North Carolina A&T, UNC Greensboro and Bennett College students march to polling location after campus polling locations were removed
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Students walked about 45 minutes to cast ballots on the first day of North Carolina’s early voting, which runs through Oct. 31.
On the first day of early voting in North Carolina, students at UNC Greensboro, Bennett College and North Carolina A&T took to the streets.
In videos shared to social media, hundreds of students could be seen marching for hours to and from their new polling location. North Carolina Supreme Court candidate Anita Earls, state Sen. Gladys Robinson and state House Minority Leader Robert Reives encouraged students to take a friend to go and head to the polls.
“You turned out when they took your voting site away,” Reives said. “You need to do your duty today, and then you need to make sure that any student that didn’t get in their vote today, you get them there.”
NCA&T and UNC Greensboro both had early polling locations on their respective campuses for the 2024 general election. The Guilford County Board of Elections, however, denied both polling locations afterward, prompting students from both colleges to walk 45 minutes to their nearest early polling location.
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The vote against North Carolina A&T’s polling location, home to the largest 4-year historically Black college in the country, occurred earlier this summer. In January, the state Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines to deny NCA&T its polling site. The GOP-led Election Board then again denied NCA&T its polling location in August.
“Can we identify a single voter who is better served by having fewer opportunities to cast a ballot?” Jeff Carmon, one of two Democrats on the state board, asked at the latest hearing.
Early voting in North Carolina concludes on October 31. Among the races to watch are the U.S. Senate race between former Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican Michael Whatley.