Travis County registers historic number of young voters

A record number of 18-to-35-year-olds — more than 300,000 — are registered to vote in Travis County, making them the county's largest voting bloc, according to numbers released Friday by officials.

The age group now makes up 39 percent of the total registered voter population, 780,133, in the county, according to the data snapshot taken earlier this week. As of the data, 302,327 young voters were registered in Travis County. Since the 2014 midterm election, the age group's percentage of overall registered voters has increased by 6 percentage points, up from 33 percent.

"This is the largest increase of younger registered voters we've ever documented in Travis County, and that is significant and notable," Voter Registrar Bruce Elfant said Friday morning during a news conference on the University of Texas campus.

Voters aged 36 to 55 make up about 35 percent of the registered population in Travis County, down from 36 percent in 2014, and voters aged 56 and above make up about 26 percent, down from 30 percent in 2014, according to the data.

Elfant said the county also had about 5,800 volunteer deputy registrars this year, up from about 3,000 in 2016 and about 4,000 in 2014.

He added that the county is finally out of the woods with its voter registration backlog. A deluge of applications near the registration deadline led a backlog of more than 38,000 last week.

County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said about 153,000 people have cast ballots early this year, including more than 10,000 on the University of Texas campus where there are two early voting locations, including a site was added this year at the UT Perry–Castañeda Library.

"This is an exciting number," DeBeauvoir said. "It is more than we usually see for a presidential election ... We are voting at 30,000 voters a day."

As of early voting data through Thursday, the UT Flawn polling location, where 6,766 people have cast their ballot, was the fourth-most popular location. The Austin Community College Highland location, where 6,665 people voted, was fifth-most visited.

Nationally, younger generations make up the majority of the electorate, though they're less likely to show up to vote, according to a Pew Research Center report. As of April 2018, 59 percent of adults who were eligible to vote were 53 and younger.

Maya Patel, a junior majoring in chemistry at the university and interim president for Texas Votes, a student organization aimed at increasing civic engagement, said she thinks the highly polarized political climate has energized people of all political persuasions to register and vote. Patel said she's seen an increase in student groups with similar goals.

Patel said members of Texas Votes this year visited more than 260 classrooms to register students, held events and handed out printed voting information on campus.

"We have a lot of civic power that comes with being the biggest voting bloc: deciding which candidates we want in office, deciding which issues we want to be at the forefront of policy discussion, deciding where the future of our country goes," Patel said.