Washington Monthly - September/October 2019 - 31

ASU Tempe's voting rate increased by 11 percent. Like UT Austin, the school conducts widespread voter registration drives.
The university works to get students registered when they move
into dorms and reminds them to vote on its online portal. But
the most important part of ASU Tempe's voter engagement work
was expanding polling access on campus. And that was not easy
to do.
That's because, unlike Travis County in Texas, Arizona's
Maricopa County is not known for being voter friendly. Until
2017, the county's chief officer for registration and voting was
Republican Helen Purcell, whose twenty-eight-year tenure as
county recorder drew controversy. In 2012, Purcell became nationally infamous when her office put out Spanish-language
voter flyers with the wrong election date. Then, during a 2016
special election, the office misprinted Spanish-language ballots.
Between 2012 and 2016, Purcell reduced the number of primary
election polling places in Maricopa County by 70 percent, and
on primary election day, many voters were caught waiting in
five-plus-hour lines.
Purcell told me that she regretted the errors. She felt especially bad about cutting the number of polling sites. "It was my
decision," she said. "It was not a good decision. I took responsibility for it and apologize for it."
Before 2016, ASU Tempe had an early-voting site on campus, but students had to leave campus to vote on election day.
This was a longtime point of contention between Purcell and the
university's student leaders, who campaigned year after year for
that to change. Eventually, Purcell agreed to move a polling station onto campus. Beginning on November 8, 2016, students
who registered at their university housing could vote on campus
on election day.
That was also the day that Democrat Adrian Fontes defeated Purcell. The campaign was high profile, dominated by controversies over Purcell's elections management. Once in office, Fontes took steps to make voting easier. Starting in 2018, any resident of Maricopa County could print and cast their ballot at the
ASU Tempe campus site on election day, even if they lived in a
different precinct. This was significant, because Maricopa County is enormous: it's home to more than half of Arizona's population and is geographically larger than New Jersey. The change
meant that many ASU students who grew up in other precincts
in the county no longer had to re-register or travel home in order
to vote on election day.
At ASU, students are still struggling to overcome some
of Arizona's more burdensome voting requirements. Victoria Ochoa, a recent ASU graduate who worked to increase the
school's turnout, told me that the ID requirements have sown
confusion among students, many of whom come from out of
state and are afraid that obtaining some kind of Arizona ID
might impact their access to financial aid. That isn't true, Ochoa
said, but "there's been no easy way to explain that."
To solve this problem, the student government is working to
get administrators to provide students with zero-fee utility bills,
which would provide proof of address to students and could potentially be used as voter IDs. It's a technique they learned about

from a national democratic engagement conference. The ASU students and staff I spoke with are optimistic that it will work.

he fight to increase student access to the franchise will
not be easy. Many states continue to make voting laws
more restrictive. In 2019, for example, Texas passed legislation that effectively bars "mobile voting"-early-voting sites
that move from place to place. The law is expected to hit Travis
County especially hard. "Travis County cannot afford to replace
all of those mobile voting locations with permanent voting sites,"
Dana DeBeauvoir, the county clerk, told one Austin news outlet.
Arizona, meanwhile, just passed a new law that extends its
ID requirements to early voting. This will create headaches for
students at Arizona State. Of the ASU students who cast ballots
in 2016, more than 50 percent did so before election day. Elsewhere, voting is becoming even trickier. Iowa recently passed
legislation requiring voter IDs and imposing a variety of new
burdens on registration, early voting, and absentee voting. In
the 2018 elections, Arkansas enshrined voter ID requirements
in the state's constitution. And in 2018, New Hampshire's GOPcontrolled legislature passed a bill that appears surgically tailored to prevent students from voting. As of this past July, New
Hampshire residents who want to vote need to register their vehicle in the state, or risk paying a fine. In an interview with NBC,
a Dartmouth student who spent $300 re-registering his car described the law as a "poll tax." (New Hampshire Democrats, who
took control of the legislature last November, passed legislation to repeal the law, but it was vetoed by Republican Governor
Chris Sununu.)
In other words, the game of whack-a-mole continues. University students and staffers find new ways to surmount obstacles to voting rights, and legislators find new obstacles to put up.
This helps explain why Democrats have increasingly pushed for
nationwide measures to protect voting rights. The first bill Democrats introduced upon assuming control of the House of Representatives would require all states to implement automatic voter
registration for federal races. Separately, several Democrats have
introduced legislation to allow any voter to cast their ballot by
mail, prior to election day.
But, to state the obvious, those bills are going nowhere as
long as the GOP controls the Senate and White House. Until that
changes, it's up to turnout activists to overcome whatever barriers are put in their path. "I really see my role as constantly thinking about how we can do what we can do better, and always within the letter of the law," Kassie Phebillo told me. Back at the University of Texas club fair, Janae Steggall was still busy trying to
get new students to join TX Votes.
"Hi! What's your major?" she said to an incoming freshman
wandering by the booth. "Business," he replied. She motioned
him in. "Awesome!" she said. "We're TX Votes, a nonpartisan organization on campus focused on voter registration and education." The student listened carefully as Steggall made her pitch.
"You sold me," he said when she finished. Then, he signed up.
Daniel Block is an editor at the Washington Monthly.
Washington Monthly

Washington Monthly - September/October 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Washington Monthly - September/October 2019