Mike Siegel
Prairie View A&M University students will not have to fill out additional registration paperwork before casting their ballots, a move that allays the concerns of Democrats who worried long lines would dissuade students from voting.
The news, announced in a joint statement Friday by Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, Waller County, the local parties and Democratic congressional candidate Mike Siegel, comes after confusion on Prairie View A&M’s campus over student residents who registered under addresses that placed them in a different precinct.
Officials said they would allow those students to vote at the on-campus precinct, but would require them to fill out a statement of residence form — referred to by county officials as a “change in address” form — before casting a ballot. Siegel and other local Democrats worried the requirement would depress turnout.
The statement reads: “It has been communicated and confirmed that the Waller County plan ensures, as it was always intended to do, that all students residing on campus who are registered to vote in the county will be able to cast their ballots at the Precinct 309 polling location on campus, and that no students will be impeded, hampered, or otherwise delayed in exercising their constitutional right to cast a ballot in the upcoming General Election.”
Remember that story I posted on Friday, about how the field director for CD10 Democratic candidate Mike Siegel was arrested and briefly detained after delivering a letter demanding that the county rectify this problem? This is the apparently happy ending to that. Siegel got some national attention for the story, but more importantly the students at Prairie View can vote without going through needless bureaucratic hassles. Good on everyone for getting this worked out.