Did Duke Students Unethically Trip Up the North Carolina Governor?

Allegations of vote fraud have run rampant in the 2016 gubernatorial election in North Carolina. One of the strongest may be that the lack of voter ID may have let out-of-state students vote in North Carolina.

Since 2008 Democrats have pursued a tactic of encouraging out-of-state students to register at their home or schools depending on which voting location was “more targeted.”  Here is a screen grab from the 2008 Obama effort published in the Hill.  As we explained previously:

The program did not tell students about legal definitions of residency in the various states or help them legally register in the state they resided, rather the program picked the most targeted state for them to vote.  The program worked like this for identical students who only had their states and colleges reversed.  Student A lived in Columbus, Ohio but was going to school at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The program told A to vote in the target state of Ohio over the blue state of Massachusetts.  Student B was reversed; B was going to school at Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio but lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The program told B to vote in Ohio.

In 2016 arguably no state had more potential close races than North Carolina.  Not only was the Presidency a highly targeted race, but so were the Senate and Governor’s races.  And vote fraud, more specifically illegal student voting, could have swung the Governor’s race.  As Republican Governor Pat McCrory stated on vote fraud:

McCrory said his “main suspicions” involved Durham County, where about 90,000 votes weren’t added to the statewide count until nearly midnight on election night. McCrory’s campaign called for a recount there that didn’t didn’t change the outcome. McCrory conceded the election to Cooper on Dec. 5 as the recount wrapped up.

“I personally don’t think it was about the machines” used to count votes in Durham, McCrory told the cable TV news station. “I think where the real impact was the Supreme Court decision not allowing us to have voter ID, which allowed a lot of college students who live out of state to vote.”

The Durham area has five colleges.  At downtown Durham’s Duke University alone only 12% of incoming freshmen (and presumably first-time eligible voters) were from North Carolina.  How many out-of-state students voted in North Carolina unethically, if not fraudulently, for Democrats?

To be clear, NO ONE is trying to stop students from voting and further we do not know anyone who is opposed to the young getting more involved in the political process.

However, should anyone be able to vote where they do not reside and have no intention of residing?  Everyone agrees we should have excused absentee voting, so people who are away from home on Election Day can vote in their home states and have their votes counted.  Would anyone be okay with letting those same people vote in the states they happen to be in on Election Day, even if they have no intent of ever residing there?  Forget about the “big ticket” items such as President, does anyone believe that local initiatives, school board races, city council elections, etc. should be determined by people who have no interest or intent to reside at the location?

Yet that is what can happen with student voting.  A student is going away from home for college.  The student may be living and intending to reside in that location or they may be going there to get the best education they can and intend to return home.  They could even be commuting to school. You will hear many students talk about “going home” for the summer or holidays, an obvious indicator of their mental state regarding where they perceive themselves as residing. That student should be treated like everyone else and vote where they intend to reside.

Voter ID is a great way to stop this practice or even the appearance of this practice.  There seems to be a very good chance that the newly “elected” Democrat Governor owes his election not to the people of North Carolina but the out-of-state college students like those that go to Duke.   Looks like Duke’s unethical tripping of opponents may extend beyond the basketball court.