While Talley has yet to be confirmed as a one-stop early voting location by the State Board of Elections, many organizations are preparing for both outcomes to ensure students have optimum accessibility to vote.
Brian Mathis, associate director of Leadership and Civic Engagement (formerly CSLEPS) and co-director of Pack the Polls, has been one of the individuals at the forefront of preparing the Wolfpack community for the upcoming election.
The decision to propose Talley as an early voting site came after hearing student feedback that Talley would be a convenient location to vote for students, faculty and staff.
“Hearing from students that Talley would be most optimal since they are taking classes here on Main Campus, they can go in between classes,” Mathis said. “For faculty and staff, also a great location, and in 2012, Talley Student Union hosted an early voting site before the new Talley and it was also a great space that students wanted and so we wanted to bring that back in 2018.”
Mathis said part of his role is to educate students on the importance of educated voting and getting students to develop the habit of being contributors to their communities and continue it after graduation.
“We believe that when young people get that chance to engage in that political process, they’re going to continue that post-graduation, and that’s what we really want,” Mathis said. “We really want our students to contribute to a thriving democracy, so a lot of our programs and our efforts focus around that education piece.”
Mathis added that having Talley as an early voting site would not only promote voting on campus, but it would also be a way to connect with the surrounding communities such as residential areas on Hillsborough Street.
“Here is one of the more densely populated parts of Wake County,” Mathis said. “If you look a population density map, you’ll see the NC State area, we have 34,000 students that attend school here, so we’re going to be densely populated. […] As an institution we also see a responsibility to serve a community, not just ourselves so we want to make ourselves as open and as accessible to voters in the community as well.”
Mathis also discussed how the location of Talley is accessible to the outside community as motorists can connect to Pullen Drive and park in the Jeter Lot next to Reynolds Coliseum from Hillsborough Street and Wade Avenue. Talley is also accessible to individuals without vehicles through the Wolfline, which stops in front of Carmichael Gymnasium, and GoRaleigh 11, which connects through Avent Ferry Road, stops in front of Talley and goes to Downtown Raleigh.
According to Mathis, Talley being a one-stop voting site will allow students to register and vote at the same time as well as make changes to their personal information such as a change of address.
“As of now, in early voting here in North Carolina, students can register and vote simultaneously,” Mathis said. “So, you don’t have to preregister by a certain deadline if you are participating in early voting. That’s also true if a registered student who may have participated in an election two years ago, if they need to change their address, they can still come to Talley during their early voting period and have their address changed and updated.”
Whether or not Talley is selected to be an early voting site, Mathis and Andrew McDonald, a fourth-year studying aerospace engineering, director of Government Affairs in Student Government, and co-chair of Pack the Polls, are pushing efforts that will help students register to vote, aid in providing unbiased information about what will be on the ballot, and if Talley is not chosen, get students to and from polling centers.
“Raising that awareness and education of the election and then registering people to vote and then on top of that, transportation to the polls, that’s the biggest thing that’s going to change if Talley isn’t confirmed as an early voting site,” McDonald said. “Because if it’s not, we’re going to immediately start looking into how [we are] going to plan out transportation to the polls on these early voting days because there’s a number of them. So we’ve got to figure out are going to transport every day or are we going to select different days and stuff like that.”
McDonald emphasized that all the initiatives Pack the Polls has been pushing and even the effort to make Talley an early voting site is for students to get to the polls.
“As co-chair of Pack the Polls, I think it’s important to stress that we are very committed to having students’ voices be heard, getting people out to the polls and getting people registered, but doing it in a bipartisan way,” McDonald said. “We’re not trying to sway anything or be affiliated one way or another; our goal, at the end of the day, is ultimately to have the students’ voices be heard and make it as easy as possible for them.”
The decision to make Talley an early voting site will be made in the upcoming weeks by the State Board of Elections. Technician will provide updates as the story develops. To learn more about Pack the Polls click here.
