After controversy over college polling sites, Tarrant County students work to increase turnout

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

In sneakers, Crocs and UGGs, more than a dozen University of Texas at Arlington students walked the half-mile from their dorm, Vandergriff Hall, to UTA’s early voting site at the Maverick Activities Center. It was the first day of early voting in Tarrant County, and freshman Finnly More wanted to vote as soon as possible.

“I have the right to vote, so I’m going to use it. So many people, you know, forget that we fought so hard to be able to vote,” said More, who was wearing a blue UTA T-shirt and planned to put the “I voted” sticker on it after casting his first ballot in a presidential election.

Yaseen Tasnif, a former resident assistant at Vandergriff Hall, organized the walk to the polls. The UTA student has been registering students to vote and letting them know their vote matters.

“We have a lot of issues that we need fixed as college students, as people of color, but unfortunately, because we don’t show up to the polls enough, we don’t see accurate representation in politics,” said Tasnif, who will serve as a presiding judge at an Arlington polling site on Election Day.

UTA is one of the largest campus early voting locations in Tarrant County, with over 9,700 people casting their early vote for the presidential election there in 2020. County Republican and Democratic leaders alike have said every vote counts in terms of what color the battleground county will turn in the presidential election and down-ballot races. President Joe Biden narrowly won Tarrant in 2020, while Republicans continue to hold all countywide offices.

In a pitched battle this September, UTA and other campus voting sites were potentially on the chopping block. The effort, led by Republican County Judge Tim O’Hare, would have removed up to four college polling sites from the county’s list of early voting sites. O’Hare cited concerns over the accessibility of campus voting sites and said commissioners should not cater to any one demographic group.

“That doesn’t seem like the right way to run an election,” O’Hare said. “That seems like it’s trying to favor one group over another. Not voter suppression.”

UTA’s Maverick Activities Center, along with early voting sites on Tarrant County College’s South and Northeast campuses and at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, were among those considered for removal. The move prompted outcry from students and university staff across the county.

The most important Texas news,
sent weekday mornings.

Ultimately, O’Hare was the lone commissioner in favor of removing college polling sites, with two Republicans and two Democrats voting to keep the list as is. County GOP leaders decried the vote afterward, stating the move hurt Republican candidates’ chances to win in November.

“It shouldn’t be too surprising that O’Hare and the other Republicans on the commission are part of what I think is fair to describe as a national project by Republicans to boost Republican turnout and throw up obstacles to Democratic voter turnout,” said Mark Hand, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington. “Like most college campuses, the UTA student body probably leans to the left, and so high or low turnout on campus could make a difference in some of the countywide races.”

Trevor McCullough, a freshman majoring in political science and a member of the UTA student government’s legislative relations committee, was one of the dozen or so students who spoke out at a September commissioners court meeting, his hands shaking as he addressed elected leaders.

“We knew, No. 1, that it would go against everything we stood for — as student government and as Mavericks — to let something like that just slip by and hope for the best,” McCullough said of the student government’s choice to speak out.

McCullough, a political science major from southwest Fort Worth, was excited to be a part of a “sea of people” who were speaking up on both sides of the issue.

“I’m really interested in and I love the idea of people interacting with the government. So No. 1, being part of that crowd was amazing,” said McCullough.

For Emeri Callaway, a prelaw and political science major at TCC Northeast campus, the polling location controversy gave students the opportunity to see what they’re working against and what needs to be done in order to move forward. Callaway, a member of Tarrant County Young Democrats, has been canvassing every weekend, participating in phone banks and ensuring that people begin to detail their plans on how, when and where they will vote.

“I would say that we just need to continue what we have been doing, which is reaching out to young Democrats, Dem supporters and even independents and moderate Republicans because we have a great slate of candidates,” said Callaway. “I am looking to turn blue at all levels of government.”

The Report reached out to several young Republican groups in Tarrant County, including campus organizations. None responded to interview requests. At a presidential debate watch party in September, Jake Lloyd Colglazier, president of the Fort Worth Young Republicans, told the Report he is certain the election will result in former President Donald Trump returning to the White House.

“The Fort Worth Young Republicans stand behind him totally, and we’ll do whatever we can to get him reelected,” he said.

James Riddlesperger, a TCU political science professor, says much of the voter mobilization efforts for the nation’s youngest voting age group are now virtual.

“It used to be that we would have a lot of bumper stickers and a lot of yard signs and a lot of flyers that were posted on campus. That was a very common thing to happen,” said Riddlesperger, who has taught at the university for over four decades.

But now, he said, partisan electioneering is more digital.

“We’re seeing it primarily in the forms of political advertisements that come across people’s social media feeds and perhaps in emails that come to their email boxes,” Riddlesperger said.

In terms of getting TCC students to register to vote, it’s an in-person effort. Volunteer deputy registrars at TCC’s Northeast campus in Hurst describe the difference in interest in the upcoming elections from last spring to this fall as “night and day.”

“When we left in the spring, we had a lot of kids saying, ‘I’m not really interested in voting, or I’m not political,’” said Barbara Leath, a Grapevine retiree and a volunteer deputy registrar. She has helped staff the table once-a-week for the past four years. “When we came on campus this fall, our first day on campus — we should have had another person helping us, because we were so busy.”

Leath has seen a lot of interest in voting among young women, with many students registering themselves and then returning with a friend wanting to register, too. That’s a phenomenon Leath hadn’t seen before.

“Usually we are asking people, are you registered to vote?” Leath said. “(This time) we weren’t even asking. (Students) were just coming up to us and saying, ‘I need to get this done.’”

More students are making a plan to vote ahead of Nov. 5. And a lot of them, Leath said, are thinking about bringing their family members to campus so that they can vote together.

Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report, in partnership with Open Campus. Contact her at shomial.ahmad@fortworthreport.org.

At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Disclosure: University of Texas - Arlington has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.