Duke Senior Recognized as a Champion of Voting Rights

The honor roll, “recognizes college students at participating campuses who have gone above and beyond to advance nonpartisan student voter registration, education and turnout efforts in their communities,” according to the organization.

Kelly arrived at Duke in the fall of 2020, months after federal officials declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, in what became a three-year fight to knock down the coronavirus.

Duke Votes caught her eye and held her attention.

“When you’re a freshman, you get to look at what’s happening on your campus and decide what you want to get involved in and Duke Votes ... was a very strong presence on campus,” she says. 

Duke Votes was a natural fit for Kelly. She had become passionate about politics and voting while in high school.

“I had voted in my first primary months earlier,” she says. “I was excited to go to my first presidential election. I mean, living under Trump’s presidency … I saw it as an opportunity to get involved in something that I cared about, and that seemed like a great community on campus.”

Jump starting voter mobilization for students is part of Kelly’s work with Duke Votes. She helps set up voter registration tables in areas on campus that have heavy student foot traffic: campus bus stops, the commons area near the school bookstore, and the Marketplace on East Campus Union.

Kelly says a big challenge for college student voters is “adapting to an ever-changing voter landscape and access for students.”

She points to North Carolina’s controversial “Voter ID Law” that went into effect last year.

Prior to Voter ID, college students in North Carolina did not need an identification card to vote. They didn’t even have to show their student IDs at voter sites.

“Duke students were very definitely affected by the voter ID law that was passed last year,” Kelly says.

“Duke students had to have specifically a separate ID, separate from their student ID, and separate from the state ID,” Kelly says. “We are in the process of trying to change the process for next year. The reason the Duke student ID doesn’t work is because it doesn’t have an expiration date. The [North Carolina State] Board of Elections came out with a regulation that IDs must have an expiration date and Duke student IDs just don’t have those.”

(In consultation with student groups, Duke University officials worked to get a Duke Student Voter ID approved by the state for use in 2024 elections.)

This week, the law is being challenged in a federal court, and there are questions as to whether college students’ provisional ballots have been counted in previous elections.

The glistening plum atop of Duke Votes’ effort this year was “Democracy Day, in early March. 

The campus celebration happened on one of the last days of the early voting period. Kelly described a festive event with “a lot of food activities, performances and free stuff, like free tote bags…and information packets about what was on the ballot.”

Kelly said the number of student voters who cast their ballots at the Karsh Alumni Center doubled from the day before. She believes her generation is passionate about voting rights and democracy.

“We were six at Occupy Wall Street, and we grew up preparing for school shootings, and we learned that the teachers would barricade the door, and the teachers would be the ones that saved us,” Kelly said.

“We all walked out for gun violence in high school, like we were part of an intense political movement throughout high school. We came to college after the summer of Black Lives Matter and coronavirus,” she added.

“We’ve seen January 6, and we’ve seen countless shootings and brutality, school shootings and shootings. And it’s…really difficult. There’s so much anguish we’ve seen, and especially through social media. Like we’ve seen it, with our eyes, we’ve seen it all.”