners later acknowledged that their earlier resolution was a mistake, but it surely has been unclear main as much as their assembly on Tuesday whether or not they would restore the location.
“Whether they realize it or not, it is voter suppression,” stated Kristina Samuel, a senior and president of MOVE Texas A&M, a nonpartisan group that works to extend voting entry on campus.
Commissioners voted 4-1 on July 5 to maneuver the early-voting location for Precinct 3 — during which the college is positioned — from the campus to City Hall, although there’ll nonetheless be a polling location on the MSC on Election Day. Commissioner Nancy Berry, who oversees the precinct, cited complaints from nonstudent voters about difficulties navigating the campus and low turnout on the MSC as causes for the change. The Texas Tribune has requested information for early-voting turnout in latest elections, however didn’t obtain the information by late Monday.
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Student pushback to the choice on early voting was initially tepid as a result of many college students had been away for the summer season, although Democratic Party Chair Amy Alge and Republican Party Chair Elianor Vessali did express support for retaining the MSC previous to the vote. The momentum picked up in August after The Battalion, the scholar newspaper at A&M, reported on the change.
In assembly after assembly on the Commissioners Court, college students testified that the MSC’s central location permits them not solely to extra simply vote between lessons but in addition assist others turn into conscious of the elections within the first place. The off-campus web site, nevertheless, would require many to squeeze a 30-minute stroll every means into their already busy schedule. And for individuals who drive, they must sit in site visitors and navigate a car parking zone that’s smaller than what is offered to them on the MSC. A petition in assist of an MSC location, which was began 4 weeks in the past, additionally presently has greater than 1,400 signatures.
“We just know that this is going to de-incentivize students a lot, and voter turnout will be lower if we don’t do something about it,” Samuel stated.
Texas A&M in College Station has around 70,000 college students — a determine that’s over half of town’s inhabitants and about one-third of Brazos County’s. And in keeping with data from the New York Times, the ZIP code containing the MSC voted Democratic within the 2020 presidential election whereas metropolis corridor’s skewed Republican.
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This struggle for college students’ voting entry is just not uncommon. This yr, Bexar County initially deliberate to restrict early-voting places earlier than dealing with pushback from college students and different group members. The county has since added five more sites, in keeping with Community Impact. Those websites embrace places at Our Lady of the Lake University, St. Mary’s University and Texas A&M University-San Antonio campuses.
The struggle can also be not new. In 2018, college students at Prairie View A&M — a traditionally Black college that has a long legacy of combating for voting rights — sued Waller County over allegations that it was suppressing their votes by not opening a ballot on campus or within the metropolis itself for many of early voting. This transfer prompted the county to expand some access two days later, although a federal decide would rule in 2022 that the scholars had not been discriminated towards on this voting course of.
Another legal challenge additionally nearly arose in 2018 in Hays County as college students at Texas State University at San Marcos alleged that the county was suppressing their votes by limiting early voting on campus. Following this menace, Hays County quickly increased college students’ entry for voting earlier than and through Election Day.
“It’s a sense of Groundhog Day because we’ve been here before with trying to protect the student vote via campus polling locations, and then a sense of Whac-A-Mole because we’ve yet to see a set of policies that would protect them long term,” stated Alex Birnel, advocacy director of MOVE Texas.
In response to the backlash at A&M this yr, some Brazos County commissioners initially wished to reopen MSC because the second early-voting location for Precinct 3. But a misinterpretation of the state’s election code — as Precinct 1 Commissioner Steve Aldrich pointed out within the Sept. 20 assembly — led the court docket to consider that it might additionally need to open a second location in all different precincts. That would have added challenges associated to value and ballot employee availability.
County officers additionally repeatedly instructed advocates since August that it was too late to alter the location logistically — regardless of it being authorized to take action — attributable to numerous causes together with the ensuing must replace ballots and the involvement of native elections. Early voting runs from Oct. 24 to Nov. 4, and Election Day is on November 8.
“I’m in favor of going back to the MSC for ’23, and I’m sorry that I made the mistake when I did and I apologize,” Berry stated on the Sept. 20 assembly. “But I think we need to move forward.”
Other commissioners, nevertheless, raised issues about how they’ve been misinformed all through the method.
“We heard testimony that we can change it this year and then we heard other testimony that we can’t change this year, so again we’ve got misinformation,” Precinct 2 Commissioner Russ Ford, who was the only real vote towards the change in July, stated in the identical September assembly. He additionally acknowledged that he desires to reinstate the MSC for this yr’s elections.
Berry has modified her thoughts since final week’s assembly. When reached by the Tribune on Monday night, the commissioner stated she would assist reinstating the MSC as an early voting location for 2022 — if it’s logistically attainable to make the change. She reiterated that it might be necessary to think about how the replace would affect native elections.
“If the [elections administrator] says we can do, let’s do it,” she stated.
Other commissioners both could not be reached for remark Monday or didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Ahead of Tuesday’s assembly to rethink the MSC early-voting location, Birnel stated MOVE Texas and different voting rights organizations are retaining litigation of their toolkit, however he would far more favor constructing relationships with native and state governments to have interaction the youth vote.
“We’d love to see counties create the kind of infrastructure that makes democracy possible and also as a public good,” he stated.
Similarly, Samuel stated her group has been wanting into attainable authorized actions, however she famous that the chapter can also be “not waiting until the last minute to find an alternate method” like a bus that could transport college students immediately from MSC to City Hall. And even with out the present problem to reopen the MSC, Samuel stated she knew this election cycle would be important as a result of it’s the first main one following the passage of Texas’ Senate Bill 1, which curtails numerous native voting entry initiatives.
“It’s definitely made this a lot more emotionally heightened and definitely energized us,” Samuel stated. “There’s a lot at stake here.”
Disclosure: MOVE Texas, Texas A&M University and New York Times have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Find a whole list of them here.
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