College electoral.

• Author: Desai, Saahil

YOUNG PEOPLE DON'T VOTE. CAN COLLEGES CHANGE THAT?

On a Wednesday afternoon late last October, a thousand or so students at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) gathered on a campus lawn festooned with red and blue balloons, where they were joined by the school's mascot, the Ed-U-Gator, a dancing costumed alligator. The occasion was Walk 2 Vote, a civic engagement initiative that's part festival, part voter mobilization effort. Rhymes from Bun B, the Houston rap icon, blared from speakers as the students grabbed free food and drinks, mingling with comedians, musical guests, and politicians who worked the crowd. After Representative Sheila Jackson Lee ascended to the stage and urged students to head to the polls, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner took the microphone: "We need every single person to go out and vote and take it seriously. And it starts right here on the campus of UHD."

Then, on cue, a sea of students, led by a mariachi band, walked ten minutes south into the heart of downtown Houston--passing a hipster cocktail bar and a dimly lit storefront advertising 24/7 bail bonds--to vote early at the county board of elections office.

The goal of Walk 2 Vote is to "make voting fun again," said John Locke, who chaired the Walk 2 Vote committee last year. The festival itself is just one of three phases of the event. In early fall, the committee recruits students for voter deputy training. (Archaic state election law requires Texans to receive training before they can register voters.) Then, nearly every day in the student union, which looks out onto Houston's skyline, the Walk 2 Vote committee sets up tables to register voters, putting together campaigns like "Eat 2 Pledge": register to vote and sign a pledge to cast a ballot, get a free hot dog.

Locke, a thirty-three-year-old known around campus for his daily uniform of crisp business suit and tie, took an unlikely path to becoming a voter turnout activist. Raised by a single mother in Greenspoint, a gritty Houston neighborhood nicknamed "Gunspoint" by locals, Locke dropped out of high school during tenth grade. (He later earned a GED.) "I mixed in with the wrong type of people," he said. "I found myself getting in trouble, suffering from drug addiction, and all that good stuff that comes with not being in the right place." In 2011, he was convicted of felony drug possession and spent a year in jail.

The Harris County Jail happens to be about a hundred yards away from UHD. Through the slit of his cell window, Locke would peer out across the White Oak bayou and study the details of the campus. "I used to look down at students going to school," he said as he gave me a tour on a blustery morning in early May, during finals week. He pointed out the jail, a nondescript brick fortress that looms over the college, eerily camouflaged to blend in with the surrounding utilitarian campus architecture. "And I was like, 'I'm going to be a student here one day.'"

Locke--who just coincidentally shares a name with the English philosopher--was released in 2012. He was living in a homeless shelter just a block west of campus when he enrolled at UHD that summer, at the age of twenty-eight, to major in psychology. Outside the classroom, he discovered a passion for combatting homelessness in Houston, working with the local chapter of Food Not Bombs, an organization that feeds homeless people. A friend urged Locke to get involved with student government, and to join Walk 2 Vote, even though he had never voted in his life.

That friend, Ivan Sanchez, founded Walk 2 Vote in the fall of 2012 during his tenure as student body president. He conceived of it, he told me, after a course on Hispanic politics opened his eyes to the underrepresentation of Latinos in local politics in a city in which they make up 44 percent of the population. In 2012, Walk 2 Vote's first year, nearly 400...