Coalition FOILs BOE over on-campus voting
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEXSTAR) — On Monday, several public policy organizations teamed up to write to the New York State Board of Elections (BOE) about an apparent lack of polling places on college campuses. They noted many schools that have nowhere to vote within a mile despite large, dense resident student populations.
"In swing House districts across New York, young people could make all the difference," said Jack Lobel, the press secretary at Voters of Tomorrow, which works to mobilize young voters. "Research shows that young people face outsized obstacles to the ballot box. It's critical that election officials do everything in their power to alleviate those burdens, including by ensuring polling places are located near and accessible from college campuses."
You can take a look at the letter from the Youth Vote Coalition at the bottom of this story. It highlights 20 four-year schools with on-campus housing and over 1,000 full-time students that need polling places:
| Campus | City | Miles to nearest polling place |
|---|---|---|
| College of Staten Island | Staten Island | 1.4 |
| Culinary Institute of America | Hyde Park | 2.8 |
| Dominican College | Orangeburg | 1.9 |
| Hamilton College | Clinton | 1.5 |
| LIU Post | Greenvale | 1.6 |
| Molloy College | Rockville Center | 1.2 |
| Mount Saint Mary College | Newburgh | 1.1 |
| Nazareth College | Rochester | 1 |
| New York Institute of Technology | Old Westbury | 3 |
| Niagara University | Lewiston | 2.1 |
| St. Bonaventure University | Allegany | 2.1 |
| St. John Fisher | Pittsford | 1.8 |
| SUNY Delhi | Delhi | 1.1 |
| SUNY Farmingdale | Farmingdale | 2 |
| SUNY Old Westbury | Old Westbury | 4.7 |
| SUNY Oneonta | Oneonta | 1.5 |
| SUNY Polytechnic | Utica, Marcy | 1.7 |
| SUNY Potsdam | Potsdam | 1 |
| U.S. Military Academy | West Point | 1.6 |
| Utica College | Utica | 1.1 |
Pointing out that state law mandates such polling places, the coalition wants the BOE to fix the problem or at least justify why they'll be missing for the general election. "We would like to understand how the law requiring a polling place on or contiguous to college campuses with 300 or more registered voters is being applied in these cases," the letter reads.
But, "many students do not register at their dorm or other college campus address, and instead opt to remain registered at home," a spokesperson from the BOE explained. "This results in fewer students registered to vote at college addresses, meaning many campuses don’t meet the 300-voter threshold."
BOE also said that County Boards of Elections have to designate polling places by March 15, based on February's voter rolls. These figures reveal where voters live, which determines election districts and where to put poll sites.
Even so, poll sites far from campus represent a barrier to voting for students who can't travel far from the dorm and follow tight schedules. Many in this cohort—about 1.1 million college-age voters in New York—represent first-time voters. A survey of 199 colleges from the New York Public Interest Group (NYPIRG) found that over half of colleges with dorms lack polling sites. They counted:
- 217 total campuses
- 147 of those had dorms
- 50 had a polling site
- 40 had polling sites within a half-mile
- 57 had polling sites over half a mile away
- 26 had polling sites over a mile away, despite over 1,000 full-time students
“I was proud to co-sponsor the bill behind the 2022 law to mandate polling sites on or near college campuses with 300 or more registered students," Assemblywoman Latrice Walker said on Monday. A Democrat from Assembly District 55 in Brooklyn, she chairs the Assembly’s Election Law Subcommittee. "I am very concerned about NYPIRG’s findings and I will be making my own inquiry to the [BOE]. We all have a responsibility to remove barriers to voting, the very cornerstone of our democracy.”
What's more, the Youth Vote coalition already alerted BOE to the issue ahead of the primary when they wrote a similar letter back in May. Since then, polling places got set up at Buffalo State and SUNY Geneseo.
Technically, the letterwriters have no way of knowing how many students are registered at each of these schools, they said that it's a reasonable assumption given the size of their resident student bodies. They'd already asked for an investigation into protecting the voting rights of students at these schools. Now, the Youth Vote Coalition is "requesting under the Freedom of Information Law any communications and documents related to the decisions to not include polling places."
Assemblymember Jonathan Jacobson—a Democrat whose Hudson Valley District 104 includes Newburgh and Poughkeepsie—chairs the Assembly Subcommittee on Election Day Operations and Voter Disenfranchisement. He agreed that counting registered voters on campus represents a challenge because they're registered off-campus.
"The key here is to get more people registered, and then if the need arises, we can get another polling site," Jacobson said. "You can register to vote within 10 days of the election on October 26. The first day of early voting is the last day to register."
Republican State Sen. George Borello, ranking member of the Senate Elections Subcommittee, agreed that New Yorkers of all ages have ways to vote easily, like early in-person voting, absentee ballots, Election Day voting, and a new early vote by mail option. "College students who are registered to vote can and should take advantage of whatever option works best for them,” he said.
Representatives from NYPIRG, New York's League of Women Voters, Common Cause New York, the Bard Center for Civic Engagement, Reinvent Albany, Citizens Union, and the Andrew Goodman Foundation make up the Youth Vote Coalition. "By ensuring that these sites are conveniently located," said League of Women Voters Executive Director Erica Smitka, "we can empower students to actively engage in the democratic process and make their voices heard on the issues that matter most to them."
Check out the letter below: