Students want early voting location. St. Edward’s said no. Here's why they aren't giving up.

Cindy Cuellar, a junior at St. Edward’s University and a student leader for the voter engagement group Texas Rising, is passionate about civic engagement.

But during the November 2022 election at her hilltop South Austin school, students waited two to three hours to cast their ballots.

Determined to make the path to voting smoother for the 2024 elections, Cuellar and other students from Texas Rising spent the summer advocating for early voting locations at Austin-area schools.

Cuellar and other activists testified at the Travis County Commissioners Court. They emailed the commissioners, too, pleading for an early voting site for the March primary.

“When the day came that they announced the polling locations, we noticed that Huston-Tillotson (University) got an early voting and election day polling location, but we only got an election day polling location,” Cuellar said.

The Travis County clerk's office said in an email to the American-Statesman that it had determined that St. Edward’s meets the criteria to become an early voting location. However, the university told the office that it could not find a space that could be used for the time needed, the email said.

St. Edward’s did not respond to emails or phone requests for comment.

Cuellar said early voting is important because college students often balance a full course load, work and social life. They also might not have access to transportation that would take them to other polling sites.

“I was pretty upset just because I do not have a way of transportation to get off-campus during early voting,” she said. “I felt like it was shutting down my opportunity to actually exercise that right, because what if I don’t have time on dlection day?”

Since then, Cuellar and other St. Edward’s students have worked to bring awareness to their cause and have launched an email campaign to the administration.

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Travis County has not yet posted early voting locations, but Maggie Di Sanza, a University of Texas student and the Central Texas campus organizer for Texas Rising, said UT and Huston-Tillotson will both be early voting locations.

“We've had meetings with St. Edward's administration, and we have just been met with excuses and nonconcrete answers as to why they can't implement an early voting location and Band-Aid solutions to what is a larger problem of voter suppression,” Di Sanza said.

Cuellar said the campus' voting location will be the Alumni Gym. To commit to becoming an early voting location, Di Sanza said, the university would need to give up the space for that time, and the county would provide all equipment with no fees.

On its facilities page, St. Edward’s lists the Recreation and Athletic Center as the main athletic facility on campus. The Alumni Gym has open recreation and is home to a spin studio and a training studio.

The campus has not been an early voting location before. In 2018, it was a mobile voting site, but when a state law the next year eliminated that option, it became more difficult for students on college campuses such as UT, Huston-Tillotson, Austin Community College and St. Edward’s to easily vote, according to the email from the county clerk's office.

Texas Rising — a project of the Texas Freedom Network, a nonpartisan group advocating for equality and social justice in Texas — works to increase voter registration and turnout among young people with more than 20 chapters at Texas universities and colleges.

In Texas, only elderly people and those with physical disabilities can vote by mail. Early voting allows for more flexibility on when voters can cast their ballot and often have shorter wait times.

In 2020, the Texas Observer reported that the number of people under 30 who voted early doubled from 2016.

In meetings with the St. Edward's administration, students said the school floated the idea of shuttle services to early voting locations. But Di Sanza said she worried that it would fall on students to drive others to the polls.

Di Sanza also pointed to equity concerns with no access to early voting — students who do not have to work are more likely to have time to wait in line or afford transportation, while students working their way through school might not.

“When we don't have early voting locations, whether or not it's intentional, we are actively suppressing the students' vote because we know that that isn't accommodating to their lives and schedules,” she added.

Both Di Sanza and Cuellar said they will continue to advocate that St. Edward’s approve an early voting location.

Polling locations for the March 2024 primary need to be finalized by mid-December.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: St. Edward's University students push for 2024 early voting location