Early voting has been under way for 11 days in North Carolina, but the process has been a source of confusion for some voters in an exceptionally competitive election year.
At the one-stop voting site in the Old Trinity Room in the West Union Building, 4,498 citizens have voted. Student participation in the election has been historically high, but some of these voters have found it difficult to make it to the ballot box, said Heather Smith, executive director of Rock the Vote.
Some out-of-state college students in battleground states like Virginia and North Carolina said they decided to register to vote in the swing states, where their votes may help tip the scales. A few political observers, however, said they are worried that students are being discouraged to vote in these "purple states."
Some students have been misinformed about their ability to vote at college, Smith said. Many out-of-state students attending schools in Virginia and Pennsylvania have received letters from local Boards of Elections officials saying that they can lose their financial aid if they do not vote in their home states, Smith added.
In addition, some out-of-state students have had difficulty providing proof of residence in states in which they do not have a driver's license or other forms of identification, said Robert Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Legal Network. Without proof of residence, registration forms can be rejected. Students have also been turned away from voting at some sites around the country if their licenses do not match their campus address.
At Duke, however, election officials and campaigns have been able to eliminate many potential barriers facing student voters.
Voter registration drives in North Carolina have prompted hundreds of thousands to register to vote. But almost 3,000 voter registration cards in Durham have been put on the "reject queue," including more than 50 Duke students, according to a list provided by Project Vote, a nonpartisan nonprofit.
The most common issue was that voters forgot to put down vital information such as their date of birth or did not sign the cards, said Mike Ashe, director of the Durham County Board of Elections. But because of North Carolina's voting procedures, these students have not been disenfranchised.
Voters placed on the "reject queue" can still vote, but must show a valid form of identification when going to the polls for early voting. If there is a more serious problem with the registration, like a discrepancy between voter registration cards and government databases, voters can re-register during one-stop voting, which ends Nov. 1.
The North Carolina ballot has also been a source of confusion for some voters. Under North Carolina law, the presidential race must be excluded from the "straight party" option on the ballot, meaning voters must vote for the president separately, which James Hamilton, associate professor of public policy studies, political science and economics, decried in a Charlotte Observer op-ed Oct. 25.
In0 a study Hamilton conducted in 1992, almost 1 percent of the North Carolina electorate did not vote for the president because they thought that it was included in a straight party vote.
The ballot says a straight party vote includes all partisan offices, but Hamilton said the exclusion of the presidency might confuse some voters, noting that he has "always viewed the presidency as a partisan office."
Presidential campaigns, however, have been taking measures to clarify voting procedure. Since early voting began, volunteers for Sen. Barack Obama's campaign have been handing out leaflets entitled the "Obama-Straight-Flip," instructing voters to first vote for Obama for president, then select the Democrats on the straight party ticket and then vote for the recommended candidates for the nonpartisan races on the back of the ballot.
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