Participating in the democratic process is more difficult for those without reliable transportation.
“I believe I spent around $300 this entire semester just on transportation,” University of Oklahoma student Markou Bento said. “It's rough. It's not an easy thing to deal with.”
Currently, Bento is sharing a car with her roommate and commutes to school in Norman from Moore. She said she's taken Uber or Lyft more than 30 times this semester.
“An extra financial burden, as most of us have, to Uber and Lyft to get to the places that we need to go,” she said. “And they're really not cheap. Like, it takes a lot out of your money and your funds.”
Just like many other students across the nation, Bento is planning to cast her vote during the election, but has no form of transportation. She said she has a plan in place to ensure her voice is heard this Election Day.
“I only get to vote between certain hours of the day so I can have a ride or I would have to pay out of my own pocket to go to my polling place and back to go vote,” Bento said. “I'm a very active voter, so it's something I'm very determined to do and it's not something that I'm going to let stop me, but it's definitely a stress on me.
For those hitting the breaks on voting because of transportation, the organization Oklahoma Votes said they’re not alone. Randi Wright is the Coalition Outreach Chair for OK Votes and said transportation and access are the two main reasons university students don’t vote.
“Every mile that you add on to someone's commute to go to a polling space, is the less and less likely they're going to actually go to vote at all,” Wright said. “And this is a bad thing because we know democracy only works when all of us come out to vote.”
A recent study from the transportation service Lyft found Oklahomans typically travel further than other Americans when going to vote, and just one-mile increments can turn off 20% of voters. Wright said OK Votes, with support of the university administration, tried to get an early voting site on campus, but the Cleveland County Election Board denied the request due to financial and staffing issues.
“Unlike other universities, particularly even other universities within the SEC, we don't have an early polling site. So you can't vote early on that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday as a college student,” Wright said. “And this heavily disenfranchizes college students, because they're more likely to vote if they can do so on campus. 57% of students say they don't want to leave campus because they're worried they're going to lose a parking space.”
Wright said not only is parking scarcity an obstacle when participating in elections, but scheduling conflicts and lack of familiarity with public transportation steer voters away from the polls.
“Statistics say that around 35% of college students have also scheduling conflicts so they don't go out to the election polls on November 5th,” Wright said. “They're not able to get transportation and work that into their overall schedule, whether that's classes, extracurriculars, academic commitments.”
And scheduling is what Marilou Bento said stresses her out the most on Election Day.
“That's something I definitely factored into my voting plan was making sure I'd get there real early and have that time scheduled real early so I wouldn't have to wait in long lines and I could continue with my day,” Bento said.
For Bento and others around the nation needing a ride this Election Day, many transportation services are helping people get to the polls. Some solutions for voters include Lyft and Uber, which will be offering discounted rides to polling locations on Election Day, and Embark Bus Services will be free on Election Day.
