Texas Bill Models How To Stop Dems’ Exploitation Of Colleges For Partisan Get-Out-The-Vote Ops
A recently introduced bill in Texas aims to prevent Democrats from taking advantage of taxpayer-funded colleges for running partisan get-out-the-vote campaigns.
HB 2390, introduced by Republican Rep. Carrie Isaac in February, stipulates that counties “may not designate as a polling place a location on the campus of an institution of higher education located within the county.” If passed by the GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, the law would take effect on Sept. 1.
Isaac cited school safety as the primary reason for introducing the measure, pointing to past incidents of violence on campus as examples of why places of education should be off-limits for elections. The bill would also prohibit public primary and secondary schools from operating as polling places for elections.
However, another potential benefit of the bill would be to curb Democrats’ efforts to use college campuses as vehicles for conducting partisan get-out-the-vote campaigns. This includes the Biden administration’s directive to public universities to use work-study funds to pay students to “support voter registration activities.” While colleges are required by law to make mail voter registration forms “widely available” to students, taxpayers were previously not allowed to fund get-out-the-vote activities in this way.
Other left-wing nonprofit groups also conduct similar campaigns on college campuses, such as Civic Nation’s “ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge,” which seeks to increase voter participation among students. While the group claims to be nonpartisan, its parroting of Democrat Party talking points and its founding advisory board composed of Democrat partisans suggest otherwise.
Although the bill has been introduced primarily for school safety reasons, Hayden Ludwig, the director of policy research at Restoration of America, said that “there’s no such thing as ‘nonpartisan’ get-out-the-vote campaigns because voting is inherently political.” Ludwig suggests going even further and banning nonprofits from running voter registration drives altogether to ensure genuine charity rather than politics.
Polling places on college campuses give Democrats home-field advantage in elections, effectively rigging the system in their favor. Banning polling places from college campuses could go a long way in restoring trust and integrity in our elections, and this should become the norm for all states.
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