Osvaldo Grimaldo, president of the Civic Engagement Alliance, speaks to kinesiology senior Rene Cuellar about the organization and the importance of National Voter Registration Day. The CEA handed out free food and T-shirts during a voter registration drive last Tuesday on the Student Union East Patio on the Edinburg campus. Verilu Infante/THE RIDER
The Civic Engagement Alliance and Vaqueros Vote celebrated National Voter Registration Day last Tuesday in the Student Union on both campuses.
Today is the last day to register to vote in the Nov. 2 election, according to votetexas.gov.
Vaqueros Vote is a nonpartisan coalition “of UTRGV faculty, staff, students and nonpartisan community organizations,”, according to the Student Activities webpage.
“It has sort of fallen into place where Vaqueros Vote and the CEA have fallen into the same bubble,” said Osvaldo Grimaldo, president of the CEA, a student-led, nonpartisan organization made possible through Student Activities. “It has allowed for us to work together and collaboratively create these voter registration events.”
The CEA’s three main areas of focus are voter registration, education and community engagement, he said.
“So, National Voter Registration Day is a holiday that we celebrate every single year here,” Grimaldo said. “It’s like one of the final pushes before the end of the registration deadline here in Texas.”
This is the first year the CEA and Vaqueros Vote offer another method of registration using TurboVote.
“[TurboVote] is an online application that we have here at UTRGV … that allows you to electronically register to vote, to a certain extent,” he said.
Part of the application will be made available online via TurboVote for anyone who chooses to use it.
“Texas laws don’t allow for people to register to vote straightforward online, so it is the easiest three-fourths of the registration process online,” Grimaldo said. “That [final] one-fourth you can mail out to [the elections office].”
The event offered free UTRGV merch, food, music and, of course, a chance to register to vote.
“Initially, it just started off as something small in the Student Union,” he said. “We had imagined ‘OK, we’ll just give away a few UTRGV merch to get people’s attention and register people to vote or verify their voter registration.’”
Vaqueros Vote and Student Activities then reached out to the CEA to propose a bigger event, Grimaldo said.
“The bigger the better, you know, to get Vaqueros civically engaged,” he said. “So it became a lot bigger, which I’m really happy about, and it’s allowing us to get a larger participation out of our UTRGV student body.”
Plans for the event started in the summer and made it the CEA’s biggest celebration of National Voter Registration Day with over 300 people attending and about 250 registered to vote.
Jade Mendieta, an engineering technology sophomore, heard about the event on Instagram and V Link and attended last Tuesday.
“I think it’s awesome,” Mendieta replied when asked about her thoughts on the CEA’s mission to get students involved civically. “I think we need to be more aware of how strong our voice is.”
She said everyone’s opinions are important, and diversity strengthens the community.
“Once we hear everyone’s voices, we become stronger together,” Mendieta said.
Magdalena Alfonso, a biomedical science junior, said it was her second time attending a Vaqueros Vote event.
“We were just hanging out in La Sala [on the Brownsville campus] and then we noticed,” Alfonso replied when asked how she heard about the event.
The junior attended to verify that she was registered to vote.
“I think it’s very nice,” Alfonso said about the services offered at the event. “As students, sometimes we don’t
have time to go to some place to do that stuff, so we can have it here in the school.”
Psychology sophomore Adelina Nieto also saw the event while on campus and decided to check it out.
“This is my first time since the pandemic and all,” Nieto replied when asked if she has attended a Vaqueros Vote event before. “It feels nice. It feels very social.”
Nieto is registered to vote and said she was happy to be at an in-person event on campus.
Vaqueros Vote and the CEA will continue its mission to engage students in the community.
“We work together essentially to get out the vote, make people want to vote and make people want to register to vote,” Grimaldo said. “We’re really excited to get this mission going.”
He wants the student body at UTRGV to know that Vaqueros Vote and the CEA are here to help and welcome anyone aiming to become more involved.
“Always be civically engaged,” Grimaldo said. “And always vote in whatever election it may be–small, big, large, local, national, school board or school elections–whatever it may be … vote.”
