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GREENSBORO, N.C. — College students are reacting after the State Board of Elections decided against early voting locations at multiple campuses.
Three of them are in the Triad.
“It’s actually very disheartening,” N.C. A&T senior Nikkira McCall said.
N.C. A&T, UNC-Greensboro, Elon and Western Carolina University will no longer serve as early voting sites but will remain as primary sites on election day.
Students on the N.C. A&T campus believe this could make it harder for some to vote.
“It was very good to me to not have my car on campus and be able to vote,” junior Alauna Nelson said.
Students said those are the barriers they are worried about for students eager to vote in the primaries, and the campus isn’t alone.
Students from the schools affected expressed those concerns to the State Board of Elections in person at a meeting Tuesday.
“We’re all young. We’re the next generation. We’re voting for ourselves. So it’s just very inconvenient for everybody,” Nelson said.
The board ultimately voted not to put early voting sites at those universities.
Director of the Guilford County Board of Elections Charlie Collicutt said students can still vote at the various campus locations on election day and early vote at any of the other early voting sites in the county.
“There’s still 10 other early voting sites throughout the county that any Guilford County resident can go to. It includes our building downtown. There’s some other buildings in sites that might be in proximity for those students,” Collicutt said.
He said for every election, the Board of Elections sets early voting sites for that particular election.
“We use a lot of sites, some years we consolidate and the board chose 10 locations,” Collicutt said.
The state board Tuesday confirmed those 10 locations.
“We have used some in elections in the past and some not. So it’s not so much necessarily a change from a pattern for this type of election, but it is a change from what we did in the 2024 elections,” Collicutt said.
The board also voted not to approve Sunday early voting plans in six counties — Columbus, Craven, Greene, Wayne, Harnett and Brunswick.
Greensboro Mayor Marikay Abuzuaiter also reacted to the news of the campus cuts.
“We went through that during the municipal elections recently, and several of the early voting sites for the primary were not used anymore, ones that had primarily been used in the past. So it was kind of a gut punch that, you know, certain areas of town may not have appropriate access to the early voting sites,” Abuzuaiter said.
In-person early voting begins Feb. 12 and primary election day will be March 3.
It’s still unclear whether these cuts in early voting sites will apply during the general election in November.
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Sasha Strong
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