The NAACP’s Virginia Chapter on Monday sued the Virginia Board of Elections for rejecting college students’ applications and same-day registration provisional ballots. The complaint stated that application and registration requirements are unduly cumbersome for college students, effectively hindering their right to vote:

On too many college and university campuses in Virginia, however, the right to vote requires that a student jump through hoops such as providing a college dormitory name, a dorm room, a campus mailing address, and/or mail box number, none of which has any relevance to the student’s eligibility to vote, none of which is asked for or even referenced on Virginia’s voter registration application, and none of which serves any material purpose in the voter registration process.

The NAACP chapter said the suit came after Virginia election officials rejected “innumerable” applications from college students, violating the First and Fourteenth amendments and the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids any person acting under the color of law from “deny[ing] the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application…if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election.”

Plaintiffs alleged that pursuant to Virginia’s voter registration application, a dorm name or room number is not “necessary to establish an applicant’s residency when the applicant already has provided a valid campus address.” Virginia’s administrative code states that “[r]esidency shall be broadly construed to provide the greatest opportunity to register and to vote” and that “no person shall be denied registration for failure to submit a mailing address.”

The complaint emphasized how defendants “lack any state interest in rejecting on-campus students’ voter registration applications for failure to provide this information that is sufficient to justify the burden these practices impose.”

Students from multiple campuses across the state have received rejection letters for neglecting to add a dorm name or number. Some who cast provisional ballots using same-day registration, but did not provide specific campus address information, will have their applications rejected for the November 2025 election.

In 2023, Trump attorney and 2020 election-denier Cleta Mitchell promoted policies that would limit voting access for college-aged individuals in “purple” states like Virginia: “They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed. And we need to build strong Election Integrity Task Forces in those counties.”

John Powers of Advancement Project warned of the implications of Virginia’s policies:

 [T]oo many [young voters] are at risk of being disenfranchised by Virginia policies that are restricting students’ access to the ballot… 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 US Constitution.