Purdue is under fire for its lack of on-campus voting sites. How is the school responding?

Purdue University is being criticized by students leaders and state legislators over its lack of on-campus voting sites for the upcoming General Election.

WFYI's Abriana Herron spoke with Lafayette journalist Dave Bangert of Based in Lafayette to learn more.

Abriana Herron: So Dave, what exactly has happened since the story broke about the lack of on-campus voting sites at Purdue University?

Dave Bangert: The election board, which is a three member board here in Tippecanoe County, voted on where they were going to put election sites and early voting sites on August 15. As they were voting, they knew that they were not putting sites on campus, and actually brought up, one of the leaders in the Purdue votes asked, you know, 'Is this going to be a problem?' And they said that they were trying to push for a site, but they had had problems with technical questions [like] dedicated Wi-Fi, parking regulations.

Anyway, so they seem to realize that was a problem and they went ahead and voted. So they have 15 Election Day sites in town and nine early [voting] sites with about 300 hours of early voting, but nothing on campus on Election Day, and nothing in early voting, which is really an odd situation here. And about two weeks ago, the Purdue Exponent, the student paper, was the first to just basically raise that question, is this going to be a problem? And that really set off a fire here in the community about trying to fix that.

Herron: Yeah, when that news broke, there was a lot of pushback from students, student leaders and state legislators. What were some of their concerns?

Bangert: Well, the concern is that on campus, voting is pretty heavy. We have vote centers here, like most people do, you know, across the state now, but we've been doing that since 2007, and in that time for the presidential races, the on-campus voting sites, both early and Election Day, have accounted for anywhere from 4.5 percent to 10 percent of the total vote in the community.

But the pushback is, you know, is this a form of voter suppression, intentional or unintentional, by not putting something in the Purdue Memorial Union. Or four years ago it was at Mackey Arena.

Herron: What happened during that Tippecanoe County Election Board meeting on September 27?

Bangert: Purdue kind of pulled out the stops and said that they would work with the county to try to figure out at least an early voting site, if not an Election Day site. And what they were able to work out was six hours from 10:00 to 4:00 on October 24 at the CoRec, which is a pretty popular and easy site on campus.

There was an election board meeting to certify that and add that site as a 10th site for early voting, but the election board said it was basically getting up against the deadline of getting all the machines registered through the state and assigned to the other 15 Election Day sites. They weren't sure they could get that done, so they did not vote to add that. So people were still very frustrated about that outcome.

Herron: So what is Purdue and the county election board going to do to kind of rectify this issue?

Bangert: Well, I've asked that question for Purdue.They actually have a very active Purdue Votes program that is intended to get students to understand, you know, where to vote, how to vote. I was at the Purdue student government senate meeting a week ago where they passed a resolution that encouraged an Election Day site and an early voting site, and also encouraged the university and the county election board basically to do better next time, not to ignore the students.

So it's still up in the air about what they're going to do. There's still a lot of voting around campus. It's just not going to be in the heart of campus like it's been in every presidential year since 2008.

Herron: Well, thank you so much, Dave.

Bangert: Alright, thanks for the call.