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Voting advocacy groups have pushed back against a Texas lawmaker’s effort to prohibit polling sites on college campuses.
State representative Carrie Isaac, a Republican, cited safety concerns in proposing to bar county authorities from placing polling sites at colleges.
“I have experienced firsthand the heightened emotions that often occur at polling locations and I will not wait for more violence to act,” Isaac said in a statement last week, adding that she will draft legislation to remove polling sites from K-12 schools.
“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,” said Isaac, who represents an area south of Austin.
Voters of Tomorrow, founded in 2019 to encourage civic engagement among young people, and MOVE Texas, a voter registration and engagement group, have denounced Isaac’s proposal.
Advocacy groups and students have pushed for voting sites at some campuses in Texas and elsewhere, at times arguing that off-campus voting sites place an undue burden on college students who may lack easy access to transportation. Some Democrats in Congress have tried to pass a law promoting the youth vote.
Santiago Mayer, executive director and founder of Voters of Tomorrow, told television station WFAA his organization would be ready to file a lawsuit to try to block Isaac’s proposal from ever being enforced.
