Half of the state's 36 public universities have on-campus voting sites.
Two Democratic Texas state senators, Nathan Johnson of Dallas and Jose Menendez of San Antonio have filed Senate Bill 118. It would place at least one polling site for schools with at least 5,000 students, two for universities with 10,000 and one extra site for every additional 10,000 students.
Johnson says "we talk all the time about trying to cultivate civic engagement, trying to get young people to vote. Everybody talks about it. Make it easier for them to vote."
He says small cities like La Grange in Fayette County have four polling locations serving about 4,000 people, while the University of Texas at Austin has two polling locations that serve 52,000 people. "A lot of these kids don't have cars so they can't drive somewhere else to vote."
Johnson says a lack of polling places can be traced to Republican-backed legislation passed in Texas in 2019. He says lawmakers effectively eliminated a number of temporary locations by requiring the counties to keep polling locations open for the entire voting period.
That had the effect of shutting down temporary polling locations on college campuses. And Johnson notes out of Texas' nine Historically Black Colleges and Universities, only two have polling places.
"It makes a really noble, inspiring image to see lines of students wrapped around buildings to wait to vote for five hours and people giving them pizza. We're cheering for them. It feels good. But we shouldn't have to be heroically enduring the process of voting in order to exercise our rights to participate in Democracy."
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