Big blown-up signs of candidates’ heads, volunteers asking, “Are you registered yet?” and campaign posters are all things students see daily on campus. The main goal is simple: get students to vote and be civically engaged. Organizations and campaigns have helped mobilize student participation in the upcoming election through signs, free handouts and registration assistance.
Typically, voters under 30 underperform in elections, according to the Texas Civic Vitality Report. Only 21.5% of eligible voters in Texas aged 18-29 participated in the 2022 midterm election. Despite this, on-campus initiatives have helped register at least 13,990 people, according to officers from both TX Votes and University Democrats.
Mark Strama, director of the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life, said young people are the least likely of any age group to vote in any election.
“If they just voted at the same rate as everybody else, they’d be about 33% more powerful as a share of the electorate,” Strama said. “So there’s a lot at stake, and young people’s voices are often left out.”
The midterm election in Texas has gained national traction this year — especially the competitive Senate race between Republican candidate and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic candidate and state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin — as well as the governor race between incumbent Greg Abbott-R and Gina Hinojosa-D.
Within the first 11 days of early voting, 6 million people cast a ballot, which is 41.3% of the 19 million registered voters in Texas, according to Fox 4. In 2022, 5.1 million people turned out during the entire early voting period, which was 29% of voters at the time.
One student organization that hopes to encourage more students to get civically involved is TX Votes, a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy organization. Its main purpose is to educate people about voting and help them register. At the beginning of each semester, they send a mass email to professors asking whether they want a classroom presentation on voting.
Jacob Hammett, the chief volunteer deputy registrar for TX Votes, said the organization gave around 185 classroom presentations this semester, in addition to giving students the opportunity to register in class. They also table at the Perry-Castañeda Library and on Speedway every week.
TX Votes has registered 1,990 people this semester, according to Hammett.
While partisan groups can help empower students to vote by aligning with their issues, TX Votes plays a vital role as a nonpartisan organization, Strama said.
Strama said TX Votes convenes various organizations working within UT, and its nonpartisan structure gives it access to classrooms where it can register students to vote.
“Most professors might not be comfortable bringing in an issue advocacy organization or a partisan organization to do that type of work in their classroom, but they all trust TX Votes with that,” Strama said.
Delfina Balduzzi, a freshman studio art major from Fulshear, Texas, said that she registered in Austin after someone came into her art history class and passed out flyers for people to register.
“I think my hometown has a different mindset than here in Austin,” Balduzzi said. “I’m happy that I’m finding more people like me here that are more open-minded. So, hopefully, that is the result for this state.”
Another organization, MOVE Texas, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit grassroots organization. They aim to teach young voters about civics and promote conversations that help them understand they have a voice.
Jetti Nasrallah, a canvasser for MOVE Texas, tables on campus near the Union. She said they use stickers created by young artists to draw people to the table, then have extensive conversations with students about why they want to vote.
Nasrallah said that by staying nonpartisan, the organization can appeal to people who don’t identify with specific political parties.
“I actually love it because yes, there are strong parties on campus, but there are a lot of people that are turned off by parties, and they’re like, ‘I don’t want to be a part of either party: I just want to look up what matters to me,’” Nasrallah said.
Partisan organizations also try to persuade people to vote by appealing to them with issues they may care about. On Speedway, student organization University Democrats has huge campaign signs endorsing James Talarico, as well as barn signs on campus saying “stop data centers” and “end corruption.”
“The goal of the signs is to draw eyeballs to the table,” University Democrats president Adit Raha said. “Same thing with the posters and the stickers and the food. Everything is to get people to the table, where then we talk to them and … encourage them to vote, give them resources on how to vote.”
Raha said this method has proved extremely successful. This semester, they registered 12,000 voters.
“It’s also a sign of energy, right?” Strama said. “When volunteers are inspired to sit in the hot sun on Speedway, to kind of holler at people passing by saying ‘support my person,’ that’s a sign that people are passionate and paying close attention to this election cycle.”
Johnson Phung, a sophomore, is voting for the first time in this election.
“There’s been so many things happening in Austin and in the country,” Phung said. “And I’m feeling really empowered to just make a change in the country and within my city.”
Daron Shaw, a government professor, who is the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Chair of State Politics said that a psychological theory called the “noticeable reminder” can best explain how these campaigns influence students to vote. He said people walk around with a set of considerations in their psyche, and constant reminders of voting can be effective in getting the consideration of casting a ballot to the forefront of people’s minds.
“The presence (of campaigns) on campus, big signs (and) text messages tend to be viewed as more effective than other forms of communication because there’s a higher chance you’ll at least look at it,” Shaw said. “If we can kind of get in your head and put something there that is likely to be recalled over the course of an average day or during early voting, then it increases the marginal probability you’ll vote.”
Shaw also said that competitive races draw a lot more energy, money and communication, which enhances the probability that someone is going to encounter the race.
For example, the 2018 senate election between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke was the closest a Democrat came to winning the Senate election in Texas since 1988, according to The Texas Tribune. Of all UT undergraduates, 55% voted in this election, a 37% increase from the 2014 senate election.
Shaw is currently the co-director of the Fox News Poll, as well as the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
“(2018) was a race that was pretty impressive,” Shaw said. “There were over 8 million votes cast in that race. It’s possible we will climb up towards 9 million this time around.”
