Texas hinders young voters with strict laws, lack of campus polling sites

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Jay Guillory was too busy making an attempt to get Texas A&M University-Commerce college students registered to vote to even take into consideration whether or not he would forged his personal poll early or on Election Day. As the college’s assistant director of management and repair, he spent weeks serving to with registration drives at busy campus spots.

But Guillory is aware of registering voters is simply half the battle. Hunt County in North Texas has just one early-voting location for the Nov. 8 midterm — and it’s greater than 14 miles away from A&M-Commerce’s campus. The closest Election Day polling location is half a mile away. He says the distant polling areas pose a serious problem to college students, particularly those that don’t have vehicles.

“We worked to get our students registered in this county,” Guillory mentioned. “But if they don’t have access to vote, how can they do that?”

This yr, A&M-Commerce will as soon as once more drive college students to the polls. With a $3,000 grant from the MTV Campus Challenge, which goals to increase pupil voter entry, the college’s 14-passenger shuttle bus will present three journeys on Oct. 28 and run each 20 minutes on Election Day, Guillory mentioned.

“We made certain our college students are educated and registered, after which we’re turning our focus now to turnout,” he mentioned.

According to a Texas Tribune evaluation, solely 50% of the state’s 36 public universities have an on-campus early-voting location this yr. That drops to round 20% for Texas’ 9 traditionally Black schools and universities, with solely two having voting sites earlier than Election Day.

“I was surprised that so few of [the HBCUs] actually have early-voting polls,” mentioned Jennifer Clark, an affiliate professor of political science on the University of Houston. “In terms of showing inclusion of younger Texans and a more diverse population, I would think that many elections administrators would be wise to expand that access, especially to the HBCUs in the state.”

That lack of on-campus voting sites comes after a surge in young-voter turnout in recent times — although it nonetheless lags participation charges of different age teams. Turnout of Texans below 30 jumped from round 8% in 2014 to nearly 26% in 2018, however this was nonetheless decrease than the state’s overall participation rate of about 46%.

Organizers and voting-access advocates say that whereas apathy is an element, faculty pupil voters expertise obstacles that make it troublesome to extend their turnout. Beyond a lack of campus polling areas — which is partially the product of a 2019 state legislation prohibiting non permanent voting sites throughout the 12 days of early voting — Texas legal guidelines additionally exclude pupil IDs as an appropriate type of required identification and limit same-day, on-line and automated voter registration.

For Election Day, 55% of public universities have voting areas, and the quantity of HBCUs with on-campus voting doubles in contrast with early voting. The common distance to the closest polling place for each teams additionally shrinks.

The Tribune’s evaluation discovered that the scale of a faculty’s pupil inhabitants predicts entry. Nine of the 12 universities with the most important pupil populations have early-voting areas this yr. Meanwhile, among the many 12 colleges with the smallest pupil enrollments, 3 have early-voting areas.

Patrick Flavin, a Baylor University political science professor, mentioned he thought the quantity of universities with early-voting sites could be a lot bigger as a result of many campuses are huge inhabitants areas and have the amenities to accommodate voting facilities.

The most notable exception among bigger schools is Texas A&M University in College Station, the state’s largest public college with over 70,000 college students. While the campus can have a voting web site on Election Day, Brazos County leaders have drawn criticism this yr for eradicating the same old on-campus location throughout the early-voting interval. The county has since agreed to spend $5,000 to assist bus voters to the closest early-voting web site however determined to not additional lengthen voting hours — as requested by organizers — citing difficulties discovering staff.

“Student activists in College Station will not back down,” Kristina Samuel, an A&M senior and president of voter engagement group MOVE Texas A&M, mentioned in a press launch final week. “We hope that Brazos County will step up and meet our demands to extend early voting polling hours, but, either way, we are ready with the busing program to help students on campus exercise their right to vote.”

State legislation prices many schools voting sites

Kennedy Fears fondly remembers partaking college students to vote in 2018 on the one day early voting was available at Huston-Tillotson University.

