Duke must do more to protect student voting rights

As we head into the days before one of the most consequential elections in history, North Carolina stands as a highly contested battleground state. However, with the implementation of new voting procedures at Duke, the chance that students at this university can fully exercise their right to vote is at risk.

This past spring, we, and participants of PUBPOL 307, authored a report, “The State of Youth Voting Rights at Duke University,” analyzing how student voting rights were impacted by the new Duke Voter ID Card in the March 2024 primary. The results were striking. Across North Carolina, 52% of provisional ballots — ballots given to voters when there are problems verifying their voter registration when voting —  were ultimately thrown out. In Durham County, this figure was 37%. Yet, among Duke students, 61.7% of provisional ballots cast were not counted. One out of eight Duke students casting ballots in the primary had their ballots rejected.

The cause of this alarming number is Duke’s creation of the Duke Voter ID, which was forced upon the administration by new voter ID laws in North Carolina. With recent changes, Duke is no longer issuing the Duke Student Voter ID for undergrads. As a replacement, the university has begun issuing new DukeCards with expiration dates that have recently been accepted by the North Carolina Board of Elections, beginning with this year’s freshman class. However, because the burden remains on Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors to go to the DukeCard office to print physical cards, we anticipate that this opt-in approach will continue to disenfranchise Duke students as happened in the spring primary. 

To be clear — while the cards the freshmen class of 2028 received at orientation were approved by the NC Board of Elections, the digital Duke ID is NOT eligible to be used as identification or proof of address when registering to vote or voting as they lack the expiration date requested by the BOE. Although UNC’s application for digital ID was recently approved, Duke did not meet the explicit standards for a digital university ID that the BOE required. 

According to administrators from the Durham County BOE and Duke, a numbered memo from the NCBOE in 2023 demonstrates that the old ID given to juniors and seniors has been grandfathered in as an acceptable voter ID, even though it does not have an expiration date. However, as we document in our report, poll workers at Karsh abruptly stopped accepting old physical Duke IDs — as well as digital IDs — without expiration dates during the primary, after initially accepting them. Because of these inconsistent election administration practices, we recommend that all Duke students request the new DukeCard with the expiration date. 

Duke has pledged to print new DukeCards to any student who goes by the Card office and requests one. The problem with this opt-in approach, however, is that it places the burden on current students to secure an ID before they decide where and when they might register to vote in North Carolina.  If there are lines waiting to get a new DukeCard this fall — or if the DukeCard office is closed when a student decides to register and to vote during early voting at the Karsh Alumni Center — Duke sophomores, juniors and seniors face the very real prospect of not having the correct ID required by the NCBOE and being disfranchised with a provisional ballot.

During the research of our report, we found through one of our surveys that one out of five Duke students experienced challenges during early voting in the Spring because of complications with the photo ID requirements. Most of the Duke students who received provisional ballots attempted to use their digital Duke IDs when registering to vote. But those IDs were rejected.  Additionally, we found that many of the Duke students casting provisional ballots had applied for the physical Duke photo ID card, but they were unable to pick up their cards because the Voter ID Card pickup was open sporadically and at specific times.  

To avoid such access problems in this fall’s election, when student turnout will be much higher, we urge Duke administrators to adopt an opt-out rather than an opt-in approach to student voting cards. Currently on the DukeCard website, students would need to fill out an application form in order to make an appointment with the DukeCard office. If past elections are a guide, more than 3,000 sophomores, juniors and seniors would potentially need to make these appointments, many of them during early voting. This creates an administrative bottleneck that is unnecessary and would hurt student voting rights. 

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this column stated that the original physical DukeCards given to juniors and seniors do not qualify as valid voter IDs. The article is updated to reflect that the original physical DukeCards given to juniors and seniors do qualify as valid voter IDs according to Duke and local county BOE administrators. The Chronicle regrets the error.