North Carolina Students Walk Nearly an Hour to Vote After Campus Early-Voting Sites Were Denied
Greensboro — On Thursday, October 15, the first day of early voting in North Carolina, hundreds of students from North Carolina A&T State University — the largest four-year historically Black university in the United States — UNC Greensboro and Bennett College rallied and then marched to the Union Square Campus polling site downtown, a walk of about 45 to 50 minutes, Greensboro's News & Record reported. Chanting "This is what democracy looks like," the students carried signs reading "It's About Us" and "They close polling sites, we keep showing up anyway."
The march grew out of a fight over polling places. Both NC A&T and UNC Greensboro hosted early- voting sites on campus in 2024; the State Board of Elections voted 3–2 along party lines in January to deny a site at NC A&T and denied it again in August, while the Guilford County Board of Elections settled on Union Square Campus — a downtown health-care education center built as a collaboration among NC A&T, UNC Greensboro and Guilford Technical Community College — as a compromise site. Student leaders criticized the location as too far from both campuses, a roughly 90- minute round trip on foot, with stretches of the route lacking sidewalks and lined with poison ivy. Organizers said many of the students were first-time voters, and more than 300 ballots were cast at Union Square that day. Organizer Kema Leonard said some students waited three hours, some had to leave for class or work, and the site briefly ran out of voter registration forms: "It shouldn't have been that hard... They weren't ready for us." Jade Dwyer, vice president of UNC Greensboro's College Democrats, said: "We are here to make our voices heard." Xavier Jones, political affairs director of NC A&T's College Democrats, told the crowd: "They are betting that you are too tired, too apathetic and have no attention span... but we are here." State Senator Natalie Murdock walked the full route with the students: "I took the 45-to-50-minute walk with them, and there are no words... They were amazing. They were positive." House Minority Leader Robert Reives told the students, "You turned out when they took your voting site away," and Jeff Carmon, a Democratic member of the State Board of Elections, asked: "Can we identify a single voter who is better served by having fewer opportunities to cast a ballot?"
Early voting in North Carolina runs through October 31. Student organizers said they would keep organizing walks and rides to the site over the coming weeks.
Related: America's Electoral System (4): The Midterms: What Is on the Ballot on November 3, 2026
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：选民在提前投票点排队投票资料照片（摄于 Indianapolis，非本次格林斯伯勒现场）。照片：Jaireeodell／Wikimedia Commons（CC BY-SA 4.0）。File photo: voters lining up for early voting in Indianapolis; not the Greensboro event. Photo: Jaireeodell / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
