Texas House Bill 2390, introduced on Thursday, Feb. 16, would ban the placement of polling locations on college campuses, including Texas State. Authored by District 73 House Rep. Carrie Isaac who represents parts of Hays and Comal Counties, the bill is an attack on students and young voters’ constitutional right to vote.
Colleges and universities are designed to house all the needs of students on campus. Housing, dining, classes and recreation are within walking distance. Requiring public transportation or a car to vote is inconvenient and will lower voter turnout.
Voting should be easy and encouraged by government officials, not restricted so politicians can decide who is able to show up to vote just so they receive more favorable odds on Election Day.
During the November 2022 midterm elections, only half of the 36 Texas public universities had a polling location and just two of the nine historically Black colleges and universities had them, according to the Texas Tribune. Despite registration for voters between 18-24 being 19% higher in 2022 than it was in 2018, this demographic still had the lowest turnout in Texas.
On Election Day at the LBJ Student Center, the wait time for voting exceeded one hour. In fact, even though polling locations closed at 7 p.m., students were still in line voting until past 9 p.m. If this bill is passed, it eliminates the possibility of voting access to some students, especially those who live on campus and/or do not have a reliable form of transportation to get to a different polling location.
The University Star’s news team was out covering Election Day for hours in November and saw how long the lines at LBJ were. Reporters spoke to the students who stood in line, determined to cast their vote, and shared the interviews, photos and videos with our followers on social media. As student journalists, our job is to accurately report on our communities. If our campus community’s most important polling place is removed, our responsibility to serve and deliver the truth to our audience will become more difficult to meet.
In the fall of 2022, Texas State welcomed a record-breaking freshman class. If the university plans to continue accepting that amount of students and increase enrollment, on-campus polling locations are crucial to accommodate a growing number of students. Additionally, if all of these students have to find other polling locations, it can overwhelm other locations.
According to The Texas Politics Project, only 32.4% of traditionally college-aged students vote. In times when it’s increasingly important that a young voice be heard in the political world, this bill would make an already low demographic of voters even more discouraged.
This bill also limits the sense of community surrounding politics on campus. On Election Day, students, politicians and organizations alike were able to voice their opinions on policies and candidates in the election. If polling locations are banned on campus, who’s to say that these practices won’t be banned too?
According to the Campus Vote Project, millennials and Gen Z were the largest shares of eligible voters in 2020 but with low voter turnout, it’s hard to see their impact. Taking away these sites on college campuses will only cause the numbers to continue decreasing.
It’s not just students who are using college campus polls. Citizens who live in the area of the college campuses, and who don’t want to travel far could also be affected by the bill. The convenience of college campus polls allows not just students but citizens to vote. Removing polls on college campuses excludes an entire group of locals who depend on the campus location to cast their vote.
A study from the American Economic Association found that a one-mile increase in distance to a polling location reduced voter turnout from districts with minority residents by 19%. Meanwhile, for predominantly white communities, voter turnout decreased by only 5%.
If the state of Texas wants a voter turnout that is more representative of its population, it would make it easier for the part of the population that is actively shaping its future. Voters under 30 increased from 8% in 2014 to almost 26% in 2018, which is still much lower than the overall turnout of 53%, according to the Tribune. We are only continuing to make progress as more and more young people are allowed to register each election cycle.
Many students are new to voting which can make it scary to participate in elections. Having polling places on college campuses gives students an opportunity to vote in an environment that they’re comfortable in.
Rather than having to inevitably spend thousands of dollars on buses to get students to voting locations, the state legislature should do the right thing and expand access to voting through more locations and take away restrictions on early voting and voter ID laws.
HB 2390 is just one of likely more than 7,000 bills that will be filed this legislative session and only around a thousand will pass, according to the Tribune. The bill passing through the Republican-held Texas legislature which has filed more than 200 voting-related bills aimed at election integrity would be a failure in achieving the integrity they desire.