4 things that need to happen in 2023 to stay on track for 2024

For student voters to get the support they need in 2024, the movement for 100% student voting needs to hit key benchmarks in 2023. New data from ALL IN will help us know where we're on track.

The Students Learn Students Vote Coalition is the largest non-partisan network in the country dedicated to increasing student voter participation. Members include scholars, students, advocates, and community practitioners. Each year coalition partners set goals for what the student vote movement needs to do to stay on track in its efforts to achieve 100% student voting and mobilize student voters in the next election. These goals are set through an inclusive and collaborative process beginning with discussions at the SLSV Coalition’s annual conference. This year’s goals represent the consensus of a large group of student voting experts about what the movement needs to do in 2023 to stay on track to serve all student voters during the 2024 elections.

Our top questions from the 2022 elections

Here are 4 things that we must accomplish in 2023 for the movement for 100% student voting to stay on track for the 2024 election.

This summer, SVRN’s State of the Student Vote Series will dive into insights from the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge’s Action Plan report and other sources. These insights will help the SVRN community know whether the movement for 100% student voting is on track to meet its 2023 goals. These insights can help us identify the urgent research and strategy questions that the SVRN community can address ahead of the 2024 elections.

Here are the highest priority movement goals we are tracking:

1) Recruit campuses to participate in student vote action planning for the first time

By December 15, 2023, we will recruit 50 colleges and universities, with a focus on community colleges, minority-serving institutions, and rural campuses that are not currently actively participating in an action-planning coaching program and help them join.

Institutional action planning is a powerful research based tool for increasing student voting rates and building power in the movement for 100% student voting. A 2022 SVRN literature review by Amy Meli (University of Maryland) found that action planning can increase student voter turnout when it includes scenario planning, goal setting that reinforces self-efficacy, and clear accountability. Over 500 higher educations institutions developed action plans in 2022.

When does action planning for 100% voting work?

Recruiting campuses that have not participated in action planning before to do so in 2024 - especially community colleges, minority serving institutions, and rural institutions - is a top priority for organizations across the movement for 100% student voting. ALL IN’s new action plan report shines a light on the extent to which each type of campus is already engaging in action planning, as well as the overall state of their plans and how it may be impacted by campus context. 

2) Support campus vote coalitions through staff transitions

By year’s end the SLSV team, in collaboration with the Resources & Support working group, will develop and conduct trainings for at least four new and existing resources that help nonpartisan student voting coalitions more effectively, and equitably, increase student voter engagement and participation within their campus communities… Among these resources will be at least one, developed by June 1, 2023, that supports the retention of campus and nonprofit partners through personnel transitions and/or non-federal-election years.

The “great resignation” has hit higher education in a big way. Staff retention is a significant challenge for many working in the student voter engagement space at institutions of higher education. In order to continue to cultivate grassroots leaders committed to 100% student voting on their campuses, we need to develop tools to better understand the causes of turnover and better support student vote leaders in working through these transitions.

3) Develop strategies that work at community colleges and minority serving institutions

“By November 1, 2023, in partnership with the Student Vote Research Network, we will inspire and support 3-4 research projects to help us better understand the impacts of action planning and various Ask Every Student strategies. These efforts will focus on evaluating strategies on community colleges and at minority-serving institutions.”

Community colleges and minority-serving institutions represent the majority of all US college students but are historically under-resourced. Research conducted both by and at these institutions is underrepresented in academic knowledge about how to achieve 100% student voting. This means that often programs at community colleges and minority-serving institutions are not able to access tools, frameworks, and strategies that are designed to meet the unique needs of these institutional contexts.

The SLSV Coalition and the Student Vote Research Network are working together to make sure that we are addressing this research gap. Five of the six projects that SVRN presented at the 2023 State of the Student Vote Workshop were done by and/or at a community college or minority serving institution.

What we learned at the 2023 SVRN workshop

We are looking to build on that progress throughout the rest of 2023. ALL IN’s Action Plan report offers key insights into the breadth and quality of action planning at community colleges and minority serving institutions going into the 2024 election.

4) Ensure campuses adopt “Ask Every Student” strategies that are proven to increase student voter turnout

the best strategies no one is studying

By October 31, 2023, in preparation for the 2024 elections, 150 campuses will implement a specific Ask Every Student strategy, with an emphasis on strategies in the following areas: orientation integration, class visits, faculty champions, or Federal Work Study usage. 

By December 15, 2023, 75 Ask Every Student campuses will report the number of voter registrations they attained through implementing AES strategies.

Ask Every Student is a joint initiative of four leading student voting organizations focused on designing and popularizing research backed strategies for increasing student voter turnout and reaching 100% student voting.

In 2021 Dr. Melissa Michelson led a multi-campus study to better understand what happens when institutions implement these strategies. She and her team found that efforts supported by Ask Every Student were reaching the vast majority of students on member campuses and helping those institutions significantly increase student voting and registration rates. She also found significant evidence of spillover effects from Ask Every Student programs as students shared what they learned about voting with other family members and the broader community.

It's more possible than ever to register every student to vote...

In order to achieve 100% student voting and stay on track to support student voters in 2024, we need to support more campuses in adopting research backed Ask Every Student strategies that are proven to increase turnout. Furthermore, we need to support more campus voter registration programs in rigorously tracking their registration numbers as they go, so that we can work together in real time to address places where student voters are falling through the cracks.

The upshot? There is urgent work to be done to get ready to support all student voters in 2024.

While specific strategies and priorities will differ by community, the SLSV Coalition’s 2023 goals highlight several areas where partners urgently need to work together in 2023 to stay on track to support student voters nationwide in 2024. The new ALL IN Action Plan report provides critically important information about where things stand. Throughout the summer we will be following up in this “State of the Student Vote” series to share updates about where the movement for 100% student voting is on track to meet 2023 goals, where it is struggling, and what strategic and research questions need urgent attention from SVRN members ahead of the 2024 election.