TEXAS \u2014 There\u2019s a central message as volunteers with Voto Latino try to catch students trekking across campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre y\u2019all registered to vote?\u201d questioned volunteers with Voto Latino\u2019s voter registration booth.<\/p>\n
The Texas secretary of state reported in 2024 that 81% of eligible Texans are registered to vote and even fewer than that show up to the polls.<\/p>\n
But college freshman Luke Parks wants to encourage voter participation \u2014 especially among college students.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where you get to share your beliefs, your things, your thoughts and truly believe what you believe. Make sure you know what you’re voting for,\u201d said Parks.<\/p>\n
Registering to vote is a necessary step to making your voice heard in the elections. Voter registration forms ask for basic information like name and address.<\/p>\n
Voto Latino is on college campuses, helping to make sure college-age voters are getting registered ahead of the midterms.<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung people will determine this upcoming midterm elections. And proof is in the pudding, especially when you look at Texas and a place like UT Austin where we have seen engagement rise up, from college students, wanting to make their voices heard. But we’re not there yet, as well. There’s a lot of, people who are still not registered to vote,\u201d said Javier Gamboa, the chief campaigns officer at Voto Latino Foundation.<\/p>\n
But one pollster says mobilizing college-age voters can be a challenge and seeing the impact is complicated because they make up a small share of the electorate, but there has been a notable shift in their preferences.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the midterm cycles like this one, we’ve seen in general exit polls showing almost two-thirds of younger voters, voters under 30 supporting Democratic candidates, we expect that to be a little bit higher among the college age cohort. But when President Trump has been on the ballot in much more competitive elections,\u201d said Josh Blank with the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n
Without Trump on the ballot, Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton launched 11 Students for Paxton chapters across Texas universities in late August.<\/p>\n
UT Austin senior Ekatarina Cruz is excited to see Texas turn blue.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of us think maybe if we vote like just one person, but when we come as a community, honestly, I think UT has thousands of students that are also wanting the same dreams of turning Texas blue,\u201d said Cruz.<\/p>\n
Gamboa with Voto Latino\u00a0thinks uncertainty about the future is motivating college students to vote.<\/p>\n
Immigration is a big issue motivating some students on campus as UT Austin is a Hispanic Serving Institution with over 25% undergraduate Hispanic enrollment.<\/p>\n
\u201cICE has been pretty busy out here lately. You see families being separated and like, there’s carelessness within the current, sitting, government,\u201d said Jose Espitia, a UT Austin sophomore.<\/p>\n
The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 There\u2019s a central message as volunteers with Voto Latino try to catch students trekking across campus.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[6329,1658,132,134,133,6328,102,6363,223,287,82,27,835],"class_list":["post-437935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-capital-tonight","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-capital-tonight","tag-dallas","tag-erin-davis","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}