Rice community prepares for early voting

By Abigail Chiu     9/24/24 11:52pm

Rice civic engagement groups are providing resources for students to understand the voting process, register to vote and early vote as the 2024 presidential election approaches. 

The Texas Medical Center is the closest location for students registered in Harris County to vote early, and Rice will provide shuttles to early voting locations according to Veronica Reyna, associate director of Houston Civic Projects at the Center for Civic Leadership. Reyna said that students can check Harris County’s voting information website, harrisvotes.com, to find early voting locations and estimated wait times. 

“You can be strategic. Given your schedule, if it’s green, that means it’s a pretty short wait time,” Reyna said. “You can go in, and you can go out.” 

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Before Election Day on Nov. 5, early voting is open Oct. 21 to Nov. 1. 

“There’s weekend days and times,” Reyna said. “So it’s really aimed at thinking about everybody and all the different reasons that they might find it difficult to vote on an election day, and then giving them two weeks to be able to figure it out.” 

Reyna said that early voting is designed to be a more accessible and convenient way for students to cast their ballots. 

“It’s often unpredictable on election day in terms of how long you have to wait in line,” Reyna said. “Early voting is a policy to make voting easier and more efficient for people, more predictable for people, and therefore increasing the turnout rate.”

RiceVotes Democracy Fellow Katherine Jeng said that early voting can fit more easily into student schedules.

 “With such a big, important election like this, you’re going to see lines out the door,” Jeng, a Hanszen College senior, said. “While we do have the day off for Election Day, which is not typical [for other universities] … it is still important to [vote early,] just because you can skip the long lines, and you can be sure that your vote is cast.”

Additionally, Reyna said early voting offers large counties like Harris County more time to process votes. 

“Instead of getting [millions] of people voting on Election Day, on one day, and then being able to process everything overnight, [the county is] able to mitigate that rush by slowly processing everybody from early voting through Election Day,” Reyna said.

Although Rice students can also vote on Election Day in the Welcome Center, Reyna said early voting also gives more time to resolve registration, documentation or scheduling issues. 

“[The CCL staff] encourage[s] students to go do early voting if possible, simply because if they do run into any issues or concerns … then they have time to ask questions, solve problems and still be able to vote,” Reyna said. 

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