NC college students sue election officials over rejection of campus voting sites
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Students from three universities sued election officials to restore campus voting sites.
- Republican-led board rejected campus sites citing cost, parking and geography.
- Lawsuit alleges decisions burden young and Black voters amid statewide voting changes.
A group of college students from three North Carolina universities — including the nation’s largest HBCU — filed a federal lawsuit against North Carolina election officials on Tuesday after the state rejected efforts to place early voting sites on their campuses.
The lawsuit, which asks the court to order the restoration of the voting sites before early voting begins next month, accuses North Carolina’s Republican-led State Board of Elections of “targeted efforts to place additional, unnecessary, burdensome, and ultimately unjustifiable obstacles” on students.
The litigation comes just weeks after the elections board voted against including on-campus early voting sites at Western Carolina University, UNC Greensboro and NC A&T State University.
While all of those universities have hosted early voting sites in recent elections, WCU is the only campus to have had a site during the last comparable election: the 2022 primary.
The state board’s Republicans, who outnumber Democrats 3 to 2, agreed with local Republican election officials from each county who argued that the campus sites were not practical due to cost, parking or geography.
The vote prompted a brief protest from NC A&T students, who had come to the Raleigh meeting in support of early voting sites on the campus of the historically Black university.
After students confronted board members with signs, Board Chair Francis De Luca threatened to call the police on them.
The lawsuit contends that the board’s Republican majority ignored students’ pleas, “brushed aside urgent warnings that their decisions would disproportionately burden young and Black voters and denigrated students who advocated for their rights.”
Asked for comment on the lawsuit, a spokesperson for the State Board of Elections said it was the agency’s policy not to comment on pending litigation.
The news comes months after a massive restructuring of North Carolina’s state and local election boards, which flipped to Republican control last year for the first time in nearly a decade.
For most of the state’s history, the governor was able to appoint a majority of election officials from their own party. Republican lawmakers stripped Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of that power shortly after he was elected, transferring that power instead to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek.
In addition to voting against some campus voting sites, the newly composed boards have also reduced Sunday voting statewide, even as they’ve increased the total number of early voting sites.
And while the votes against WCU, UNCG and A&T have drawn significant attention, an N&O analysis of early voting plans found that North Carolina will have more total on-campus polling sites this March than it did in the 2022 primary election.
When counting community colleges, there will be 10 on-campus early voting sites this year, compared to nine in 2022.
Early voting begins on Feb. 12.
This story was originally published January 28, 2026 at 11:31 AM.
