Morehouse College student Marchellos Scott performed some political calculus this summer when he registered to vote in Georgia’s Fulton County for this year’s presidential election instead of casting a ballot in his native state.
“I understand that Georgia is a swing state and I want to ensure that I’m giving a lot to keep Georgia blue,” Scott told Capital B Atlanta in July.
The 21-year-old senior from Clarksdale, Mississippi, said he and other members of the Morehouse College Democrats registered more than 100 students to vote during their National Voter Registration Day drive on campus Tuesday.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz visited Morehouse the same day to help Scott and his peers encourage their classmates to exercise their voting rights ahead of the Nov. 5 election between current Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Scott said convincing students from other states who both live and attend college in Georgia to vote here instead of their hometown has been a key voter engagement strategy this election cycle.
Some of the roughly 41 million young people across the nation who became eligible to vote this year live in Georgia, where the last presidential election was decided by less than 12,000 votes. Many college students like Scott come from partisan red or blue states where their votes won’t have as much influence in the presidential election as they likely will here in Georgia.
“States like Mississippi — it’s not changing anytime soon,” Scott said on Wednesday. “If we have other avenues to vote so that it’s really making an impact, that’s what we told students to do. I think that’s all a part of voter education and voter awareness.”
The office of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger says it’s perfectly legal for college students to register and vote here in Georgia as long as they can prove they live here and meet the legal voting requirements. (Must be at least 17.5 years of age, must be U.S. citizens, can’t be actively serving a felony conviction sentence, and can’t have been declared mentally incompetent by a judge.)
The avoidable risk of mail-in voting
Voter engagement groups like New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter, and the Georgia NAACP say they have discouraged college students from using absentee ballots to help them avoid being disenfranchised on Election Day.
The nation’s current U.S. Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, has faced criticism previously for administrative actions resulting in mail processing delays, which may have prevented some Americans from getting their mail-in ballots on time during previous election cycles.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, has been one of the federal lawmakers pressuring DeJoy to improve mail delivery services ahead of the November election. DeJoy has said the postal service is ready to deliver the mail on time this election cycle.
The National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors sent a letter to DeJoy on Wednesday that urged him to enact proposed new procedures designed to eliminate delays at least a month before the election.
‘Looking a little crucial’
Fulton County Voter Education and Outreach Manager Lashandra Little said she often asks students whether they’d prefer to send a riskier mail-in ballot back home or vote early in-person in Georgia, the state where they’ll be living while they’re in school and can have a greater electoral impact.
“Once I phrase it to them that way, most of them say they want to vote here,” Little said.
The argument has been persuasive for people like Clark Atlanta University student Arianna Anderson. The 20-year-old Chicago native said she has lived in Atlanta for three years. On Tuesday, she registered to vote here for the first time.
“I’m almost done with my schooling here, and I think this is where I’m gonna be [living], so I just decided to register here,” Anderson said. “This time around, it’s looking a little crucial.”
Anderson is an elementary education major and aspiring teacher who said she’s concerned about Trump eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, a policy proposal included in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s now-notorious, conservative political playbook for a second Trump presidency.
Trump has repeatedly disavowed Project 2025 despite it being co-authored by members of his first administration.
“The Department of Education is on the verge of being crucified, so I think it’s important to vote,” Anderson said.
Fellow Clark Atlanta student Queenshe’ba O’Conner, 22, a New Orleans native, also changed her voter registration to Georgia on Tuesday.
“I’m based in Georgia, and I only go home to visit,” she said. “I need to make sure my vote counts.”
