|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Alexa Hill spent most of the fall semester helping fellow NC State University students figure out where and when to cast their ballots in the midterm election—and how to get there.
This summer, the Wake County Board of Elections voted to move a longtime campus polling place from Talley Student Union to the university’s business service center, more than a mile away and across Western Boulevard. The board’s Republican majority said the new location would offer more parking and easier access than a site in the middle of NC State’s bustling campus. Critics of the move argued it would make it harder for students to vote because many do not have cars and the route would require crossing a busy, multi-lane road to a site that many weren’t familiar with.
The change at NC State meant Hill and her Pack the Polls teammates had to significantly change their approach from years past, when students could easily cast their ballots between classes without much planning required. The nonpartisan, student-led effort is dedicated to fostering civic engagement and increasing voter turnout, and is advised by NC State staff.
“Students definitely came up to me confused. It isn’t a site that we normally use,” Hill said. “But the majority of those issues were able to be sorted out really easily.”
The group provided a free shuttle from Talley and Centennial Campus, where engineering students typically have classes, to the business center every hour for most days of the early voting period. For students who could drive or wanted to walk roughly 20 minutes to the new site, Hill’s team made sure to advertise the site using its address, 1220 Varsity Drive, which she said tended to be easier to pull up on a phone’s GPS than the building’s name. And for those who wanted to take the bus, the group provided information about the available routes.
Their efforts appear to have paid off.
Unofficial early voting numbers from Wake County show that 14,502 voters cast their ballots at the business service center, out of a total 334,127 voters so far across the county. That’s a roughly 40% increase in the number of votes cast at Talley from the last midterm election in 2022 and on par with the 14,491 votes cast at the student union in the 2018 midterm. (There were 18 days for early voting at most Wake County sites in 2018, compared to 17 this year and in 2022.) Overall, early voting turnout was up 52% in Wake County compared to 2022.
North Carolina saw a significant early voting uptick in this election, with more than 2.8 million people voting before Election Day—a new state record for a midterm, and a 31% increase from 2022. As of Monday, early voting turnout was up about 20% nationally, according to data maintained by the University of Florida. Some experts predict overall turnout, including votes cast on Election Day, could rival the numbers seen in 2018, when turnout across the U.S. reached its highest level for a midterm in more than a century.
Campus polling places were a major source of contention across the state heading into the election, which is seen as a temperature check on the first two years of President Donald Trump’s second term and the Republican-controlled Congress.
Election boards in Jackson County, home to Western Carolina University, and Guilford County, home to N.C. A&T State University and UNC Greensboro, split over whether to host voting sites on those campuses. The State Board of Elections, which issues final decisions over county voting plans that aren’t unanimously supported by county boards, approved a site at WCU but not at UNCG or A&T. In Wake County, the elections board initially disagreed on moving the site from Talley, but ultimately submitted a unanimous plan to the state board.
Even as the moves made voting more difficult for some students, they didn’t seem deterred from casting their ballots. Hundreds of A&T and UNCG students recently went viral on social media for walking roughly 45 minutes to their nearest polling place, and turnout in Guilford County was up nearly 40% compared to 2022. The new WCU site, which was across a highway from the university’s main campus, was up 135% compared to a location at the center of campus in 2022—the second-largest increase at any voting site in the state this election, according to an analysis by WCU professor Chris Cooper.
Much of the increased participation this election is likely driven by economic concerns; every New York Times poll conducted leading up to the midterms found that was the top issue on voters’ minds, per the outlet. For young people who are nearing graduation and entering the job market, or those who may want to buy a home in the coming years, the concern could be more pronounced. Hill said most NC State students she spoke to during early voting cited the issue as their main concern, and UNC Charlotte voters voiced similar sentiments to The Election Hub, a Charlotte nonprofit. In a Times poll conducted late last month, 70% of voters aged 18-29 said they strongly disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy.
Gerry Cohen, a Democratic member of the Wake County Board of Elections who opposed moving the NC State voting site out of the student union, said he believes the elections boards’ decisions to move campus voting sites or to deny requests for them may have also driven a spike in turnout. That could be especially true in Guilford County, where A&T students have fought for their rights to vote for decades, he said.
“I think that really set off a firestorm, especially in the Black community across the state,” Cohen said. “I think it was a complete backfire.”
Looking forward to the 2028 presidential election, Cohen said he would prefer the NC State site move back to Talley, or perhaps a larger campus location like the McKimmon Conference Center. The latter shares a parking lot with the business service center but would allow more people to vote at one time, he said.
“But we’re a ways away from making any decision on that,” Cohen said, noting the elections board will begin discussions about locations for the 2028 primary election in January.
To Hill, the polling place at the business service center offered a lasting lesson for NC State students.
“With this out of the way, you had to be a lot more intentional with it,” Hill said. “But for the rest of our lives, we’ll always have to be intentional about making a plan to vote.”
