As of Monday, Genevieve Carpenter, a freshman from suburban Kansas City, Missouri, who attends the University of Arkansas, had yet to receive her mail-in ballot for Tuesday’s general election. So her father, Shannon, sprang into action.

“She filled out the paperwork (to request a mail-in ballot), got it notarized, sent it. Friends around her got theirs, but hers never showed up,” he said, speaking to Inside the Upper Ed on the phone Tuesday afternoon. “So instead of worrying, we waited until yesterday and said, ‘Shit. I’m just coming to get you.”

Shannon got into his car, drove three and a half hours to Fayetteville to pick up Genevieve, brought her back to the polls in Missouri to vote in person, and then drove her to campus — all on Election Day. He had originally wanted to leave for Fayetteville on Monday, but tornadoes in the region interrupted his plan.

By the time she returned her daughter to her dormitory, it was midnight; he had been in the car for about 12 hours. He decided to stay at a hotel before going home the next morning.

Genevieve Carpenter is not the only registered voter who requested but did not receive a mail-in ballot for this election; throughout Monday and Tuesday, confused voters in various states reported problems with absentee voting. Some never received the ballots they requested or received too late. (Some states require mail-in ballots to arrive by the close of polls to be counted.) Others submitted their ballots but found they were REJECTED or never arrived.

Theresa J. Lee, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, is currently representing the voters of Cobb County, Georgia.whose ballots were never delivered due to a county error. But she said there’s no reason to believe the anecdotes in other parts of the country are connected to Cobb County’s problems or part of a systemic problem.

“In general, there have always been unintended hiccups in election administration,” she said.

Absentee voting issues can have a particularly strong impact on students. About a third of the students who responded to a Inside the Upper EdFlash survey /Generation Lab conducted in late September said they intended to vote absentee or by mail. This share is even higher – 45 percent – ​​among students who attend college in a different electoral district than their permanent address.

Shannon Carpenter said she was willing to drive hours to help her daughter vote because she strongly believes people should exercise their right to vote — something she has worked to instill in her children, taking them to ballot boxes at every election since their birth.

He admitted that the journey was not only intense and tiring, but also expensive; spent money on gas and the hotel he stayed at Tuesday night, as well as meals.

“There’s a real financial cost to it that I understand that a lot of people, a lot of students, can’t pay to do this. It’s worrying for something that should be free and easy to do,” he said.

But he was grateful to spend time with his daughter and son, who accompanied him on the road trip. The brothers, who hadn’t seen each other in a while, spent the long car ride catching up and debating silly hypotheses like their last meal on Earth.

“It’s a joy to listen to,” he said. “They’re a family and I did this and I’m proud of what I did.”

In other parts of the country, students reported long searches — and in some cases flights — to their home states to vote. Multiple news outlets reported that Lexi Harder, a German graduate student from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, flew 15 hours to vote after her ballot was unexpectedly returned.

“It’s definitely priceless. I would have paid triple to go back.” Harder told 6 ABC.

Others opted to vote in person where they go to college once it became clear their ballots weren’t coming, using a provisional ballot or same-day registration to make the last-minute switch. Mya Tolbert, a student and first-time voter at Towson University, said Inside the Upper Ed on election day, she decided to vote in person at a polling station on the university campus when her absentee ballot did not arrive in the mail. Fortunately, he had a gap between classes, so he could stand in line for more than an hour.