The Wake County Board of Elections met Tuesday to discuss and vote on eight early-voting sites needed for the Midterm elections this fall, not including the law-bound ninth site, the Board of Elections office in downtown Raleigh.

Despite hearing from about 40 speakers, many who argued in favor of including N.C. State and Chavis Community Center as early-voting sites, the three-man board voted against endorsing N.C. State as one of the eight sites. It did, however, decide to name Chavis, a predominantly African-American community, as one of the sites.

This ruling will force students to travel off campus to vote, as opposed to making their way to the Talley Student Union, which served as an early-voting site in 2012.

The Wake County voting site closest to N.C. State’s campus is Chavis Community Center, located 3.6 miles away, making for a seven-minute drive.

It’s no surprise that the board, ruled by Republican majority, would omit N.C. State as an early-voting site, as many college students tend to vote Democrat.

The voting demographic for the University, however, was not provided as a factor in the board’s decision to exclude N.C. State from the early-voting sites. Instead, the board raised concerns about parking-space availability on campus and low voter-turnout.

Whether parking is a factor is almost irrelevant, as 35 percent of 24,536 undergraduate students live on campus and would be able to walk to the on-campus voting site.

In 2012, more than 13,000 people voted at N.C. State’s early-voting site, so it’s hard to take the board’s critique of low voter-turnout very seriously. Further, even if this number somehow seems low when compared to other sites, it makes little sense to deprive 13,000 people of a convenient voting location, which may encourage more students to vote.

Alone, the board’s ruling could be defendable. However, it comes almost a year after the North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 589, otherwise known as the Voter ID bill.

House Bill 589, effective Jan. 1, 2016, will render student IDs as invalid forms of identification.

Additionally, a group of legislators proposed as what is referred to as “The Dependency Clause,” which states that students may not vote in their universities’ counties unless they declare independence from their parents. The clause obstructs dependent, out-of-county students, a large demographic, from voting unless they can find it in their schedules to travel often long distances to their parents’ homes. Though this part of the bill was not passed, it serves as a reminder of yet another attempt to discourage select groups of citizens from voting. 

Though the General Assembly and the Board of Elections exist as separate entities, the board adheres to guidelines the General Assembly established. 

Further, the Board of Elections carried out the General Assembly’s decision to shorten early-voting time from 17 days to 10, meaning fewer hours of operation for each early-voting site. Considering college students’ often packed schedules, this decrease in hours proves problematic.

With so many of our supposed representatives making choices that disenfranchise students, it’s difficult not to wonder whether our representatives actually represent us.

Intention becomes more questionable considering the North Carolina State Board of Elections ruled the N.C. State campus a voting site before the presidential election in 2012.

The state board had made the ruling after a member of the Wake County Board of Elections challenged its decision not to include the University as a site.

Mark Ezzell, the sole Democrat on the board, said he would not challenge the decision to exclude N.C. State from the list of early-voting sites.

Voting should be accessible and convenient to all people. Continuously and covertly restricting that right to people, especially people who skew a political demographic opposite to that of those making these decisions, infringes on the ideals of democracy.

It seems our Republican representatives want to make it harder for college students to vote, and with this Board of Elections ruling, they have accomplished exactly that.

Editor’s Note: The Technician originally wrote that the “Dependency Clause” was passed as part of House Bill 589. A group of legislators proposed this clause as part of the bill, but it was never passed.