Some Emory University students who registered to vote in the upcoming election may need to re-register due to an address discrepancy, according to the Young Democrats of Emory. The online registration deadline is today at 11:59 p.m.
The Young Democrats of Emory said in an Instagram post that “another organization on campus” misregistered students to vote by instructing them to list their mailing address as their residential address. They did not name the group. However, the Emory Votes Initiative — an administration-run program that has registered hundreds of students — previously told students to register using their mailing address.
EVI contested the claim that students who have already registered with their mailing address need to re-register, saying that the organization has “continuously followed counties’ instructions.”
“Nobody’s registration will be ‘thrown out’ because they had previously only provided their campus address,” Associate Director of Civic Engagement and EVI Tereza Lewis wrote in an email to The Emory Wheel.
Until Sept. 23, EVI told students to write their campus mailing address — 1762 Clifton Road for students who live on Emory’s main campus and 1946 Starvine Way for Clairmont Campus residents — as their residential address. However, under state law, students must register to vote using their specific residential address, according to an email from Robert Sinners, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s communications director.
Georgia’s voter registration application has separate sections for residential and mailing addresses. If a citizen’s mailing address is different from their residential address, they must complete both sections.
According to Lewis, a “county representative” asked EVI on the week of Sept. 23 to tell students to provide their dorm addresses — not their campus mailing address — as their residential address, which she said EVI has done ever since.
Lewis added that this did not implicate the registration status of those who had already registered with EVI.
However, other groups on campus, including Young Democrats of Emory and Fair Fight U Emory, are encouraging students to check their registration and re-register if they followed EVI’s previous voting advice.
Thessalia Merivaki, a voter registration researcher and associate teaching professor at Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy (D.C.), said that generally, voters should register with an address corresponding to their unique residency. However, she said that situations like these — in which students register using a mailing room address at a college campus — represent a “gray area.”
“It’s actually a very common issue across many campuses, and therefore, there’s always an effort to communicate with the election officials to alert them that this is something that we are experiencing on our campus,” Merivaki said.
Merivaki said that at Mississippi State University, where she previously worked, students used the common mailroom as their registration address until there were concerns about overusing the mailroom.
In DeKalb County, where the vast majority of Emory students reside, the DeKalb County Voter Registration and Elections Office (VRE) manages voter registrations, according to Robert Sinners, communications director for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
However, Erik Burton, a public relations official working with the DeKalb County VRE, did not answer the Wheel’s question about whether students should re-register. In an email to the Wheel, Burton recommended that students should direct their questions to the VRE office itself.
Students who previously registered to vote using their mailing address, but have since moved off-campus or to the Clairmont Campus, may have had their registration listed as “inactive,” according to an email to Emory students from Marjorie Pak, associate teaching professor of linguistics and a member of EVI’s steering committee.
“With the deadline for this election quickly approaching, students and anyone who has questions should reach out to the office immediately,” Burton wrote.
Pak told students registered with on-campus addresses in an email not to panic if they were listed as “inactive."
Georgia has passed several laws related to voter challenges in recent years. In May 2023, the legislature passed Senate Bill 129, allowing individuals to challenge a voter’s eligibility on the basis that they do not live at the address provided on the voter’s registration. Though largely unsuccessful, “fraud hunters” have challenged some college students’ registration on the basis that students do not intend to live indefinitely at the address they provided such as a general college address.
Merivaki said students should not worry about their votes being challenged since there is a process in place to protect them from disenfranchisement.
“I don’t anticipate this happening, but if there’s an effort to challenge students, as long as you have either documentation that you are a citizen and that you [live where you say you live], those challenges will be unfounded,” Merivaki said.
Students who would like to re-register to vote can update their address by sending in a new registration form.
Correction (10/8/2024 at 8:29 p.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly said that students should update/re-register to vote with updated addresses. This was incorrect, student do not have to re-register.
