Georgia college students aiming to vote in November face a unique set of hurdles

When students at Emory University registered to vote this year, they were faced with two main campus options for guidance: The Emory Votes Initiative, a university-administered program for nonpartisan voter education, or Emory Young Democrats, a student-run club and chapter of the Young Democrats of Georgia.

Georgia’s Young Republicans don’t have a chapter at Emory.

What seemed like one of the only inconsequential choices in a consequential election could potentially cost young voters their ballots.

While the administration’s initiative advised students to list the university’s campus-wide address on registration forms, Young Dems said to list individual residential dorm addresses. For students who chose to register based on the school’s advice and listed the general campus address, that choice could remove them from the rolls per Georgia law.

The basis of many Georgia voter challenges — including the Sept. 17 lawsuit against DeKalb County, where registered Emory students vote — is that there is not a resident living at the address the voter listed on their registration, University of Georgia Political Science Professor Charles Bullock said.

College voters in Georgia, many of whom will vote for the first time this November, face a unique set of hurdles to ballot box access as advocacy groups scramble to get people registered before Georgia’s Oct. 7 deadline. Aside from conflicting information on residential addresses, most college students also move to new dorms every year, which requires a voter registration update. Depending on the number of campus residence halls, even moving within a campus from one dorm to another could require re-registering. Students without a Georgia ID or driver’s license must also register using a paper application.

College student voters, including those who re-register from other states to vote in Georgia, could play a critical role in the November election. In the 2020 presidential race, Georgia was decided by about 12,000 votes as Democrat Joe Biden narrowly defeated GOP incumbent President Donald Trump.

“We have at least that many out-of-state students in Georgia, so if they all were to register and all vote the same way, it could even affect the outcome of the election,” Bullock said.

Georgia is once again expected to be closely contested and is considered one of seven swing states in the country that will likely decide who winds up in the White House starting in January. Though unlikely, this means that if all 16,019 students at Emory University voted the same way, Emory voters could well exceed that 2020 margin.

Emory’s administration voter initiative trained students and faculty to register people, asked professors to post links to the program on their course pages and distributed flyers with materials directing students to use the general campus address rather than their individual dorm addresses and list their specific mailbox as the mailing address.

Robert Sinners, Communications Director for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told the Georgia Recorder in a statement that state law requires each voter be registered at the address at which they reside.

“Since the student is moving from one address to another, they must update their Voter Registration Address to reflect their new address of residency,” he said. “The reason why this is important is because districts (especially Municipal, State House, State Senate, etc.) may cut through a particular college campus or street. Moving a few blocks away could change the ballot that you receive in November.”

He added that updating voter registration to reflect a current residential address is standard for any Georgian who moves within an apartment complex or down the street.

Tereza Lewis, associate director of Emory’s initiative, said the program has been having students fill out registration forms with the Emory campus address. In response to Sinners’ information on residential addresses, Lewis said the program is currently working with the state and in the two counties where dorms are located to find a viable solution and clear messaging for all Emory students.

At Georgia State University, student organizations like the school’s chapter of Young Democrats register people through the university’s office of civic engagement so that everyone goes through the same process. When explaining to students which address to register with, Political Director of GSU Young Democrats Sarah Forberger describes the difference between school and dorm addresses to potential voters.

“It is their residential address, and so, they don’t live at the headquarters of Georgia State University,” she said.

Lewis said that the administration and Emory Young Democrats have had some communication, although the school cannot work with them in full because the university is nonpartisan.

In the past month, Emory Young Democrats have registered more than 750 people to vote, spreading the word about updating registrations with new dorm addresses and registering voters for the first time through on-campus tabling, events and social media.

“We’re trying to be in places where people are already and create spaces where people can come to register to vote,” said Khushi Niyyar, Emory Young Democrats Voter Registration Director. Last week, the group held one of their signature events, Peach Jam, where local Atlanta bands and vendors came to Emory and Young Dems tabled, registering over 100 new voters.

For smaller Georgia schools like Valdosta State University, Morehouse College and Spelman College, re-registering each year for dorm changes isn’t as much of a challenge since the campuses are small enough that individual dorms do not have their own unique addresses. But the three colleges and Emory do have one challenge in common: registering out-of-state students on paper.

Kim-mya Thomas, president of Valdosta State University Young Democrats said she noticed that some students seemed apathetic about changing their registration from the home where they lived before the fall semester started to Lowndes County.

“They felt like it was too much trouble for them, like the process was too complicated for them, especially having to do it on paper,” she said. “Especially when our generation is so technology based, we’re not used to having to fill out forms on paper.”

Hudson Osborne, President of College Democrats of Georgia, encountered similar problems at Morehouse, where he also runs the school’s College Democrats chapter.

“We have almost half a file cabinet full of these paper [forms] and nobody wants to take them,” he said.

Morehouse College Democrats has hosted live workshops to hand out forms and walk students through registration. External Vice President for Spelman Democrats, Ariana Levin, said her group has had a similar strategy, hosting live events and reaching students via social media.

The Online Voter Registration tool is built for voters with Georgia licenses and IDs, Sinners said. All voters without Georgia licenses or state-issued IDs, not just students, must complete a paper application, he added.

Student leaders on college campuses across the state are making one last push for registration ahead of Oct. 7. Across campuses, enthusiasm for the election is high with November’s contest between Trump and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris around the corner. Jackson Weeks, Political Director of GSU Young Democrats alongside Forberger, noted that college students themselves are pushing for registration.

“When we’re tabling,” he said, “we have a bunch of people come up to us and ask us to register them to vote, which shows how enthusiastic a lot of people on campus are about this election.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and X.