Republican officials across the country continue putting forward new bills that target Americans’ fundamental rights. Most recently, a new Texas lawmaker proposed House Bill 239, which would no longer allow higher education locations—like college campuses or university libraries—to be used as polling locations for elections.
Rep. Carrie Isaac filed the bill Thursday, proposing that county commissioners bar college and university sites from being designated voting sites starting Sept. 1. Per the bill, an institution of higher education is defined as any public technical institute, public junior college, public senior college or university, medical or dental unit, public state college, or other agency of higher education.
The move comes as part of an initiative by the Texas Freedom Caucus to “increase election integrity.” It also follows another bill proposal that would require counties to include a certain number of polling locations on college campuses based on the size of their enrollment, the San Antonio Express-News reported.
According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, over 18,500 early vote ballots were cast at higher education polling places in one county alone in November’s joint general and special election. There were 3,525 early vote ballots cast on the University of Texas at Arlington campus in the November election, Tarrant County records indicated that 3,525 early vote ballots were cast on the University of Texas at Arlington campus, with a total of 14,990 early votes cast across four Tarrant County College campuses.
This isn’t the first time Texas GOP officials attempted to close university polling locations. In 2018, polling locations at Texas State University were closed earlier, impacting student votes severely. However, the location was reopened when voters’ rights groups threatened lawsuits.
Speaking about HB 239, Alex Birnel, Advocacy Director for MOVE Texas, a nonprofit focused on increasing voter engagement, noted that it was clear the bill has no purpose outside of decreasing young voter turnout. He called it "one of the most insidious attempts to silence young voters in Texas."
"The bill text is so short that it doesn't illuminate any further why this bill would be filed other than to directly target places where universities have large enough voting populations to flip the county, like we saw in Hays County back in 2018," he said, according to Houston Public Media.
Birnel added that young people are the state’s “largest, most diverse electorate,” and that those in power are attempting to eliminate access for these voters out of fear they won’t be able to win them.
Advocacy organizations are not the only ones fighting for the rights of young people to vote on campus. College students themselves expressed the need for accessible polling locations, noting that they do not always have the ability to travel.
"Students have already been kind of crying and fighting for their right to vote and access to equitable polling locations for four decades in Texas,” Katya Ehresman, Common Cause Texas voting rights program manager, told KVUE.
But of course, instead of acknowledging the issues that removing polling locations from colleges would create and lack of access students would have to vote, Isaac told KBTX she filed it to “protect” children.
“Having these long, drawn-out primaries, in Texas we have the longest voting period than any other state,” Isaac said. “There’s a lot of opportunity there for people to be places they shouldn’t be. I just know in this session, this is going to be a topic we cover intensely, school safety. I just believe these are a couple areas we can improve on.”
Isaac noted that this is the first of many bills she plans to draft and promote for “school safety.”
According to the Leadership Conference of Civil and Human Rights, Texas had closed at least 750 polling locations within the last 10 years.