Hundreds of North Carolina college students hit the pavement on the first day of early voting. Sources say their marching lasted nearly an hour to cast their ballots after officials denied on-campus polling locations at two Greensboro universities.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Students from North Carolina A&T State University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Bennett College joined the Oct. 15 march to Union Square Campus, turning the lengthy trip to the polls into a public demonstration over voting access.
The march came after N.C. A&T and UNCG, which both hosted early voting locations during the 2024 general election, were denied campus sites for the 2026 election.
Students Faced A Long Walk And Hourslong Waits
According to Greensboro.com, students at N.C. A&T and UNCG held simultaneous rallies before marching to Union Square on the first day of early voting, with Bennett College students and others joining along the way.
Marchers carried signs reading, “It’s About Us” and “They close polling sites, we keep showing up anyway,” while chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.”
Greensboro.com reports that the Guilford County Board of Elections earlier this year declined requests from students and local activists to add early voting sites at N.C. A&T and UNCG. The board instead approved Union Square Campus, a downtown Greensboro health care education center and collaboration between N.C. A&T, UNCG and Guilford Technical Community College, as a compromise.
Reporters say the trek from the campuses include gaps in the sidewalk and poison ivy along the route.
The trip was only part of the challenge.
Greensboro.com states that local Democratic organizer Kema Leonard said some students waited three hours to vote, while others had to leave early to return to class or get to work.
“It shouldn’t have been that hard,” Leonard said. “At one point, the staffers said they had run out of registration forms. It almost proved our point that we need our own sites. They weren’t ready.”
According to the Guilford County Board of Elections’ daily tally, more than 300 votes were cast at Union Square that day.
Student leaders also made it clear that the inconvenience would not keep them from participating.
“We are here to make our voices heard,” Jade Dwyer, vice president of the UNC Greensboro College Democrats, told students before the march.
At N.C. A&T, College Democrats political affairs director Xavier Jones delivered a similar message.
“They are betting that you are too tired, too apathetic and have no attention span … but we are here,” Jones said.
Sen. Natalie Murdock, a Greensboro native who represents Chatham and Durham counties, joined the students for the approximately 45-to-50-minute walk.
“I took the 45-to-50-minute walk with them, and there are no words,” Murdock said in Greensboro.com. “They were amazing. They were positive.”
Some participating students told reporters that this was a first time voting.
Previous Campus Polling Sites And Elections Board Votes
TheGrio reports that N.C. A&T and UNCG both had early voting locations on their respective campuses during the 2024 general election before being denied sites for the 2026 election.
N.C. A&T, UNCG and Bennett College took to the streets by the hundreds, with social media videos documenting the lengthy trip to and from the new polling location.
TheGrio states that the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted 3-2 along party lines in January to deny N.C. A&T a polling site. Reports also say that the Republican-led board again denied the university a polling location in August.
N.C. A&T is the largest four-year historically Black college in the country.
“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 elections board, asked during the latest hearing, cited by theGrio.
Political leaders also encouraged students to keep their classmates engaged.
North Carolina Supreme Court candidate Anita Earls, state Sen. Gladys Robinson and state House Minority Leader Robert Reives encouraged students to bring a friend and make sure their peers got 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.”
Early voting in North Carolina continues through Oct. 31.
