Early voting serves multiple purposes, but according to the USA Absentee and Early Voting website, its primary objective is to provide accessibility to those who cannot vote on Election Day.
Early voting took place Monday, Oct. 24 through Friday, Nov. 4, in 33 locations across El Paso. Among those locations was the UTEP Union Building East, inside Cactus Flower Room 102C. Union Building East is a top destination for student life and engagement which makes it a convenient location for students, faculty and staff to vote.
The UTEP Center for Community Engagement (CCE) made it a priority to emphasize the convenience of voting on campus to students.
“I know as students we are really busy, we all have really busy schedules, and as a commuter campus, I feel like most students just come to their classes and leave,” said Glenda Bustillos, a service-learning program undergraduate student assistant.
For this reason, the CCE tabled daily during early voting dates to advertise the accessibility for students to fit early voting into their schedules.
However, the work began long before early voting season. According to Bustillos, the CCE has tabled monthly since March. Over the summer, they registered incoming freshmen to vote and informed them about early voting.
“We could sense students being very excited to vote,” Bustillos said. “It was more with the generation of incoming freshmen, the newly registered voters. They had a sense of involvement that was very different from past semesters.”
With a polling location on campus, the CCE is hopeful a high volume of students took advantage of it and civic engagement increased during this early voting season.
Among the voters who voted at this polling location was gubernatorial race candidate, Beto O’Rourke Nov. 3. After he and Congresswoman Veronica Escobar rallied students to vote for them, O’Rourke headed to the poll accompanied by UTEP students to cast their ballot.
The results of early voters on campus will become available on Election Day, Nov. 8.
Josie Avila is the audience and engagement editor and can be reached at [email protected]; Joseline Avila on LinkedIn.
