Lawsuit seeks to ensure Virginia students have their votes counted in upcoming election

Young people on college campuses are having their voter applications denied, and the Virginia Department of Elections must now defend the action in court.

Advancement Project and the NAACP Virginia State Conference filed a lawsuit on Friday alleging that local jurisdictions are disenfranchising college and university students, including those attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs.

“Young people, including young voters of color, have a huge stake in the future of this country. Thousands of young voters on Virginia college campuses want to make their voices heard in this year’s elections, but too many are at risk of being disenfranchised by the Virginia policies that are restricting students’ access to the ballot,” said John Powers, legal director at Advancement Project. “We must remove the barriers that infringe on their right to vote. Ensuring equal access to the ballot box for Virginia’s students is not only a matter of fairness, it is required by federal law and the U.S. Constitution.”

The applications were rejected, according to the suit, because the students did not include dormitory names or room numbers despite providing valid campus addresses. Under Virginia law, to be eligible to vote, a person must be a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years old by Election Day and a resident of the precinct in which they vote. Nothing in Virginia statute requires a dormitory name or room number to establish residency.

In 2019, a federal court addressed the issue when George Mason University students were wrongly denied voter registration for omitting dormitory information. In that case, New Virginia Majority Education Fund v. Fairfax County Board of Elections, U.S. District Court Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. approved a consent order ensuring that affected students’ ballots would be counted, and they would be placed on the permanent voter rolls once residency was verified.

The impact reaches across colleges and universities across Virginia including:

• George Mason University
• James Madison University
• Old Dominion University
• University of Richmond
• Virginia Commonwealth University
• Norfolk State University
• Virginia State University

The NAACP Virginia State Conference has college chapters on all of the impacted campuses.

Advocates warn that the failure to provide timely and accurate guidance ahead of the November 2025 election could likely result in widespread disenfranchisement, rejected provisional ballots and long lines at polling places as officials attempt to resolve discrepancies at check-in.

College students who aren’t registered yet can still vote on Election Day using same-day registration. When college students go to vote, they should provide all of the information requested by election officials, including, where necessary, their dorm name and dorm room number to ensure their registrations aren’t rejected before the court rules on our case.