Sept. 3, 2004, 12:13AM
Campus voting site is denied
County's vote rekindles dispute at Prairie View A&M University
By TERRY KLIEWER
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
HEMPSTEAD - The Prairie View A&M University student-voting controversy, believed resolved when the Waller County district attorney said he would resign later this month, is apparently far from settled. Waller County commissioners decided Thursday to deny designating a central campus voting site.
The 3-to-2 vote surprised minority leaders who thought county Judge Owen Ralston, a white Republican, would be willing to join with the court's two Democrats, both black, to approve the voting location on the mostly minority campus.
The Commissioners Court recently approved the use of the county's community center at the south edge of the campus to serve as the lone polling place for both the university and the small, mostly black town that adjoins it. Proponents of the central campus site said the community building, five minutes by foot from the center of campus, is inconvenient and intimidating to student voters.
However, Ralston countered that the Memorial Student Center, proposed by minority and student leaders for the second voting site, is too noisy and crowded to meet legal security requirements for voting. "There's not a place in that building that meets the election code," he said. "We need to find a better place if there's to be voting on the campus."
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