“It was just a huge crowd with smiles on our faces,” mentioned the faculty senior and organizer with Texas Rising, a progressive youth engagement initiative. “Professors were also encouraging their students like, ‘Hey, you got to go to the union. Go vote!’”

But her expertise with on-campus early voting on the Austin-based HBCU was short-lived.

In 2019, Republican lawmakers ended non permanent sites and mandated the more expensive choice of protecting polling areas open for all the early-voting interval, arguing that the previous allowed for the “selective harvesting of targeted voters.” Since many non permanent early-voting areas have been on faculty campuses, Democrats sued the state alleging that this legislation suppressed college students’ voting entry, however the problem was later dismissed.

As a end result, Huston-Tillotson misplaced entry to a short lived on-campus voting web site.

“Student leaders were pissed. We were like, ‘You’re making it more difficult for us to vote, to have that motivation to want to go out and vote,” Fears mentioned.

Also in 2019, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, launched a invoice requiring counties to put voting areas on campuses with at least 10,000 students, which might have coated about 20 public universities and one HBCU, based mostly on fall 2020 enrollment. State Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, wrote laws that lowered that urged threshold to not less than 5,000 college students in 2019 and once more in 2021. That would have required voting areas at round 30 public universities, two of that are HBCUs, and at one personal HBCU. But these efforts failed — and with simply over 1,000 college students, Huston-Tillotson wouldn’t have benefited from them.

This yr, the HBCU can have an on-campus web site for Election Day, however the closest early-voting location is half a mile away. Fears mentioned the lack of an on-campus location has made it tougher to get college students excited concerning the elections and early voting, however organizers are decided to proceed partaking them.

“Our goal right now is just keeping people hyped. You can always be registered, but are you going to get up and go vote?” Fears mentioned.

And three years after the Legislature banned non permanent voting sites, some native governments are nonetheless confused.

Webb County commissioners needed to convene a special meeting Oct. 21 to replace their polling areas after they have been made conscious of the legislation simply days earlier than the beginning of early voting. After a last-minute scramble, they determined to show cellular early-voting areas — together with one at Texas A&M International University — into everlasting sites as a substitute of eradicating them.

“Whatever we need to do to add, let’s go above and beyond,” Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina mentioned throughout the assembly.

Mixed reactions to transferring on-campus areas 

At the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s second-largest public college, with close to 52,000 students, there are two polling areas on campus this yr. While one stays throughout the campus’ undergraduate core, the second web site was moved from a central location to 1 nearly a mile away to make sure that the power complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Members from Hook The Vote, a nonpartisan civic engagement group on the college, mentioned this variation may exacerbate the principle voting location’s wait time throughout peak durations. Ana Fuente, an organizer and UT-Austin junior, recalled seeing in 2020 a queue that wrapped across the massive constructing twice.

“This is an election that has everyone’s attention,” she mentioned. “That drastic wait time can happen again.”

Beyond the traces, organizers identified that the gap can add accessibility challenges for college students with disabilities and people with out autos. Research has additionally proven that distance to ballot sites reduces voter turnout.

In response, Travis County is rising the quantity of machines on the college’s primary polling location to 12. “The message we want to convey very clearly is this is not an effort to in any way limit the ability of students or the regular public to access voting places,” county clerk Rebecca Guerrero told The Daily Texan pupil newspaper.

Not all relocations have been criticized, although.

The University of Texas at El Paso senior Destiny Guerra and junior Glenda Bustillos, organizers with the Campus Vote Project and MTV Campus Challenge, cheered the transfer of their on-campus voting web site to the scholar union constructing this yr. They say having the polls at this pupil hub will carry in additional voters, particularly when contemplating the massive quantity of commuter college students.

The web site is “definitely something more accessible,” Guerra mentioned.

The change has additionally allowed them to shift their assets from consciousness concerning the election towards educating college students about voting and elections extra broadly.

“We really have been wanting to express the importance of Latino voting since many are first-generation students on campus,” Bustillos mentioned.

Invisible challenges 

On prime of the hole in on-campus voting entry, organizers and specialists say Texas’ voting legislation creates challenges for youthful voters.

