Non-profit helping out-of-town UTRGV students vote in the Valley
A local non-profit is pushing to get college students in the Rio Grande Valley to vote, even if they're registered somewhere else.
Some of the students thought they couldn't vote because they're going to school here, but they can still participate in their elections if they're registered to vote back home.
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's latest demographics report shows that just over eight percent of their students are from outside the Valley.
It's not a large population, but a student organizer says he's been getting a lot of questions from other students about how to vote out of town.
"There's a fairly decent amount of people who are here from a different county or a different state," NextGen America South Texas and UTRGV junior Angel Perez said. "Right now, they're not focused on going to go vote, they're focused on classes and exams. So we're here to help remind them."
There are three ways a student can vote if they're away from home.
One, is they can always vote in person in their home county if they can make it before election day.
The second is to vote by mail. The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot is on October 25.
The final option is to vote on a limited ballot. This means students will only get to vote in races that their home county and voting county have in common. They can only vote on a limited ballot during Early Voting, not on Election Day.
"That limited ballot's going to be basically what's parallel to the others in their county. So basically the presidential and the senate and stuff like that. It can't be anything local," Perez said.
Whatever the plan is, student are encouraged to vote.
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