Alexa Hill already has plans for election night Tuesday. The N.C. State University senior will be gathered with friends at the student union, eating pizza and watching the results. For her, the day means more than just seeing which candidates win. Hill is part of the university’s nonpartisan “Pack the Polls” initiative and has been working to get more students to vote in the midterm election.
“It’s been my whole life for the past month, so I’m very excited,” said Hill, 20, who has hosted election talks across campus and encouraged students to take a free shuttle to vote. “If people voted when they were 18 to 20, they’d be more likely to do that as they got older. So, that’s why we think it’s so important for college students to start now.”
College students across the state have been mobilizing and urging other young voters to cast ballots in this year’s election.
At North Carolina A&T State University, hundreds of students marched more than 30 minutes to a polling location to protest the loss of their on-campus voting site. Students from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Bennett College also joined the march.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has its own nonpartisan voting initiative, Tar Heels Vote, which focuses on voter education, empowerment and outreach. U.N.C. was recognized for having the highest voter turnout among A.C.C. schools, with 82% of eligible students voting in the 2020 election, The Daily Tar Heel reported.
Natasha Young
Natasha Young is assistant director of leadership development in U.N.C.’s Office of Student Life and Leadership. She works with students in Tar Heels Vote and credits the work they do throughout the year to encourage their peers to participate.
“We’re really big on trying to emphasize that civic engagement and democratic engagement is something that doesn’t stop after Election Day. This is work that takes place year-round,” Young said. “We’re really big on how we train and give folks access to nonpartisan, fact-based information that then empowers them to make decisions for themselves.”
Young voters a ‘large and powerful’ segment
People under age 30 make up more than 1 in 5 residents in North Carolina and have had above-average turnout in recent elections, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, also known as CIRCLE.
Nationwide, 50 million young people, ages 18-29, are eligible to cast ballots in the 2026 midterms, including more than 8 million newly eligible voters since the 2024 election. Young voters are “a large and powerful segment of the electorate that can have a major impact on the 2026 midterms,” according to CIRCLE.
Data from the North Carolina State Board of Elections shows that more than 187,000 North Carolinians ages 18-29 had voted early in this year’s midterm election as of Oct. 28. That represents 9% of the total voters who cast an early ballot by that date. In 2022, youth voters made up 7% of all early voters.
At U.N.C., Young’s goal is to get 100% of students to vote in an election. To get there, she and her students plan to continue providing training on how to register voters, helping students mail their absentee ballots and walking to polling places with students. Once students have voted, she wants to show them how to communicate with their elected representatives.
“A majority of our work on campus is truly driven by students, and I know that I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t be doing the work that I do without them,” Young said. “I just want students to know that their voice does matter a lot and their ideas matter.”
Q&A with Alexa Hill, a ‘Pack the Polls’ student leader
NC Local spoke in depth with Alexa Hill, a civic engagement intern and student co-lead for N.C. State’s “Pack the Polls” initiative. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
NC Local: What topics are young voters interested in right now?
Hill: The number one thing I definitely hear is affordability, not only now but after college. Buying a first home, that’s definitely a concern for students. How much you’re paying at the pump, going to the grocery store — all of that is really important. I know a lot of students are looking at graduate school, so those graduate school loans are always a big deal.
NC Local: What questions do students have about voting?
Hill: Our number one question is: I’m registered back home. Can I still vote [in North Carolina]? So we’re extremely fortunate in North Carolina to have the ability to register to vote with your temporary address. While you’re in college, if you have an on-campus address or even an off-campus address, and you want to register to vote, you’re more than welcome to.
NC Local: What prevents more students from voting?
Hill: The number one barrier for students voting, in my experience so far talking to students, is they feel like they don’t have enough information. A lot of students, when I am telling them, “Hey, you should vote,” they say to me, “Well, I really just don’t know what’s going on. I don’t feel like I have enough information.” So that’s been a big thing that we’ve been pushing students to look at nonpartisan voting material.
NC Local: How did you get interested in voting?
Hill: My parents always brought me to the polls with them when they voted, and I’ve always known that it was really important. My first time voting in high school was the most exciting thing ever! I was super excited to get the sticker, and I’ve always been encouraging my friends around me to do that. I’m always encouraging parents, please take your kids with you.
NC Local: Have you been following what’s happening at A&T in Greensboro with students marching to the polls off campus?
Hill: Yes, I have a lot of friends at A&T, so I’ve been seeing it on Instagram. We are very fortunate that we got to keep our voting location [at N.C. State]. I’m encouraging students to vote on campus so that the board of elections sees that students are inclined to vote. But we also always encourage community members to come out and vote at our on-campus voting location as well.
We’ve had a lot of questions [from students] about losing our on-campus voting location because a lot of students read the big headlines and assumed that [N.C. State] lost it. We did not lose it. We still have an on-campus voting location, so it’s been a lot of trying to get that messaging out there. [Editor’s note: N.C. State’s on-campus early voting is located at 1220 Varsity Dr. in Raleigh.]
NC Local: Is there anything else that you want people to know about Pack the Polls?
Hill: I think that our biggest push is not only, “Hey, there’s voting, just go and vote.” It’s that voting is a commitment to a process of getting to know the people that you’re voting for. So while it does not have to be your full-time job by any means, it does take a level of commitment to your community and eventually your country that you are taking the time to think about the choices that you’re making.
Go vote and be confident about the choices that you pick. Look at what those people are going to do, especially down ballot to the community level. We get to have a lot of interaction with those choices that the city council is making, the mayor is making, county commissioners are making. So we want to make sure that students know that the people that they’re voting for are going to represent them best.
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