The Board of Elections met yesterday about the proposed elimination of the on-campus early voting site (because Morehead Planetarium is not available this fall). UNC Vice Provost Steve Allred was there to speak on this matter, as were the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, and representative of Vote Carolina and I. All of us uniformly agreed that the Franklin Street Post Office would be a reasonable compromise (given that the Planetarium was out of the picture).

In my comments to the BOE, I pointed out that during my Freshman year at Carolina, on my 18th birthday I registered to vote at the Chapel Hill Public Library (then located downtown). On election day I had to figure out where the Lincoln Center was (which I had never heard of) and where Merritt Mill Road was (which I also did not know). My Sophomore year I had moved three blocks away and was very surprised when I arrived at the Lincoln Center and was told that I had to go to Frank Porter Graham School (which I also did not how to find). That was because the campus and the immediately surrounding area are carved up across five different precincts with five different polling sites. The Board of Elections, the student body and our state legislative delegation have all worked hard to simplify the voting process over the course of the last 15 years. I thanked the BOE for its leadership creating a more participatory democracy and pleaded with them to maintain the excellent level of ballot access that the campus early voting site provides for students, faculty, staff and downtown workers and visitors.

The Board of Elections staff said that the Town of Chapel Hill has indicated that it will help provide parking in the Wallace parking deck and some parking along streets adjacent to the Post Office. The building is wheelchair accessible. The Post Office is a familiar landmark for most folks - whether students or not. It is also very accessible to a lot of people by foot, bike or public transportation.

The BOE was very interested in the concerns being rasied by the speakers. They ended up acquiescing to our requests, selecting the Post Office as one of the early voting sites.

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In response to student requests, I wrote the following letter to the Board of Elections in late July:

Dear Mr. Garner;

I understand that the Board of Elections is planning to move one of the early voting sites from UNC campus to the Senior Center. I must tell you that I consider this a totally unacceptable proposal.

If the issue with using a campus location is the parking access, then please consider directing voters with automobile needs to the Carrboro Town Hall early voting site.

Many of us have worked long and hard to make our local demcoracy truly inclusive by advocating for UNC student voters. In recent years, the Board of Elections has been a key partner in this effort. Please do not take a step backward by moving away from having an early voting site on campus.

The thousands of students who live on campus by and large do not have cars to drive to the Senior Center to participate in early voting. These same students are carved up across several different polling sites on election day, many of those sites being a remarkable distance from their ordinary travels. The campus early voting site has been a great solution to this problem. Please stick with it.

Sincerely;

Mark Chilton
Mayor of Carrboro

This entry was written by Mark on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 and is filed under Community, Issues, News. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.