As fate would have it, I happened to be present when this week’s PV Poll questions were being asked. One question was posed to senior history major Sean Spikes who sparked a conversation with another student that prompted me to step from behind the comfortable anonymity of the copy editing desk to launch this foray into journalism. As you peruse the column and the poll in question, you’ll see and maybe ask yourselves the same questions… Why does Texas A&M have 10 days of early voting at their Memorial Student Center while students at Prairie View neither have the convenience of having a polling place at our MSC nor the knowledge that all we needed was our school identification to cast a vote? Did anyone else know that we could use our student identification cards to vote? A lot of people reading this article may ask the question, “What’s so wrong with walking to the post office?” To which I pose another, “Why aren’t we afforded the same privileges and comforts of our white counterparts?” No, it is not a big deal to walk to the post office. But, how many students actually go there? How many students actually know where the post office is? Don’t be ashamed if you’re not a freshman and you don’t know.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston was here last week to march with students just as in 2004 when she, along with 7,000 Prairie View students, State Rep. Al Edwards and Herschel Smith of Waller County Leadership Council marched in protest of then Waller County District Attorney Oliver Kitzman, who threatened to prosecute Prairie View students for voting in Waller County.
Kitzman’s issue was that students at Prairie View weren’t legal residents of Waller County and therefore had no right to cast a ballot. Kitzman’s handlers apparently didn’t inform him of the the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1979 affirming Prairie View students had the right to vote in their campus community. This ruling as well as the controversy surrounding the 2004 protest was reported in an article written by Gloria Rubac of the Workers World where she sheds light on the reasoning behind Kitzman’s lawsuit, “[According to the lawsuit] only Prairie View students failed to meet his definition of persons having a legal voting address.”
The student who had an issue with our questioning of Texas A&M having a longer period of early voting suggested that maybe the reason Texas A&M had more early voting days was due to their higher population. When told of the reason behind the march last week and the previous march in 2004, to which she was oblivious, she continued to argue that no one would legally be turned away from a polling place and be disenfranchised, and that if that ever happened we’re supposed to let the polling officials know post haste. Yet, that’s exactly what happened to students in Prairie View when they tried to vote in Waller County in 2004. That’s exactly what happened in the 2000 presidential election. And that is the very reason why the Voting Act of 1965 was implemented in the first place.
The denial that racism still exists or ever existed or just the blatant refusal to view the facts and history behind not only the struggle that students at Prairie View A&M University but African-Americans in every state have endured with being disenfranchised adds insult to injury. Trying to excuse, explain or gloss over the disparities between the way students at Prairie View are treated and the way students at Texas A&M are catered to puts one on the level of the Oliver Kitzmans and the George Wallaces of the world.
I’m sure students attending Texas A&M never had cause to pause in fear of a lawsuit or question whether they’d be turned away from their MSC during the 10 days that they have at their disposal to cast an early ballot. To them, it probably is unheard of that they’d be blocked from the polls.
Most of us who’ve had experience with voting know the routine: usually we are expected to show not only our voter’s registration card but our state-issued identification card, driver’s license, birth certificate, get fingerprinted and give a blood sample in order to cast our vote. All of these requirements were put in place for the same reason students at Prairie View have to go to the post office to vote…Make it as inconvenient as possible until they simply give up.