Hearing set Thursday in College Democrats’ early voting site lawsuit
A federal judge has scheduled a Thursday hearing on College Democrats’ request for an injunction that would mandate early voting sites on three North Carolina university campuses.
Early voting for the March 3 primary is scheduled to start one week after the hearing on Feb. 12.
US District Judge William Osteen issued an order Sunday scheduling the hearing. Osteen’s order arrived after the College Democrats of North Carolina and four individual students filed a motion seeking a temporary restraining order or injunction. The plaintiffs are working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm.
The hearing is scheduled for 4 p.m. Thursday in Osteen’s Greensboro courtroom. His order indicated that proceedings could be continued to 3:30 p.m. Feb. 11, the afternoon before early voting opens across North Carolina.
Plaintiffs are asking the courts to force elections officials to open early voting sites in Guilford County on the campuses of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and North Carolina A&T State University. The requested injunction also would mandate an early voting site in Jackson County on the Western Carolina University campus.
“The Twenty-Sixth Amendment prohibits states from abridging the right to vote on the basis of age,” the students’ lawyers wrote Friday in a court filing supporting the injunction motion. “States violate that prohibition when they intentionally target young voters for disfavored treatment, as they did here. And the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit states from unjustifiably burdening the right to vote. The site closures here will unquestionably impose severe burdens on the voting rights of Plaintiffs and young voters like them. But no matter the severity of the burden, the site closures cannot pass constitutional scrutiny because the justifications offered for them are woefully insufficient.”
The students’ suit filed Jan. 27 in federal court targets the North Carolina State Board of Elections and the Guilford and Jackson County elections boards. Republicans hold 3-2 majorities on the state and local boards. In each case, Republican board members at the local and state level outvoted Democrats who supported on-campus early voting sites.
Each affected campus hosted an early voting site during the 2024 presidential election cycle.
“Contrary to the views of Defendant Eugene Lester, the Guilford County elections board chair, voting is a right of citizenship — not a privilege,” the students’ lawyers wrote. “This case is about targeted efforts to place additional, unnecessary, burdensome, and ultimately unjustifiable obstacles between students at three North Carolina universities — including the nation’s largest historically Black university — and this fundamental constitutional right.
The three campuses “serve over 40,000 students,” according to the complaint. “For multiple election cycles, those students have been able to vote early at early voting sites on their campuses. Having that on-campus access has been no mere convenience — it has been critical for overcoming the barriers that student voters face when they attempt to access the franchise, including lack of personal transportation, unfamiliarity with off-campus geography, demanding class and work schedules that leave little time for travel, and limited financial resources. For many students, on-campus early voting enables access to the franchise.”
“Moreover, because same day voter registration is available at early voting sites and not election day polling sites, the on-campus accessibility was critical to ensuring not only that registered voters were able to vote, but that young North Carolinians who were voting for the very first time or updating their voter registration were able to do so in time to participate in the state’s elections.”
The students oppose the state elections board’s Jan. 13 decision not to have early voting sites on those campuses this year. “Along the way, state and county officials brushed aside urgent warnings that their decisions would disproportionately burden young and Black voters and denigrated students who advocated for their rights,” according to the lawsuit.
“These closures intentionally target the rights of young voters,” the lawsuit claims.
The students characterize arguments against the campus early voting sites as “troubling” and “thin.” “Guilford County officials cited low turnout and claimed resources would be better spent on communities deemed more politically engaged, a characterization that is especially fraught for students at NC A&T and UNC-G, both of which serve large numbers of Black voters,” according to the lawsuit. “Meanwhile, officials in Jackson County cited cost savings and logistical issues that simply don’t hold up to scrutiny. Lacking any legitimate justifications for the closures, state and county election officials flippantly dismissed student concerns by declaring that university students are ‘adults’ who are too capable and mobile to need voting sites on campus.”
The plaintiffs seek to have early voting sites restored on the three campuses by the time early voting begins on Feb. 12 for the March 3 primary election.
“The real reason for the elimination of on-campus early voting at these universities appears to be a judgment that student voters — and disproportionately Black student voters — do not deserve the same level of accessibility as other voters in their counties,” the students’ lawyers wrote. “That judgment contradicts the Constitution and basic principles of equal treatment.”
Andy Jackson, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Civitas Center for Public Integrity, responded to the students’ complaint in a Carolina Journal column posted Friday.
“First, it is important to note that, despite reports of early voting sites being ‘axed,’ North Carolina will have more sites for 2026 (319) than for the last midterm primary in 2022 (301),” Jackson wrote.
Jackson focused particular attention on the lawsuit’s demand for an early voting site at NCA&T.
“There is one problem with the argument that removing an early voting site on the NCA&T campus for the midterm primary is taking away students’ right to vote: there has never been an early voting site on the NCA&T campus for a midterm primary,” he wrote.
“But, even if NCA&T has never hosted an early voting site, should it host one now? The evidence indicates it should not,” Jackson added. “There was an early voting site on the campus in the 2024 presidential primary. … [T]he NCA&T site was the least used of the 17 sites in Guilford County. That does not recommend it as one of the 10 sites in the county for the 2026 midterm primary.”
Locating an early voting site at WCU “is at least potentially more legitimate,” Jackson noted.
The campus hosted early voting sites for the 2018 and 2022 primary elections, making Cullowhee the only Jackson County community to have two early voting locations. Three other sites were “widely distributed across the county,” Jackson wrote.
“[T]he WCU site was the second-least used in Jackson County in the 2024 primary. The proportion of votes at the WCU site was much lower in the 2022 midterm primary, but that election was held in May, which conflicted with exams and the end of the semester,” he explained.
“Why close any site at all?” Jackson asked. “Early voting sites cost county election boards money. While there is disagreement about the exact amount, both Democrats and Republicans on the Jackson County Board of Elections agree that they would save between $6,000 and $20,000 by operating four sites instead of five. Operating four sites instead of five would also allow election officials to avoid spreading their staff too thin. Jackson County board members have also expressed concern about access to the WCU site for voters not affiliated with the university.”
Democrats on the Jackson County elections board recommended maintaining the WCU voting site but eliminating Cullowhee’s other early voting location, “despite the site consistently being the second-most popular midterm primary site after the county board of elections office,” Jackson wrote.
“We will have this same debate when election officials decide if NCA&T and WCU will host early voting sites for the general election,” Jackson concluded. “When officials have that debate, it should be based on community access and the most practical use of resources, not slogans and protests.”
“Hearing set Thursday in College Democrats’ early voting site lawsuit” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.
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