Just over three weeks after Election Day, I got a Google Alert. My name had appeared in the digital edition of my hometown’s daily newspaper. An article, the first of several on the subject in the following weeks, stated that the chairman of the Republican Party in Pasquotank County, where I had voted by mail-in absentee ballot, was attempting to invalidate my vote and 21 others by “challenging the residency of 22 voters who participated in last month’s election, claiming they are a ‘symptom of voter fraud’ that calls into question the outcome of the governor’s race.”

The governor’s race in question was North Carolina’s, and at the time I learned of the challenge to my voter eligibility, Pat McCrory had not yet conceded defeat. In fact, after losing to Roy Cooper on November 8 by a margin that has since surpassed 10,000 votes, McCrory hung on, demanding recounts, filing protests across the state, and alleging fraud in the form of votes cast by felons, by people who voted in multiple states, or in the name of deceased persons. McCrory, of course, also signed a controversial 2013 voter-ID law that a federal appeals court struck down this year due to “racially discriminatory intent.” (A number of the 22 voters challenged gave their address as Elizabeth City State University, a historically black college in my home county, more on which shortly.)

I initially found the challenge quite odd. I wasn’t a felon, hadn’t voted in another state, and hadn’t attempted to vote in someone else’s name. The GOP chairman behind the local challenge, Richard Gilbert, filed what is technically called an elections protest petition disputing my residency in the county. It’s true, I don’t reside in Pasquotank County. I voted by absentee ballot, something one does, by definition, when absent.

It’s true, I don’t reside in Pasquotank County. I voted by absentee ballot, something one does, by definition, when absent.

I’ve been a registered voter since 2002, and voted absentee while in college in North Carolina, in graduate school in Boston, while studying and teaching in a foreign country, and most recently while pursuing a doctorate in Chicago. I voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 primaries while teaching English in Rövershagen, Germany. I used the event for a unit on the American political process (the witnesses who signed my ballot weren’t even U.S. citizens). Indeed, the same principle allows members of the military to vote from overseas. Regardless of where one temporarily resides, a voter can legally cast a ballot using the address of their domicile, defined in part and somewhat poetically as the place “to which…that person has the intention of returning.”

A hearing at the local board of elections the following Monday provided a bit more clarity. Gilbert had found the description of a literature course I taught last spring, as well as some student evaluations, which he used to claim that I was a full-time professor. By his account, I had established a permanent residence in Chicago, and was therefore voting illegally in North Carolina. But being referred to as “Professor Sterritt” by a student doesn’t make me a professor—if only that were the case. I’m actually a full-time student funded by a teaching assistantship, which carries a part-time appointment as an instructor.