Provisional Ballots, Provisional Rights: Protecting Student Voters (2024-2025)

The youth vote holds significant influence, particularly in North Carolina, which ranks among the top ten states where young voters can impact electoral outcomes. Provisional ballots – or ballots used by voters whose eligibility cannot be verified at their polling site – are supposed to be a failsafe for voters experiencing difficulties with their voter registration. Increasingly, however, regulatory practices around provisional ballots are depriving young voters of their right to vote. 

Using publicly available data through the North Carolina State Board of Elections, this project team conducted diagnostic research to identify the full nature and extent of youth disfranchisement across North Carolina over the past several election cycles. Team members from Duke and NCCU identified and isolated the varied factors – campus gerrymanders, lack of access to early voting sites, misinformation and legal barriers – that compromise students’ voting rights, and piloted potential solutions to reduce the pervasive barriers that inhibit youth voters from realizing their potential political power.

The team's work built on survey data collected in April 2024 from students at Duke, NCCU, Appalachian State, UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and UNC-Pembroke. Using the same protocol, team members expanded the study to include four additional college campuses across the state: Eastern Carolina University, North Carolina A&T, UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Charlotte. Team members surveyed registered youth voters in the campus precincts of each school (a cohort of roughly 24,000 registered voters) and interviewed provisional balloters from each campus.

Timing

Fall 2024 – Spring 2025

Team Outputs

White papers on how to minimize provisional balloting on each college campus

Non-partisan op-eds explaining the risks to student voting and how to avoid them

Website and digitized stories by student voters on the provisional balloting process

Participation in statewide forums on the youth vote

See earlier related team, Elections in a Pandemic: Looking Back, Looking Ahead (2021-2022).