Move Of A&M Galveston Classes To College Station Creates Another Polling Access Issue For November

The Galveston County Daily News reports that classes at Texas A&M University at Galveston have been moved to the College Station campus in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. While the Daily News doesn’t say how long the move will last, sources familiar with the situation tell Capitol Annex it will last for the remainder of the semester.

That will be a tremendous burden for TAMUG students, of course. It is also yet another roadblock that could prevent voters affected by Hurricane Ike from voting.

While it is unknown how many TAMUG students vote with their college addresses as opposed to an address at their parent’s home (college students in Texas may claim their residence in their college town or dorm), this will clearly mean that at least a sizable number of Galveston County voters won’t be in Galveston come election day.

One wonders what the Texas Secretary of State (and, of course, the Galveston County elections office) will do about this.

Some possible solutions include satellite polling stations at A&M College Station for displaced Galveston voters or an aggressive mail-in ballot program.

A hitch is that both would cost money. And, needless to say, with hurricane clean-up and restoration a priority for government agencies at all levels, one has to wonder how much money Galveston County could actually shake loose to pay for such a program.

This, of course, brings up the point that we’ve been harping on for several days: the state is going to have to make a significant amount of funds available for a massive program to aide those displaced by Hurricane Ike.

We’ll be doing a piece over the weekend on some of the steps that must be taken to make sure Ike evacuees can vote easily over the weekend, so stay tuned.

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