Amongst the bills filed in the Texas House of Representatives, State Representative Carrie Isaac has filed House Bill 2390 which would ban polling locations on college campuses. Isaac’s bill would prohibit Texas college campuses from becoming voting locations. Her bill has obviously become very controversial since its filing. Isaac defends her bill by stating it’s about student safety and keeping strangers off of college campuses. 

“In Texas, we have one of the longest early voting periods of any state in the nation,” Isaac said. “Our polls are open for two weeks all day, every day. I believe that it’s not wise to invite people onto our school campuses that would otherwise not have any business there. Emotions run very high a lot of times with politics, and I don’t believe we should wait until something really bad happens to act.” Furthermore, Isaac has also expressed she might file legislation that prohibits polling locations at K-12 schools. 

If her bill is passed, “the commissioners’ court of a county may not designate as a polling place a location on the campus of an institution of higher education located within the county.”

Her argument is that by creating a voting location, especially during a hot political climate, then student safety could be at risk when strangers are able to come onto campuses. However, lots of strangers come to college campuses anyways.

Isaac’s bill faces scrutiny in that while she states that students can go off campus to voting locations, that’s not always a luxury students can afford. Lots of students are going in between classes and are working jobs. Plus they have to study and do their homework. So students see having a voting location on campus as helpful for them to vote while still going about their busy day. This burdens students who are already too busy.

In opposition, State Representative Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin) has filed House Bill 644 to allow for more voting locations around the state through universities. Hinojosa seeks to expand voting locations in her bill to require counties to place a voting location on college campuses with at least 8,000 students. Hinojosa writes, “Voting by personal appearance must be conducted at a polling place location designated [at a campus with at least 8,000 students] during the same hours as voting is conducted at the main early voting polling place and on election day.”