The University of Texas will be relocating the on-campus Flawn Academic Center polling location ahead of this year’s presidential election.
The Texas Union, which is next door to the FAC, will house the polling station this year, University spokesperson Mike Rosen said in a statement to TSTV News.
The move will be finalized and presented to the Travis County Commissioners Court Aug. 27 with the rest of the county’s polling sites.
The relocation is due to planned construction at the FAC and was requested by UT, the Travis County Clerk’s office said in a statement emailed to TSTV News. The new location will be in the second floor food court, according to the Austin-American Statesman.
University Democrats President Brian Peña said he’s seen the FAC provide a polling location for thousands of students over the past three years.
In the past, election day wait times have reached more than two hours, despite there being over a dozen machines available for voters to use, Peña said. He is worried the new location will hold fewer machines, increasing voters’ wait time.
“(The Texas Union) is significantly smaller than the (FAC) is,” Peña said. “We’re very concerned about this change.”
The Travis County Clerk’s office referred TSTV News to UT when asked about the number of voting machines that would be available in the Union. The University did not respond to requests to confirm an expected number.
Peña said he is worried that those who have voted at the FAC in the past may have difficulty finding the new location. He added that the space may be less equipped to handle the expected crowds.
“The Texas Union is a building that’s uniquely active,” Peña said. “There’s a lot of movement in that building that you’re going to end up disrupting. … The (FAC) is just kind of a big study space. We’re not disrupting anyone with long lines.”
Peña said he is disappointed by the lack of communication from the University to voter registration groups on campus that prepare materials ahead of time.
“We’re not asking to be intimately involved in the financial decisions of UT; … all we’re asking for is a little better communication,” Peña said. “(University Democrats) might be partisan, but there are a lot of other nonpartisan groups doing this work.”
Andy Hogue, the communications director for the Travis County Republican Party, said the county makes elections accessible for college students. Still, he hopes the space at the Texas Union is chosen with student needs and schedules in mind.
“I will trust UT to make the right decision on a room that accommodates the maximum number of students, and hopefully it’s comparable to what the capacity is at (the FAC),” Hogue said.
English junior Daniela Capistran voted at the FAC during the primaries. She said she had been planning to vote and stumbled upon the polling place largely due to its location.
“For me, it was pretty convenient, so I just went in on the way to class,” Capistran said.
Journalism and theatre junior Aaron Sullivan, who has early voted at the FAC in the past, worries that moving to a less visible location could limit voter turnout. In his view, the University has an obligation to inform students about the switch.
“That burden falls on the County Clerk, but it also falls upon the University too, because they were the ones requesting this change,” Sullivan said.
Mike Siegel, a civil rights attorney and candidate for Austin City Council district 7, said he believes this change could lead students that have voted in the past to not cast their ballot this November, due to either confusion around the polling place’s new location or because of increased wait times.
“When the University made a unilateral decision, without consulting with student groups, to close a very highly frequented and well-known voting location and to replace it with a less accessible, most likely smaller location that will be harder to vote at, that’s going to suppress the vote,” said Siegel, who has been involved in multiple college voting rights cases in Texas.
Additional polling locations available near UT include the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the Civil and Family Court Facility at the corner of Guadalupe and W 17th streets.
Information about polling places can be found on the Travis County Elections website.