Tuesday is the final day Texans can register to vote in the November election. To mark the final day for registration, the nonprofit Texas Rising held registration events at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of North Texas.
"Getting the youth out to vote is really going to change the narrative for a lot of politicians," Texas Rising's Dania Hindi said. "I think we saw that in 2020. Young people do care. It's just politicians have never invested in young people. They never go to young people and talk to them about what they care about."
Texas Rising said Texas led the nation in youth voter turnout in 2020. The Brookings Institution said 15% of residents aged 18 to 29 voted in the midterms in 2014, and that increased to 30% in 2018. In the 2020 presidential election, Brookings said turnout among 18 to 29-year-olds increased 8% from 2016.
Hindi said Texas Rising works to help students understand the process.
"A lot of students say, 'We want to get registered to vote. We just don't know how to do it or where to do it,' so we like to meet students where they're at and come to them," she said. "We help them navigate through that whole process because we know it can be a bit intimidating and hard."
Some political science students say they are learning how decisions made by local, state, and federal politicians affect them.
"That's when I started to understand the magnitude of all the things that are impacting us not only as Texas residents but as students also," one said.
"I want to be a part of this, and I want to be a part of making a change instead of just sitting on the sidelines complaining about things not going the way I wanted politically," another said.
The Texas Secretary of State said 17,183,996 people were registered to vote in the March primaries, up from 16,955,519 in the 2020 presidential election. Despite the increase, the Texas Secretary of State says there were 21,866,700 people of voting age living in the state.
Related
LISTEN on the Audacy App
Sign Up and Follow NewsRadio 1080 KRLD