Just a week after Gov. Pat McCrory signed new voting requirements into law, students across the state are seeing the effects.
The new law requires voters to provide a government-issued photo ID, but it does not allow poll workers to accept college IDs or out-of-state driver’s licenses. It also shortens early voting by a week and ends same-day voter registration. Boards of Elections are currently reworking voting locations and trying to determine how the new law will affect local voting practices. The Watauga County Board of Elections has eliminated the early voting site and an election-day polling precinct on the campus of Appalachian State University. The Pasquotank County Board of Elections voted to stop an Elizabeth City State University senior from running for city council because his on-campus address doesn’t establish residency.
And the Republican chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Elections recently announced that he plans to eliminate the early voting site on the campus of Winston-Salem State University .
“I will go as far as saying this is an attack on student voters — they’re blatantly trying to suppress the student vote,” said Robert Nunnery, president of the UNC-system Association of Student Governments.
Jocelyn Hunt, a student at ASU and the director of state relations for ASG, said there were 50 to 60 students and townspeople at the Watauga County Board of Elections meeting to show their opposition to the changes.
She said the new site for early voting has limited parking spaces and is located along the highway, with no sidewalks.
“I would be scared to walk there,” Hunt said, adding that she and other student leaders will have to find ways to address the situation. “We just hope that students will still go vote even though this obstacle has been put in the way.” Nunnery said ASG will discuss ways to educate students on the changes at its meeting Saturday. He said he will ask the body to allocate $20,000 to $30,000 to this project.
Stefani Jones, president of Duke University’s student government, said that Duke Student Government and UNC-CH Student Congress had jointly written a statement denouncing the changes. Shelby Hudspeth, director of state and external affairs for UNC-CH student government, said she was concerned that shortening early voting would decrease student turnout.
“For college students, we utilize early voting because we are extremely busy, and standing in line on election day isn’t always an option for us,” she said.
