Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Early voting lifted turnout at colleges
But UCF lagged compared with other large schools
Youth turnout boomed at campus early voting locations in Florida in 2018, according to a new study, boosting overall turnout statewide after a hard-won victory by advocates against a state law that had banned casting ballots on university grounds.
But at the University of Central Florida, the biggest university in the state, turnout was at the middle of the pack compared with other large schools.
And new requirements for parking at campus early voting sites is leading advocates to worry that there may be fewer such options for voters in 2020.
“Our report shows strong evidence that there is no lack of youth voter enthusiasm,” wrote University of Florida political science chair Daniel A. Smith, the study’s author. “Elections officials should be in the business of lowering the barriers to voter turnout.”
The Andrew Goodman Foundation study found that almost 60,000 voters cast ballots from Oct. 22 to Nov. 4 at the 12 on-campus voting sites.
Of those voters, 56% were between 18-29 years old, according to the study, and 38% were 18-22 years old – a huge jump from the less than 4% of voters at other early voting sites who were of college age.
Hispanic and black voters also disproportionately cast ballots at those sites, as did those who didn’t vote in 2016.
UCF did have had the third-highest percentage of college-age campus voters, with more than 59% ages 18-22.
But even though it has the largest student body in Florida, with more than 70,000 students, it fell squarely in the middle of the 12 campuses with 5,102 voters – behind University of Florida and Florida International University, which both had more than 7,500; FSU, which had more than 6,000; and each of the two campuses of Miami Dade College.
UCF Student Government didn’t partner with the Orange County elections office to promote voter registration and engagement last year. Instead it worked with about 20 groups such as the campus Democrats and Republicans as well as NextGen America, the national group founded by now-Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer.
But Orange elections supervisor Bill Cowles, who had said last year he was “blindsided” by the UCF Student Government’s decision not to work with his office, acknowledged that UCF’s middling numbers could have more to do with UCF’s location than any failings by get-out-the-vote efforts.
“Only Orange County voters could vote at that site,” Cowles said. “When you go to the University of Florida, you most likely changed your address that you moved to Alachua County. For FSU, you move to Leon County. If you go to UCF, you’re coming from six to eight counties, [maybe] driving in to go to school. And the boundary with Seminole County is just north of the football stadium.”
Cowles said that if students from Seminole, Brevard, Lake could have voted at the UCF site, “it probably would have blown away all those numbers.”
Still, voter outreach groups say there is more that can be done to increase turnout at UCF and other colleges.
Justin Atkins, the NextGen Florida state director, said the group helped push for the University of North Florida to add signatures to their student IDs, making them compatible with requirements for voter IDs.
A proposal to do the same for UCF IDs is now making its way through the Student Government Association, UCF spokesman Mark Schlueb said.
It would either add signatures to cards or create a blank space for a signature, Schlueb said, an idea “nobody really objects to” and has the support of the the school’s administration.
The influx of young voters almost didn’t happen, thanks to a provision of a state law that went into effect after the first attempt at campus voting in 2014. But a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters led to the provision being overturned by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who ruled, “Throwing up roadblocks in front of younger voters does not remotely serve the public interest.”
Now, though, an amendment added to an elections bill by state Sen. Dennis Baxley creates stricter parking requirements for early voting. Such sites must “provide sufficient non-permitted parking to accommodate the anticipated amount of voters,” the bill states.
It was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Baxley, R-Ocala, said he wasn’t targeting campuses with his amendment.
“Part of being an early voting site is it has to be accessible to everybody,” Baxley said. “Any public function requires adequate parking. Everybody doesn’t live on campus or ride a bicycle … Early voting sites are not targeting audiences, it’s so all voters can come to them and cast a vote.”
But Patricia Brigham, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, said the amendment, “slipped through at the eleventh hour … has never been about parking. It’s another way of the Legislature trying to prevent thousands of young people and others from voting.”
Smith said there was a double standard when it came to early voting sites at campuses versus places that draw lots of older voters, located mostly in suburban and residential areas.
“Community locations, recreation centers, retirement villages, they don’t seem to have issues about parking,” Smith said. “[But] you want to make sure early voting [sites] are in places with highly dense populations. And college campuses are one of the most highly dense locations in the state.”