Judge denies North Carolina students' plea for early voting site at nation's largest Black college

[MichMan]

1. Timing seems to be the factor behind the decision

During the preliminary hearing in Greensboro, Osteen was skeptical of the students’ arguments, at best. Even if he had agreed that students’ voting rights were unfairly burdened by the decision to exclude early voting sites from their campuses, there were technical issues with the case.

For one, to solve the students’ problem, Osteen would have to order the college campuses to host early voting sites for 17 days. He couldn’t do that, since the colleges themselves were not part of the lawsuit. So instead, he had to rely on the likelihood that they would be willing and able to set up early voting sites with less than a week’s notice.

“That the universities hosted early voting sites in prior elections, or that one of them indicated over a month ago that it could do so in this election, is one thing; whether they are able or willing to do so now, only days away from the start of the early voting period, is another,” Osteen wrote.

The timing was just too tight, he ruled. According to a federal rule called the Purcell principle, judges should generally avoid changing rules close to the start of an election to avoid voter confusion and ensure that election administration runs smoothly.

https://carolinapublicpress.org/74415/judge-denies-demands-for-early-voting-sites-on-three-nc-university-campuses/