Bill seeks to prevent vote sites at colleges
Rep. frames matter as one of safety, but some blast rationale
A new bill under consideration in the state Legislature would remove all polling places from Texas colleges and universities, prompting outcry from voting rights advocates who say the proposal would make it even harder for young people to cast a ballot.
House Bill 2390 would expressly prohibit county commissioners from designating college campuses as voting sites. State Rep. Carrie Isaac, a Dripping Springs Republican, said she authored the bill as part of a school safety initiative to keep potentially dangerous people off school grounds — an assertion that critics called offensive and dishonest Tuesday.
“I have some other ideas on how we can ‘protect places of education,’ Carrie Isaac,” tweeted former Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, a Democrat who administered the 2020 election in Houston and is now running for mayor. “Banning voting on college campuses isn’t it.”
Isaac plans to introduce another bill in the coming weeks that would also prevent K-12 public and charter schools from being used as polling places. After last year’s mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school, some local officials and parents voiced concerns about allowing adult voters on K-12 campuses.
“We must do everything we can to make our school campuses as safe as possible; they should not serve as a target-rich environment for those that wish to harm children,” she said in a Tuesday statement. “I have experienced firsthand the heightened emotions that often occur at polling locations, and I will not wait for more violence to act.”
Other Democrats and voting rights activists have characterized HB 2390 — narrowly tailored to college campuses — as an attack on young Texans, many of whom already don’t have easy access to the ballot box. On-site polling places are almost always the fastest way for college students to cast a ballot, especially when they don’t have cars to drive nearby.
“Texas has the fastest growing population in the nation, largely led by young voters of color, and some politicians clearly see this as a threat,” said Katya Ehresman, the voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas. “This bill is an unabashed attempt to manipulate the outcome of elections by suppressing the voices of our increasingly young and diverse electorate.”
Young people — those between 18 and 29 — are far more liberal than previous generations, but few of them show up to vote. After record turnout in 2018 and 2020, about 75 percent
of all registered young Texans stayed home during last year’s midterm election.
It is more difficult to vote in Texas than it is in almost every other state,
but the barriers are especially high for young people. Strict vote-by-mail rules have impacted some college students seeking absentee ballots, and the state’s voter identification
laws don’t allow the use of student IDs at the ballot box.
Texas students are also supposed to learn about civic engagement and have the opportunity to register
to vote in high school, but that isn’t always the case across thousands of campuses. And the state’s lack of an online voter registration system has frustrated advocates, who say access to such a platform would significantly ease the registration process for teenagers and 20-somethings who have only known a digital world.
“Banning access to polling places on college campuses would not only strip away the electoral power of young people, but would have a dangerous impact on the future of Texas,” said Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, the president of the advocacy group NextGen America. “We need to expand access to voting at all public higher education institutions, not eliminate it.”
The bill also comes just months after Brazos County commissioners took away an early-voting site at Texas A&M University during the November midterm, sparking widespread backlash from students. The county later voted to give A&M $5,000 to provide transportation for students heading to the nearest voting location at College Station City Hall, and the advocacy group Moms Against Greg Abbott also raised $15,000 for the busing effort.