AUSTIN, Texas — Tuesday marks the last day Texans can register to vote in the 2022 midterm elections.
At college campuses across the state, students are registering to participate in democracy, some for the first time.
"It's my first year voting," said Damian Langford, who turned 18 in April and started the semester at Austin Community College. "It's my first time. I think that was the biggest factor. You know, it's like an adult thing."
He registered to vote with members of New Voters Project, a non-partisan group helping sign students up to vote – in this case, ACC students living in Travis County.
"We think it's equally important to get people that might have a different background or maybe just to get like a wider variety of people," said Gracie Coates, leading the effort at ACC on Monday. "Registered because we already know that there's a large presence on the other campuses and this one is equally important."
Coates said they set up a table at ACC because other campuses, like the University of Texas and Texas State University, already had different groups helping register new voters.
"Our generation is the demographic with the least voter turnout," Coates noted. "It has been surprising getting over 100 people registered in about five days."
Since 2019, Texas voter registration has gone up by just over 10%. According to the Secretary of State's Office, 15.5 million people were registered to vote in Texas in January of 2019. Just under 17 million were registered in November of 2020. The latest data from March shows there are 17,183,000 registered voters in Texas.
"Right now we're really focused getting as many people registered as possible up until Oct. 11," Coates said.
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