Voter registration events were set up on Tuesday across Texas to mark National Voter Registration Day. National Voter Registration Day was first organized in 2012, and the U.S. Census estimated that 25% of eligible Americans are not registered to vote.
The Texas Secretary of State said turnout among registered voters was about 46% in the gubernatorial election last year, but only 80% of the voting age population was registered, so turnout among the entire voting age population was just 37%.
In the 2020 presidential election, turnout among those registered was 67%.
Turnout for local elections has been even lower with less than 9% voting in the most recent mayoral election in Fort Worth. Turnout for the May election in Denton County was about 11.5%.
"Local elections, school board, all of those are so important and directly affect their community," says Bonnie Moore, a Denton VOTE Group member.
Moore and several other organizers set up a voter registration station inside the University Union at the University of North Texas in Denton Tuesday with volunteers asking students walking by if they were registered. She says they were helping students learn how to register and how to feel less intimidated when they go to a polling place.
"We try to give them resources because they can look up their ballot information before they go vote and actually know what they're voting about," Moore says.
On the Library Mall outside, MOVE Texas was also registering people.
"We are non-partisan, so we don't endorse any specific candidate, so we just try to talk about the issues and show people the options they have," says MOVE Texas Campus Organizer Madeline Carles.
Carles says events like this can show other young people how government affects them.
"A lot of apathy comes from the fact that it seems so distant," Carles says. "'That doesn't affect me,' or 'every time I vote, nothing I want happens anyway.' We want to show this has a direct impact on your life."
Carles cites Proposition 5 as an example. The measure would change the National Research University Fund to the Texas University Fund to increase funding for research at universities including the UNT system.
"The constitutional amendment relating to the Texas University Fund, which provides funding to certain institutions of higher education to achieve national prominence as major research universities and drive the state economy," the resolution reads.
"We just want students at UNT to feel like they have the resources to be politically engaged if they want to," Carles says. "We would never tell them which way to vote, but we would never want someone not to participate because they don't know what to do or it's too difficult."
MOVE Texas has voter registration events across Texas Tuesday. More information is available at https://www.movetexas.org/ .
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