Beto O’Rourke’s Ready to Vote Tour travels to Texas State

By Felicity Guajardo & Mason Dodd

SAN MARCOS – Former Democratic U.S. Representative Beto O’Rourke was at Texas State University with his group Powered By People to help students register to vote and spoke on pressing issues in Evans Auditorium on Tuesday. 

As part of the event on Sept. 17, students were given free entry to attend the speech after updating their voting registration or registering to vote for the first time. First time voter Skylar Walker said that she was glad to attend the registration event and shared her previous experiences with elections. 

“Well, I am from a small town, and I just turned 18, so it’s my first time being able to vote,” Walker said. “But when I was like in elementary or middle school, they would always have mock elections and it would never really be a good environment, so I am glad to be at a good university with a good environment and feel safe and comfortable.” 

Texas State College Democrats President Avery Guggenheim says she believes that exercising the right to vote is crucial when people desire change.  

“And so that vote that you make and the ability to vote, that right, it’s you making your choice. It’s you saying I’m going to dictate my life and what I want my life to look like,” Guggenheim said. “…that’s why I said my speech like a lot of people don’t realize that everything that like kind of runs the world, everything in our day-to-day lives is, you know, run by politics.” 

Voter purging has been a controversial topic since Governor Greg Abbott removed over one million ineligible voters from the registration roll in August. According to NBC News, this has caused issues for voters placed on a suspension list for outdated addresses and more. 

In an interview with Beto O’Rourke he says that he believes young people will shock the polls and he hopes this event will encourage the student body to vote on Election Day Nov. 5th .  

“I think young voters have been written off, they have been taken for granted. They are not figuring in anyone’s plans or strategy,” O’Rourke said. “Therefore, I think they are the surprise secret weapon in this election,” O’Rourke said.

Although O’Rourke is a democratic politician, he said in this interview that the priority of Power By People was to register anyone regardless of party affiliation. 

O’Rourke says that local elections and down-ballot voting can be even more impactful in daily life.  

“Let’s look at issues that we just mentioned, abortion, public education vouchers, tuition at Texas State. None of that is decided by the president. All that is decided by the state legislature,” O’Rourke said.  

“I think we need to talk about them as the most important races and ones where we want to make sure that voters are making informed decisions, because probably more than any other election that’s going to shape the choices that they have in their lives,” O’Rourke said.  

To find out if you are registered to vote in Texas or if you need more information on registration click here  

The views expressed in this article do not represent the views of KTSW 89.9-FM or the news department.  At the time of Publishing College Republicans has not responded to our request for comment.