Washington Monthly - September/October 2020 - 44

AMERICA'S BEST
COLLEGES FOR
STUDENT VOTING
The schools doing the most to turn students into citizens.
By Daniel Block

n November 3, Americans will vote in an election
unlike any other in U.S. history. As COVID-19 rages
across the country, many will find themselves voting
by mail for the first time. Others will wait in long lines at the
fewer polling places that are open because their state government has made voting by mail difficult or impossible. If
localities are imprudent about in-person voting-by having
people line up indoors, for example-some will doubtlessly
get sick as a result, leading to a terrible trade-off between
political participation and physical health.
For even the most seasoned voters, this will likely be a
fraught and challenging process. But for America's college students, it will be especially perplexing. Young people are, by definition, the age group least experienced with the act of voting.
Not coincidentally, they are also the ones least likely to cast
ballots. In 2018-a hard-fought, high-water mark for youth
midterm voting-turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds was still
only 35 percent, more than 10 points below the rate for 30- to
44-year-olds, 20 points below the rate for 45- to 64-year-olds,
and less than half the rate of the over-65 crowd. Among college students, the rate was 40 percent-not much better.
The good news is that despite the pandemic, young people are unusually fired up about the 2020 contest. A recent
poll by Harvard's Institute of Politics shows that more 18to 29-year-olds say they plan to vote in 2020 than said they
planned to vote when asked in surveys conducted at similar
times in 2016 and 2018. It's clear that recent events, such as
the mass activism against police brutality and institutionalized racism, have inspired many young people's passions. According to a poll by Tufts University's Center for Information
and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, 27 percent
of 18- to 24-year-olds have attended a march or a demonstration in their lifetimes, a more than fivefold increase from 2016.
A quarter of all 18- to 24-year-olds say they have registered
someone else to vote, far more than in the past. And while
many people are worried that young Americans will be less
likely to vote by mail than their elders, preliminary evidence
44 September/October 2020

suggests that's not the case. Compared to 2016, the number of
18- to 24-year-olds who voted by mail in Florida's 2020 presidential primary increased by 338 percent. For all other age
groups, the increase was just 11 percent.
The bad news is that many young Americans are still unsure about how to vote. In the same Tufts survey, just 51 percent of respondents correctly knew whether they could register online. Seven-and-a-half percent, which translates to
3.5 million people, said they have poor access to the internet,
which inhibits their ability to both register and learn about
the voting process. And it is unclear if colleges will be able to
keep large numbers of students on campus until November
3, meaning that even the most well-informed students may
wind up registering in places they ultimately can't cast ballots.
At the Monthly, we believe that colleges have a special obligation to help young Americans become active political citizens. It will help if they make sure students can be confident
about where they will be on Election Day. But to ensure that
young people capitalize on their growing enthusiasm, schools
will need to do much more. They'll need to explain how to register and what's needed to actually cast a ballot, given both
the pandemic-related election chaos and the growing maze
of franchise restrictions in GOP-controlled states. In other
words, they will need to help make voting as easy as possible.
There are multiple resources universities can use to pursue this end. The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, for
example, works with all kinds of colleges to develop schoolspecific student voting action plans. It has developed a virtual
tool kit full of suggestions for how schools can use the internet to bolster registration and turnout during the pandemic, and it has created a Google group where colleges can share
digital resources and ask questions. The National Study of
Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) at Tufts University calculates registration numbers and turnout rates for participating campuses, allowing schools to track their progress.
To encourage schools to work at bettering turnout, the
Monthly has used ALL IN and NSLVE information to compile

Washington Monthly - September/October 2020

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