Some campuses are in danger of backsliding on student voting
In Part 3 of our Action Plan series, we examine the 128 campuses that submitted a democratic engagement action plan in 2020, but not in 2022.
This is the third in a series of State of the Student Vote updates about the progress colleges and universities are making in planning for the 2024 election - here are links to Part 1 and Part 2.
High retention is a key reason we believe that action planning works.
In Part 2 of our Action Plan series, we examined the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge’s 2022 Action Plan Report.
The most important takeaway from the report and our analysis is that democratic engagement action planning works. Campuses that complete action plans see a meaningful increase in student voting rates. Campuses that regularly complete action plans see even larger increases.
According to ALL IN’s evaluation of campus voting data from the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education’s 2020 National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) reports, campuses that submitted a 2020 action plan averaged 3.7 percentage points higher voting rates in 2020 than campuses that received NSLVE data and didn't submit an action plan. Even more encouraging, campuses that have been developing action plans for more than one election cycle had higher 2020 campus voter turnout rates than those for whom the 2020 cycle was their first time writing an action plan, outpacing the average NSLVE campus by 5.2 percentage points.
Action planning is not just correlated with higher student voter turnout. There is also growing evidence of action planning having long-term positive impact and sustainability through retention of campuses in the action planning process across multiple election cycles. Campuses tend to improve their student voting plans each time they submit them. It takes fewer resources for a campus to update their plan for the next election as opposed to creating one for the first time.
That’s why one of the key questions we need to answer together is how we ensure campuses that start action planning during one election cycle continue to do so in subsequent cycles. 76% of campuses that submitted an action plan in 2020 resubmitted in 2022. The overall number of submissions increased as a result of a surge of new campuses developing an action plan for the first time in 2022. But 128 campuses that submitted an action plan in 2020 did not submit one in 2022. Our experience with these 128 campuses in 2022 suggests that without pro-active and coordinated intervention in 2024 there is a strong and concerning possibility of backsliding on student voting at institutions serving millions of student voters.
Campuses with less supportive campus contexts are most in danger of backsliding on student voting.
Re-submission rates for action plans were relatively stable across different types of institutions. While they’re underrepresented overall among action plan-submitting campuses, more than 75% of community colleges and minority-serving institutions that submitted 2020 action plans did so again in 2022, putting them largely in line with overall numbers.
But the 128 campuses that didn’t re-submit in 2022 did have some key shared characteristics.
Less time in an action planning program: The campuses that backslid in their democratic engagement action planning had participated in ALL IN’s action planning program for about a year less on average than the rest of the action plan submitting campuses.
Smaller institutions: The campuses that backslid were more likely to be smaller institutions - they had an average student body enrollment of 7,830 - compared to a total average of 10,158 for all campuses participating in ALL IN and an average of 13,573 among campuses that submitted action plans in both 2020 and 2022.
Limited support from the college or university president: The 128 institutions that backslid in 2022 were also less likely to have public support for their democratic engagement program from their college or university presidents through the ALL IN presidents' commitment and were more likely to have experienced significant staff turnover.
Focusing extra resources on colleges where campus vote coordinators are developing democratic engagement action plans in spite of these headwinds will be key to locking in the gains of the past few elections.
We need to continue exploring innovative tools - including generative AI - to make action planning more accessible, while maintaining a focus on retention.
In 2020, ALL IN provided a Google Form template for action planning in order to make the action planning process easier and faster for campuses. 35% of the 128 campuses that didn’t resubmit in 2022 submitted action plans using the Google Form template in 2020. This suggests that some campus vote coordinators who used the Google Form template did not engage with it in as full a manner as necessary to institutionalize the action planning process.
However, the fact that retention rates among 2020 Google Form users - many of them campuses that may not have had the capacity to develop an action plan without such a tool - was over 60%, is a powerful piece of evidence in favor of the continued use and development of such tools. In fact, of the 60-plus percent of 2020 Google Form users that submitted an action plan again in 2022, less than a third used the Google Form in 2022. For many campuses, technological tools were a gateway into a virtuous cycle of action planning with increasingly meaningful engagement over time.
Improved tools and more support for these campuses can improve retention rates and catalyze growth. These tools can support the development of high quality action plans in less time, allowing campus vote coordinators and campus voting coalitions to save time on action planning, and spend more time implementing their plans.
As we enter the first federal election cycle where generative AI is widely available, we need to continue taking steps as a network to ensure that we are creating the spaces and coaching support that campus vote coordinators need to develop quality action plans that authentically reflect the full strategic brilliance of their campus teams as they seek creative ways to reach 100% student voting on their campuses.
The upshot
Among the 128 campuses that submitted an action plan in 2020 but did not re-submit in 2022, we see key themes emerging around the conditions that put a campus in danger of backsliding on student voting. Coalition partners should be intentional about creating and providing extra resources to campus vote coordinators working in less supportive contexts especially smaller institutions that are new to action planning, lack support from their college or university president, and used an action planning template rather than generating an entirely original plan in past years.
Many new resources are available to address action planning retention challenges. The SLSV Coalition’s newly released Transition Management Guides could prove to be a valuable resource for many institutions that have experienced staff turnover. SLSV’s Action Plan Workshops Working Group has also worked to streamline the creation of trainings and resources for action plan building with the goal of increasing awareness and reducing confusion for campuses in all stages of their action planning experience.
In closing, we must ensure the democratic engagement action planning process for all campuses is as authentic and reflective as possible! Providing templates may encourage participation, but meaningful planning and long-term retention require a deeper commitment. We must continue our work as a community to design action planning processes that are streamlined and efficient and move campuses towards authentic deep commitments and effective strategies for reaching 100% student voting.