For occasion, faculty college students usually transfer residences, which might require them to consistently replace their voter registration information in the event that they need to vote the place they attend faculty. Texas additionally stays one of the few states to not settle for pupil ID playing cards as a form of voter ID. Former state Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, unsuccessfully attempted so as to add faculty IDs to the checklist of accepted identifications in 2019.

And Texas’ lack of same-day voter registration, which over 20 states within the U.S. permit, is a serious barrier to strong youth participation. Research exhibits that having the ability to register the identical day as an election “disproportionately increases turnout among individuals aged 18–24.”

“Same-day registration is the easiest way to increase turnout,” mentioned Mark Owens, an affiliate professor of political science on the University of Texas at Tyler.

Texas officers, in contrast to their counterparts in much of the country, have additionally lengthy resisted on-line voter registration, which has equally proven to increase youth turnout. The state needed to barely chill out its guidelines in 2020 after a court ruling required it to permit voters to register once they replace their driver’s licenses on-line.

“The state has placed more of a burden on the younger voters. And so even with access to polls, it can be a bit difficult to see a big jump in that turnout sometimes due to some of those other restrictions,” mentioned Clark, the University of Houston affiliate professor.

For organizers like MOVE Texas advocacy director Alex Birnel, these hurdles require investing most of the group’s assets in voter registration. He pointed to automatic voter registration — a way began in Oregon in 2016 that has unfold to many different states — as one other resolution. In Texas, state Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston, launched a bill in 2019 to allow automated registration for eligible college students, however that laws additionally didn’t go.

With a brand new legislative session developing in January, Birnel mentioned MOVE Texas and its companions will hold pushing policymakers to pursue long-term reforms.

“We deserve better,” he mentioned.

Looking to the Legislature

In Texas, many profitable efforts to assist pupil voters have come from authorized challenges. In the final midterm cycle, Prairie View A&M sued Waller County, rapidly prompting the county to extend on-campus early-voting access. More lately, Bexar County regained over 40 polling areas for Election Day following a court order earlier this month. These sites now cowl multiple campuses together with St. Philip’s College, an HBCU in San Antonio.

“One of the proud moments about the new list of election locations is how many colleges we actually cover,” Democratic Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert mentioned throughout an Oct. 18 commissioners court meeting. “I really think that young people are going to be very pivotal in this particular election.”

But Democrats have had a a lot more durable time making an attempt to increase voter entry and voting choices with payments pitched in a Legislature lengthy managed by Republicans. In many instances, the laws died in committees.

Last yr, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed sweeping legislation that further tightened state election laws and restricted counties’ potential to increase voting choices. Senate Bill 1 spurred months of legislative clashes and standoffs, throughout which Democrats — propelled by considerations that the laws raises new limitations for marginalized voters — compelled Republicans into two further legislative classes.

A partisan divide can be seen on the bottom. The Tribune’s evaluation exhibits that Democrat-leaning counties usually tend to have on-campus early-voting areas than Republican-leaning ones, even amongst bigger areas.

Menéndez, the Democratic state senator who has launched a slew of bills to extend voting entry, just isn’t discouraged. Instead, he advised the Tribune that he could be refiling many of them in 2023 if he’s reelected in his solidly blue district.

“As elected officials, we should be doing everything that we can to help make it easier for lawful citizens who have a legal right to vote, no matter what their age is,” he mentioned.

He considers entry to polling areas to be the most important problem for college students. Ultimately, Menéndez shares the identical sentiment as many organizers and specialists that state and native governments ought to put money into youth voters as a substitute of being dissuaded by statistics and reinforcing a vicious cycle.

“I like to show young people that by investing and having a polling site by law on your campus, we’re saying to you, ‘We want to hear your voice. We want to know your opinion,’” he mentioned. “And I think it would cause more elected officials and candidates to go talk to these young people about the issues that are important in their lives.”

Disclosure: Baylor University, Huston-Tillotson University, MOVE Texas, Prairie View A&M University, St. Philip’s College, Texas A&M University, Texas A&M International University, the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at El Paso have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that’s funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no function within the Tribune’s journalism. Find an entire list of them here.