Photo by Michael. A Schwarz for USA TODAY

When voting sites open across the country Tuesday, students at George Mason University in Northern Virginia will have a more accessible option for casting their ballot.

No longer will students need to travel to local poll sites at off-campus locations if they want to vote, because Tuesday’s election will be the first to feature an on-campus voting location.

That accessibility is the result of patience and years of work that was finally realized after the 2010 Census redistricting process when Mason was made its own voting precinct, according to Student Government President Allyson Bowers.

Efforts to make voting more accessible for students are cropping up around the country. The process is not easy for students, especially in states where new voter identification laws are changing the voting process – and by many accounts making it more difficult for students to participate.

With more than 5,000 students living on campus at Mason, Bowers said student government leaders were focused on accessibility. Previously the student government had sponsored Vote-Vans to transport students to poll sites, but students found the process too time consuming.

“Bringing a polling place to campus makes a more feasible option,” Bowers said.

Advocating for on-campus voting isn’t unique to Mason, according to Heather Smith president of Rock the Vote, who said there has been a push by students to petition county registrars for on-campus voting sites.

Beyond the accessibility of on-campus voting locations, Smith said the locations also create a culture of participation, especially for students voting for the first time.

Smith said there is a lack of civic education so that many students have trouble navigating the voting process. Often it takes months of forethought for students to be eligible to vote on Election Day, including deadlines to re-register at a new address, requesting an absentee ballot or other logistics.

“It’s not on the top of mind two or three months from election day,” Smith said.

Making that more difficult is new voter identification laws in some states that changes the acceptable photo identification needed to vote.

One of those laws in Wisconsin limits the type of identification permitted for voting. Often this means a student ID card can’t be used because of requirements that approved voter identification include an expiration date and signature, according to Matt Kozlowski with the Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group (WISPRIG).

These laws mostly impact out-of-state students who decide to vote in their university community instead of in their home community. In order to prove voter eligibility, these students can’t use a driver’s license from their home state and can only use their university ID if it meets certain standards.

“It’s going to be a lot more complicated and a lot more difficult and that’s unfortunate,” said Bruce Speight who is the director of WISPRIG.

Speight said the voter identification laws are meant to prevent fraud, but he said the laws actually create additional problems.

WISPRIG is working to educate students on the type of identification they need to vote while universities also work to redesign ID cards to meet the new standards, Speight said.

“Our goal is to make sure everyone who wants to participate can,” Speight said.

Even for students who choose not to vote in their university community, the nature of being away from home on Election Day poses another challenge to participation.

Rob Richie is the executive director of Fair Vote and said students who choose to vote in their home community by absentee ballot also face problems. He said absentee programs are often poorly organized and students often have difficulty requesting a ballot because of deadlines and having to request a ballot multiple times.

“Anyone who isn’t living where they usually live is more disadvantaged,” Richie said of the voting process.

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