A coalition of local and statewide organizations will gather in Greensboro Monday to advocate for early voting sites at area universities ahead of a Tuesday vote by the Guilford County Board of Elections.
“If we as a nation and a state want to talk about free and fair elections, having that access is important,” said Rev. Wayne Wilhelm, Faith Tri-Chair for the NC Poor People’s Campaign.
The Greensboro event—5:30 p.m. at the Old Guilford County Courthouse, 301 W. Market Street—is the latest in a string of events by local community groups revolving around early voting sites on NC A&T State University and UNC-Greensboro’s campuses. An event in Winston-Salem will take place on July 27 at 6:30 p.m. at Union Station.
Last November, the Guilford County Board of Elections voted not to include NC A&T or UNCG in its list of 10 early voting locations in the February primary elections. Republican board members—who hold a majority—cited past voter turnout numbers, a lack of precedent, and cost.
Republicans on the board say they aren’t doing anything new. While sites at A&T and UNCG have been used for both early and election day voting in presidential elections, neither has ever been used in midterms.
Eugene Lester, who chairs the board, has served on it since 2019. The board makes its determination based on which precincts perform well, he said, as well as whether the facilities are appropriate and if there is enough parking.
Historically, both UNCG and A&T are lower-performing locations when used in presidential elections, Lester said.
“If you have a site that hits 2,000 people versus a site that’s only getting a few hundred, you tend to gravitate towards the higher-performing sites,” he said when the board debated the issue last year.
Last fall, students rallied and held press conferences to spread awareness of the issue. They raised money to transport students to the closest polling location and joined other students across the state to file a federal lawsuit against the State Board of Elections and local boards.Â
In the end, neither campus was included for the primary election. Students dropped the lawsuit shortly afterwards. Now, students and local organizations are continuing to advocate for the campus sites for the fall. The decision on final voting locations is scheduled to take place at the board of elections meeting on Tuesday.
The NC Poor People’s Campaign focuses on five interlocking injustices, according to Wilhelm: systematic racism, systemic poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation and the denial of healthcare, and the distorted narrative of religious nationalism. While access to voting rights isn’t explicitly named as one of the injustices, it intersects with these issues, he said.
“Voting is one of the powers that the community and the people have to be able to combat and help push and fight against these interlocking injustices,” Wilhelm said.
He pointed to how a shift in power from the governor to the state auditor by NC Republicans led to local boards of elections with a 3-2 Republican majority.
“If we want to be fair and free, there should be opportunities to have people from both sides making these decisions,” he said. “But it does seem like they are trying to get all of the positions and take that power to make these decisions.”
Wilhelm also cited Republican state legislators drawing a line straight through NC A&T’s campus a decade ago, cutting the university into two voting precincts. In 2020, state judges ordered new maps that put the campus back into one precinct.
“It seems like the new thing seems to be to go after these college campuses,” Wilhelm said.
Area students agree. For months, dozens of students have gathered at the Guilford County Board of Elections meetings with signs, expressing their frustration.
“It’s a historical thing,” UNCG senior Xaviar Rodriguez Nail told The Assembly in December. “The government is always targeting minority areas or Black areas where the Black population is the highest.”
NC A&T is the country’s largest HBCU. But the NC Poor People’s Campaign isn’t advocating for voting rights for just Black people, Wilhelm said.
“We’re about voting eligibility for everybody,” Wilhelm said. “We’re not trying to say one group should have an advantage over another…. Voting sites are nonpartisan. They’re not Democratic or Republican.”
While the Moral Mondays event focuses on the campus of UNCG and NC A&T, other campuses across the state have also been impacted. Students at Western Carolina University, NC State University, and Elon University are also pushing for early-voting sites.
“It just seems like almost a concerted effort,” Wilhelm said. “If you want young people to be involved and young people to be engaged, why would you pull those resources from them?”
In addition to Indivisible and the NC Poor People’s Campaign, members of Common Cause NC, Camel City United Indivisible, Lift Every Vote and Repairers of the Breach will also be participating in the events.
The point of the events is to raise awareness, Wilhelm said. Within the community, for the media and for those in power.
“We’re not going to be silent anymore of the practices and tactics that seem to be suppressing votes for marginalized communities or for anyone,” Wilhelm said. “It’s not going to go unnoticed.”
