Students at Brown navigate changing voting legislation across the country

When Lily Yanagimoto ’27 decided to request an absentee ballot from her home state of Missouri, she was confronted with a five-step process: filling out an online request, emailing it to the county election office, receiving a ballot by mail, getting the ballot notarized and mailing it back.

The process, from requesting the ballot to receiving it in the mail, took her two weeks. Mailing the ballot back also took time. “I didn’t know that I needed to get it notarized until I finished everything, put it in the envelope and saw it needed a seal,” Yanagimoto said.

Yanagimoto’s peers were surprised to learn that her voting process was so complex. But her experience is by no means unique among young Americans on college campuses, most of whom are casting their first vote in a presidential election.

Since the pandemic, numerous states have altered their voting procedures as more Americans prefer early and absentee voting. In some states, such as Rhode Island, new laws made pandemic-era absentee voting options permanent.

But not every state responded this way.

In Florida, laws make it harder for campus groups to run registration events for fear of legal action, said Logan Tullai ’25, the national president of the nonpartisan student-led group Every Vote Counts. Similarly, in North Carolina and Missouri, voting policies requiring notarization often create barriers for college students.

In Texas, new legislation caused an increase in the number of mail ballot applications rejected. But another law makes it easier for people to request mail-in ballots by permitting counties to accept online absentee voting applications.

For students in these states, the shifting laws have at times made voting more challenging.

Lauren Richards ’26, a Texan student currently abroad in France, faced numerous hurdles in her process to vote by mail during this year’s elections. Although she had already registered to vote in previous elections, this is the first time Richards has ever casted a ballot. In previous years, issues with absentee voting led to her never receiving a ballot.

Richards explained that, while registering to vote was easy, requesting a mail-in ballot was frustrating. Richards’ county in Texas has not yet created an online application.

“I had to physically print out the application and then mail it off to Texas, to my county, wait for them to process and receive it, and then they would mail me my ballot back,” Richards said.

Richards also faced challenges mailing her ballot back to Texas. Unlike some other states, Texas does not have prepaid postage for all election mail, meaning that Richards had to find a way to cover these fees herself. While the U.S. embassy could have covered the mailing fees for her ballot, the deadline for this funding had passed by the time Richards received her ballot, meaning that she had to pay for both her initial absentee application and her ballot to be sent to her county.

When voting in a 2021 state recall election, then-California resident Leah Carey ’25 easily obtained an absentee ballot for her state to vote. But since moving to Texas, the process has been more complicated, she said.

For Taka Montez de Oca ’27, a resident of Colorado, the voting process was much easier. The process required changing his ballot address online and receiving a physical ballot in the mail, filling it out and sending it back.

While the process was straightforward, his ballot arrived later than he expected. This was his first time voting by absentee ballot.

In Colorado, the state mails ballots to every voter who registered at least eight days before Election Day. Their voting process also allows for online registration.

In crucial swing states, barriers to voting might stop students from casting their ballots for the presidential election and hotly-contested Senate and House races.

For Isa Marquez ’26, confusion surrounding the absentee ballot request process in Pennsylvania caused her to miss the deadline for the primary elections earlier this year, while her older sister’s absentee ballot application was rejected thrice by the state.

Iowa Vance ’27 also faced challenges when voting in her home state of Georgia. A resident of DeKalb county, Vance had to mail her absentee ballot application to receive her ballot. “It takes a long time and you have to stay on top of things if you want to make sure your vote gets in on time,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.

Vance also said some of her hometown friends who study out of state are flying back to Georgia to vote or abstaining from voting altogether.

Avery Redlich ’28, a Florida voter, noted that registering and first-time voting should be made more accessible.

“In a state like Florida, each vote has weight and significance whether that voter is living in the state or not,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.

“But that makes every absentee vote that much more important,” Redlich wrote. “Our voices are not cancellable, and our decisions have impact and influence.”