Students at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro began a 40-minute walk to the nearest off-campus early polling site on Oct. 22, 2026. Election officials declined to place an early campus voting location at the school despite protests. A documentary titled “Where Do I Vote Again?” premiered Thursday night at The Rialto in Raleigh, showcasing the efforts of students who sought to secure early voting sites on their campuses. The film also features the work of Influence NC, a nonprofit that held voter information parties at a dozen campuses and provided students with rides to the polls at three locations.
The Guilford County Board of Elections and the state Board of Elections did not grant N.C. A&T State University students the campus early voting site they requested. The N.C. State University site was relocated from the centrally-located student center to a building at the edge of campus, which students argued was inconvenient. A push from the state auditor’s office to prevent an early voting site at Western Carolina University failed. The documentary did not cover all the outcomes, but it included footage of an A&T student marching to an early voting site that made national news. The WCU early voting site, which Republicans opposed, was the second-most used in Jackson County.
According to data from NC Election Live, voters aged 18-29 cast 11% of early ballots this year, compared to 5.4% in 2022. The film featured interviews with students, Jeff Carmon, a Democratic state elections board member, Dallas Woodhouse, a Republican political operative who worked at state Auditor Dave Boliek’s office advising counties on their early voting plans, voting rights advocate Bob Hall, and Gerry Cohen, a Democrat on the Wake County Board of Elections. Boliek was recorded at an event sponsored by The Assembly, where he discussed locating an early voting site at Union Square Campus, a building used by A&T, UNC-Greensboro, and Guilford Technical Community College.
Ahead Media produced the documentary in collaboration with Influence NC. During a question-and-answer session following the screening, Hannah Preston, director of Influence NC, stated that organizing young people is easy. “We had doughnuts, we had coffee, we had t-shirts,” she said. “You have to have something fun to motivate folks, and not just younger people.” About 3,000 students attended its campus events, she said. Influence NC is a nonprofit originally sponsored by the progressive group Carolina Forward.
During the Q&A, Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper compared Democrats’ sweeping victories to a 100-year flood, one that breached the walls meant to protect Republicans in gerrymandered districts. He noted that it would be a mistake to argue that gerrymandering doesn’t matter. “It absolutely does,” he said. Democrat Roy Cooper won the U.S. Senate race by nearly 20 percentage points, the largest US Senate win since 1974, he said. Yet, the state Senate still did not flip. “So why is that? The way the lines are drawn,” the WCU professor said.
The documentary may have helped solve a mystery. One of the election rules the state Board of Elections approved along party lines this year bans amplified sound at polling sites. Students and voting rights advocates argued that the rule was aimed
