Students from three North Carolina campuses who were denied an early voting site for the 2026 primary election are suing their respective county and state election boards.
The students, alongside the College Democrats of North Carolina, asked a federal district court judge Tuesday to require election boards to place early voting sites on the campuses of Western Carolina University in Jackson County and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro in Guilford County.
In their complaint, the students argue that exclusion amounts to discrimination against student voters. It places an undue burden on their right to vote, they say.
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Over the course of early voting decision-making, Republican board members have dismissed these concerns. Jackson County Board of Elections Republican Chairman Bill Thompson suggested that students are adults; they can figure it out.
“I would remind everyone when we talk about students, we’re not talking about kindergarteners who need help tying their shoes and opening their milk cartons,” Thompson said. “We’re talking about adults who are seeking their post-secondary education. These adults have demonstrated above-average ability and mobility.”
The early voting site case
Student voters are a unique population. It’s generally their first time voting. Many students are in an unfamiliar environment, unaware of the local geography. Their schedules are busy, and they may not have as much disposable income as older voters. Depending on the campus, a significant proportion of students may not have cars or access to other reliable transportation.
These factors are all cited in the lawsuit as reasons why campus early voting sites are needed, not just convenient for students.
Since 2016, Western Carolina University has had an on-campus early voting site. This cycle, Republican board members decided to locate one site instead of two in Cullowhee. In a party-line vote, the board deemed Cullowhee Recreation Center better suited to serve the community than the WCU site. Campus parking is confusing, even with signage, and the recreation center is familiar to most voters, Thompson argued.
Now, some students feel stranded. The recreation center early voting site is only a mile or two from campus, but that journey is along a busy mountain highway without sidewalks. Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft are unreliable when available in the area, the lawsuit claims. While students may request transportation from Jackson County Transit, they must do so 24 hours in advance.
Students can vote by mail or on Election Day, but only early voting includes same-day registration, which younger voters commonly use. The WCU site in particular has recorded the highest proportion of same-day registrations in eight of the past nine elections. It’s been proven to boost youth voter turnout, according to an analysis by Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper.
Neither NC A&T nor UNC-Greensboro have ever had a campus early voting site in midterm elections. However, they have been included in early voting plans for presidential general elections since 2004 and 2012, respectively, and for presidential primaries since 2020.
The Guilford County campuses are also racially diverse; NC A&T, for one, is the largest HBCU in the nation.
These factors may or may not play into a judge’s decision, Cooper said. It’s a “credible” case, but he wouldn’t venture a guess on the outcome.
“A barrier doesn’t mean you can’t get there, it just means you have to go around,” he said. “And so there’s been lots of times when courts have jumped in and said, ‘Hey, this barrier is too much on this particular group.’”
It’s not the first time NC A&T students have fought for a site. In 2019, students advocated for an early voting site for the 2020 presidential election. They won that battle, and over 70% of students voted in the 2020 election. At UNC-Greensboro, 74% of eligible students voted.
It’s unclear whether they’ll win this time around, but North Carolina’s College Democrats believe the boards’ decisions are a pattern. In a statement, they cited 2023 comments made by an influential Republican lawyer and election integrity activist, Cleta Mitchell. According to a separate lawsuit, Mitchell allegedly advised North Carolina Republicans on same-day registration changes.
“The Republican model of trying to suppress college students was evident from the moment that Trump ally and GOP Lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, criticized North Carolina college campuses for making voting accessible for students, saying, ‘We need to be looking at what are these college campus locations and polling? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorms, so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed,’” the statement read.
Dialing up the pressure
There’s more than one way to win a lawsuit.
Appalachian State University students proved that in 2014. After the then-Republican majority Watauga County elections board voted to remove a long-standing early voting site from ASU’s campus, and the State Board of Elections backed the decision, a group of students sued.
Wake County Superior Court Judge David Stephens sided with the students. He ruled that the site removal was intentional discrimination against student voters, according to the presented evidence.
The state appealed the case to the North Carolina Supreme Court, but before they could act, the state elections board reversed its previous order, and restored ASU’s early voting site. Eventually, the case was dismissed, since the matter at hand — the 2014 early voting cycle — was over.
While ASU students didn’t quite earn a legal win, they got a practical one. In every primary, general and municipal election since (with the exception of the 2015 municipal election), election boards have placed an early voting site on ASU’s campus.
“Pressure can be successful,” said Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper. “It’s entirely possible that the plaintiffs lose this case, but that causes county boards of elections to make a different decision in the general (election).”
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