New voting laws and state discrepancies leave young voters anxious about their absentee ballots

Howard University senior Maysen Odom has never missed an election since she turned 18.

“My mom always stressed the importance of voting,” Odom, now 21, said. “Her mother's 96, so they had to go through a whole other ordeal with just getting the right to vote and then actually using the right to vote once she got it.”

Originally from Houston, Odom always casts her vote in Texas through an absentee ballot in the mail. She is one of many students across university campuses who are going to school out of state and opting to vote by mail in their home county.

But with new voting laws across the country, including in Texas, some students are taking new steps to make sure their vote is counted, going as far as a flight back home or having their parents bring their ballots to campus.

Will Brummett, program manager for co-curricular service at George Washington University, called the situation very confusing for students.

Paired with a rise in election disinformation, Brummett said: “We've never had this type of perfect storm of so much legislation, so much change, so much collective anxiety … And then on top of that, you actually have the changes themselves.”

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A report by the Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan group of experts, last month found more states had changed mail voting laws than had not since the pandemic and election of 2020. The organization tallied 20 states that had passed legislation expanding voting access and 11 whose new laws restricted it.

Odom’s home state of Texas made the restrictive list, after the Lone Star state legislature passed Senate Bill 1 in 2021. The new law requires voters to provide additional identification, like their social security or driver's license number, on their mail ballot.

According to the Voting Rights Lab report, around 24,000 ballots were not counted in the state’s primary election earlier this year. Researchers said many of these were due to voters forgetting to provide the identification or because what they provided did not match county records.

A New York Times analysis in March found that of those rejected mail-in ballots, about 12% of all ballots submitted in the primary, a disproportionate amount came from Black residents in Harris County, which includes Houston and Odom’s own Third Ward neighborhood.

In Texas, absentee voters can only submit their application for a ballot by mail to their county's early voting clerk. New York, one of the 20 states with access-expanding laws, amended their state regulations during the pandemic to allow online applications. The change helped make the process of voting absentee even easier, according to Nick Marino, a 22-year-old graduate student at State University of New York at Albany.

"It also saved on postage because they forced you to pay for a stamp to actually request your absentee which kind of sucks," Marino said. "I mean, it's not a lot of money but it's still kind of stupid."

Originally from Niagra Falls, a four-hour drive from his school, Marino voted by absentee this election and said it was an overall smooth experience for him.

Georgia meanwhile is another state on the list for passing voting restrictions. In March 2021, the state passed the Election Integrity Act, which shortens the time to request an absentee ballot and the deadline to return it.

Akash Rudra, a senior at Boston University who grew up in Georgia, said he found the process in his home state more straightforward this year, especially since this was not his first time voting absentee.

"But I totally believe that Georgia is making voting harder, I have no doubt," Rudra, 21, said. "I feel like they tend to have  (legislation) that harm marginalized communities. And I don't think I'm a part of those, so they usually don't affect me as a citizen and as someone who is moderately well involved in politics."

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Students are making sure their votes get counted

Odom said she also had a smooth process with voting this year, but that she knows of classmates at Howard flying back to Texas to vote in person, including three of her friends.

“They don't trust the absentee ballot to be counted or received in time because of the loopholes that Texas tries to put people through,” Odom said. “There's a lot on the line, and they're not trusting Texas to count their votes properly.”

Some Texan students at American University have made that same decision, said Jacob Wilson, who advises first year students at the university and helps lead the AU Votes organization, which helps educate students on voting rights and requirements.

“I wish that students didn't have to be scared about whether or not their vote’s going to count,” Wilson said. “But the reality of our current state of affairs in the United States as it relates to elections, and the right to vote, (is) that fear for many students is fair and warranted.”

An “understandable anxiety” about mail-in voting is widespread, said Gwendolyn Reece, an associate librarian at American University, who added that the process can vary “tremendously from state to state.” She said interactions on campus with students from across the country highlight the discrepancies.

“When you have somebody who is from Massachusetts standing next to somebody who is from Texas, there is no comparison in their experience, and suddenly they're like, ‘Hey, wait a second. Why is this so much harder for me?’” Reece, another AU Votes leader, said. “That is usually pretty outrage-fueling.”

Brummett said he has observed students who don't trust their local election officials and are choosing to have their ballot mailed to their parent or guardian’s residence, rather than their D.C. address.

Montana Manelski, 21 and a senior at Georgetown University, said she took that route after running into an issue applying for an absentee ballot in her home state of Florida, since her D.C. address did not match her permanent residence.

“That was kind of a pain. I had to have my mom bring my ballot here over Parents Weekend to vote,” Manelski said.

For those who could not get their ballot delivered in person like Manelski, some students are having their parents or guardians mail it to them in D.C., an extra step that George Washington sophomore Vidya Muthupillai said makes her nervous.

“That's just an added layer,” Muthupillai, 20 and GW Votes chief voting ambassador, said. “It takes more time for them (parents) to get it and then they have to mail it to you. And it still has to go through our mail and package services.”

Alex Grass, a junior at Georgetown and co-director of operations for GU Votes, said he faced an issue with the mail service for the first time in all his years voting absentee in Ohio, when his initial request for a ballot was never received. However, he said as best he could tell his experience was not part of a trend, but rather a random error that could happen to any voter.

“Voting has never been a cakewalk in the park in America or in any country,” Grass, 21, said. “Like any piece of mail, there is always that small, small risk that it's never received or somehow gets lost.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: College students face confusion voting absentee this midterm election