Austin, TX
Travis County volunteers help hundreds register as Texas voter deadline hits
AUSTIN, Texas — Monday was the voter registration deadline in Texas, where several Travis County groups burned the midnight oil to help people beat the deadline.
Texas is one of the few states left that doesn’t allow online voter registration. From the county tax office on Airport Boulevard to the University of Texas at Austin and several coffee shops in between, Austinites were still able to register to vote until midnight, thanks to volunteers who were committed to working until the very last minute.
Radio, Coffee and Beer, Radio Coffee East, and The Front Page were coffee shops all open until midnight Monday.
For Destiny Osborne, it’s better late than never.
“To be honest, I wasn’t actually going to vote,” Osborne said. “but my boyfriend and my boyfriend’s mom was telling me to vote, like, hey, you need to vote. It’s important for you. All votes matter. Like, every vote counts.”
The 19-year-old moved to Austin a couple of months ago to be with family and is excited to participate in her first presidential election.
“Now I can say, hey, I voted man, like you should go too,” Osborne said. “You have a word, use your word.”
She’s one of thousands across Travis County who waited until the last day of the state’s voter registration deadline, but county voter registrar Bruce Elfant says that’s exactly who they’re there for.
“We’ve added about 10,000 registered voters in the last month, and we will probably do another 10,000 today,” Elfant said.
ALSO| Oct. 7 is final day to register to vote, officials recommend registering in person
A tent was set up outside the Airport Boulevard tax office to help people register and check their voting status.
“If you’re able to go to votetravis.gov and look yourself up, that’ll give you peace of mind if your application is there,” Elfant said. “If you’re not able to do that, my motto is, when in doubt, fill it out.”
Elfant says some people might find themselves suspended if they moved and the tax office was unable to find them, but all you have to do is bring the correct credentials on Election Day to vote and be removed from that list.
“When you go vote, they’re going to require one of many forms of ID, certainly your Texas driver’s license if you have that,” Elfant said. “You can vote with your passport… utility bill, a bank statement, or any government document with your current name and address on it.”
There have been some big changes, including the polling site at the University of Texas at Austin moving from the Flawn Academic Center to the Texas Union right next door due to construction.
“We’re going to be advocating for the polling place in the future to return to Flawn Academic Center. But in the meantime, we’re going to work with the situation we have.” University of Texas at Austin University Democrats President Brian Pena said.
UT’s University Democrats also hosted a voter registration drive until midnight, where Pena says they were helping spread the word. Pena says his organization is even providing shuttles on election day to help with expected wait times.
“I think in combination with a lot of education, like we’re doing right now, and our polling shuttles, I think we’ll have an adequate polling place out of the Union,” Pena said.
And after the registration deadline, that’s where the next fight will be.
“Texas is a wildly under-voting state, especially our demographic, 18 to 35 young people,” Pena said. “Any election we vote our full strength, we have real impact.”
Now the attention turns to early voting which begins October 21st. A list of polling sites can be found here.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Small hail peppered the Austin area as strong thunderstorms moved through Saturday.
A few of the storms dropped rain and up to pea-sized hail in San Marcos, Dripping Springs and the Austin metro area.
A Severe Thunderstorm Warning was issued for Williamson County around 8:15 p.m., and then canceled shortly after. However, it was enough for the Two Step Inn music festival in Georgetown to cancel shows for the rest of the evening. Event organizers say the festival will run as planned Sunday.
KXAN’s First Warning Weather team is monitoring the storms. We will update this post as the evening continues.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Society Sons of the American Revolution unveiled a new monument at the Texas State Cemetery on Saturday, dedicated to Texas Revolutionary War soldiers.
“We must educate every generation about why it is that America grew from a tenuous 13 colonies into the most powerful country in the history of the world,” said Governor Abbott. “This monument here is an enduring testament to the heroes who fought for the freedom that is unique to America.”
The monument was dedicated to 69 soldiers who fought in the American Revolutionary War and later settled in Texas, according to a press release.
Among those that were honored, Abbott recognized:
- José Santiago Seguín, grandfather of Texas Revolutionary hero Juan Seguín.
- Peter Sides, who fought in the 2nd Battalion of the North Carolina Regiment of the Colonial Army, and was later killed in the 1813 Battle of Medina, fighting for Mexican independence against Spain.
- Antonio Gil Y’Barbo, the founder of Nacogdoches.
- William Sparks, who fought as a mounted rifleman in the American Revolution and later settled in Texas. He had two sons and two grandsons who fought in the Texas Revolution.
“This year marks the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, which not only gave freedom to the British colonies of North America, but inspired movements for freedom and liberty all over the world,” said TSSAR President Mel Oller. “Texans played a role in the war too, and it’s important to recognize them, and the sacrifices they made for our freedom.”
At the monument unveiling, Abbott was also inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution and received its Silver Good Citizenship Medal.
AUSTIN, Texas — Inside a green wooden box mounted to a steel fence, a treasure trove of trinkets awaits. Just a few miles north is another goodie box, this time covered in leopard print and inside a craft studio. Farther east, a simple white trinket box sits mounted on a wooden pole, decorated with stars and a crow saying, “Thanks for visiting!”
These boxes, filled to the brim with stickers, keychains, jewelry, collectibles and more, are known as trinket trade boxes. Austin has seen a sudden surge in these boxes over the last few months, and despite their varying locations, one sentiment ties them all together: trinket trading is a fun way to bring a bit of joy to the community.
“Little things that bring people joy is so important right now, which I think a lot of us can agree with, and I’ve seen all sorts of people use the box so far,” said Anna Arocha, whose trinket box is in The Triangle neighborhood downtown. “Little kids and all the way up to people in their 50s and 60s, I’ve seen stop by.”
Trinket trading operates on a simple system of take something, leave something. People can swap a toy car for a lanyard, a bracelet for a Sonny Angel, or a Pokémon card for a rubber duck.
“There was somebody who was just walking by with their kid in the stroller, and there was a finger puppet inside of the box, and I saw her swap something out and walk away with the little finger puppet,” Arocha said. “And it was just such a cute moment to see a mom and a kid enjoy something like that.”
Arocha put her crafting skills to work and made her green wooden box in just one day using craft wood and a wine crate last month. Amy Elms opted for a small, white junction box to ensure it could withstand harsh Texas weather. Ani’s Day & Night on East Riverside, which has a large outdoor space for picnic tables and food trucks, gave Elms permission to place her trinket box on their property in January.
Ally Chavez used her own property, Create! Studio ATX on West Anderson Lane, for her leopard-print box that opened in March.
“There wasn’t a ton up here in the north area, so we just kind of wanted to put it together and put it up for the studio just as a way to connect with the community in a way that no one has to spend money,” Chavez said.
Since their debuts, all three trinket boxes have garnered thousands of interactions on social media. When Arocha posted about the opening of her box in March, she racked up 100,000 views on TikTok. But with the excited comments came a bit of negative attention, and her cameras caught a thief trying to take all the trinkets. Arocha now locks the box at night.
“If somebody wants to do that, so be it,” Arocha said. “We can start over, and if the joy that it brings outweighs that every time, I think it’s worth doing.”
Arocha, Elms and Chavez’s boxes are now registered on a website called Worldwide Sidewalk Joy, alongside all the others in Austin and across the globe, as trinket trading grows to become a kind of new, modern geocaching.
“Honestly, it’s been I think even better than I expected so far,” Elms said. “I’ve had people… visiting Austin from out of town, and they’re making it a stop during their visit. I’ve also had multiple people reach out to me to ask how they can start their own trinket trade box, too, which I really love.”
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