Focus on Democracy: Student Voting Rights Lab

Started by Professor Gunther Peck, the lab provides opportunities for students to participate in individual and group research projects investigating barriers to youth voting as well as solutions to those challenges. 

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Sofia was a freshman at the time of the 2024 election, and she remembers being “very excited” to be a first-time voter. She didn’t have a North Carolina license, so she used the last four digits of her social security number and then showed her passport at the polls. Still, her vote was challenged by the Jefferson Griffin campaign. Griffin was running for North Carolina Supreme Court, and he challenged over 60,000 voters’ ballots including Sofia’s, claiming her voter registration was incomplete. 

The Griffin challenge highlighted how critical the research of students in the lab was to understanding flaws in election administration that can cause students to have their voting rights challenged and potentially thrown out due to no fault of their own. As a part of the lab, Duke students partnered with peers at Noth Carolina Central University (NCCU) to uncover and document the targeting of youth voters in the Griffin challenge.

In an op-ed co-authored for WRAL Duke student Abdel Shehata and Professor Gunther Peck noted research from the lab showed Black voters in North Carolina are more than twice as likely as whites be challenged, and “youth voters are even more targeted, with 18 to 25 year olds 3.4 times more likely than voters over 65 to have their votes challenged,” adding that the issue is particularly key in urban counties. In “Durham County, youth voters are nearly seven times more likely than elderly voters to find their ballots challenged.” In the 2024 election, 792 Duke voters found their ballots challenged by the Jefferson Griffin campaign. That’s more than a fifth of the total undergraduate population that voted in North Carolina in 2024. 

Members of the lab also used their research and their own individual case studies to fight back against voter suppression efforts.  Sofia Dib-Gomez filed an affidavit with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice that became part of the successful legal challenge defending the ballots of more than 60,000+ citizens whom the Jefferson Griffin campaign had targeted. 

Members of the lab likewise used their research to both document problems that college students face with the new photo ID requirements for voting and to help pilot solutions to these same barriers.  In the fall of 2024, members of the lab wrote an amicus brief with Professor Peck for a legal case brought by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice and Common Cause defending college students’ right to use digital IDs as proof of their residence and identity. 

Although that legal effort lost in court, lab researcher Annika Aristimuno (public policy, international comparative studies and human rights) worked with Duke Votes and Duke University administrators to minimize the negative consequences of the dual ID requirement for voting by having the Duke Card office print physical IDs on demand next to the Karsh Alumni Center throughout early voting in the fall of 2024.  At NCCU, members of the lab similarly discovered that fading ink on NCCU student IDs were preventing students’ ballots from being counted, leading NCCU administrators to print new student IDs on demand for students throughout early voting. These collaborations between university administrators and student researchers meant many student voters in Durham County were able to vote without the extra step of casting provisional ballots during the fall 2024 election, including 427 voters at Duke.

Roots of the Student Voting Rights Lab

The Student Voting Rights Lab began as a Duke’s Bass Connections program, where undergraduate and graduate students collaborate with faculty on interdisciplinary projects focused on big societal challenges. Professor Peck now molds his annual undergraduate course PPS 307 Democracy: Crisis and Opportunity around lab activities. “The students are super energized,” about the research Peck says, adding that the new research seeks to diagnose a new set of democracy challenges as well as possible solutions to them. 

In fall 2025, students in the lab investigated the relationship between voter discouragement and polarization as well as how to build a voting rights movement among young conservatives across the state.  Sofia Dib-Gomez, along with Michael Hailu (public policy and international comparative studies), researched ways of increasing college students’ participation in local elections.   

Sofia says that the most meaningful part of her participation in the lab is “researching to inform advocacy and using advocacy to guide the way for our research.” For example, lab members created a mural on Duke’s Free Expression Bridge highlighting their findings about the number of Duke student votes that were challenged by Griffin.

“Finding ways to transform our data points into public-facing advocacy allows our work to actively challenge voter suppression and demand accountability in real time,” she says.

Future of the Lab

Professor Peck is continuing to work with Sofia Dib-Gomez and other students from the lab to find ways to broaden the impact of the lab’s student-led research. For example, the lab is in the early stages of designing a kit to train university faculty and students to understand NC election laws and be watchdogs on campus for student voting rights.

“My participation in the lab has truly made my Sanford experience,” Sofia says. “Without the lab, I would still have my passion for registering voters and making voting more accessible on campus, but I wouldn’t have found an outlet to explore this passion academically and professionally. I believe that it is imperative for Sanford to continue offering projects related to democracy, like the voting rights lab. In North Carolina, where the voting space and laws are constantly changing, this lab is a crucial entity that is committed to protecting student voting rights in a climate that doesn't always prioritize them.” 

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Related Podcast Episode

Listen to the episode "Missing Votes" on Duke Sanford's Ways & Means podcast featuring Professor Gunther Peck and Duke and North Carolina Central University students. The episode, released in the run-up to the 2024 election, explores why many college students' ballots are getting tossed — and what could be done about it.