the best strategies no one is studying

Social science is missing out on the most exciting innovations in student voter mobilization. Is the topic of your next big publication in this email? Read on to find out.

Earlier this month during National Voter Education Week over 630 colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, and companies helped voters bridge the gap between registering to vote and actually casting a ballot by ensuring they have the information and resources needed to do so. To mark the week, Dr. Mara Suttmann-Lea and Dr. Thessalia (Lia) Merivaki wrote about the importance of voter education in this article in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage.

Their extensive research has shown that voter education

1. increases voter turnout

2. helps voters cast valid ballots and

3. increases confidence in elections. 

While more research is still needed on how to best educate voters about how to participate in our electoral system, as National Voter Education Week comes to an end this year and we move from education to mobilization of voters, many questions also remain about how we identify the most impactful tactics for mobilizing student voters. 

Maricopa County Election Department officials tabling during National Voter Education Week at Mesa Community College in Arizona to help voters get ready for the upcoming election. Source: Twitter

But some of the most exciting tactics remain unstudied or understudied! In an earlier post, we shared that the Ask Every Student (AES) design community has been working with a representative group of campus co-designers to develop new tactics that move campuses toward full student voter registration and participation. The latest iteration of the co-created Ask Every Student Toolkit that was released in August features the most innovative, comprehensive, and campus-driven set of tactics available. With over 280 campuses participating in Ask Every Student and implementing these tactics this fall, this is an area full of wonderful opportunities for scholars willing to use mixed-methods evaluations to better understand how these tactics are influencing student voting behavior and political knowledge.

Here are a few examples of the AES tactics that could be improved through research and evaluation. 

Institutionalizing Voter Registration at New Student Orientation

Stony Brook University is among a handful of campuses that have pioneered the integration of voter registration in campus orientation processes in a thorough and intentional way. Going way above and beyond simply inserting a voter registration form into an already jam-packed and overwhelming orientation packet, Stony Brook has institutionalized a five-step process that is detailed in the AES Toolkit.

The Stony Brook process includes

1. getting buy-in from your college or university

2. planning and preparing your voter registration process

3. implementing your process during orientation

4. verifying voter registration and following up with students and

5. submitting voter registration forms and staying in contact with students about important election dates.

Scholars can help practitioners better understand and better advocate for the spread of the adoption of this strategy by evaluating its impact at multiple types of institutions. While past research by David Nickerson and Elizabeth Bennion has demonstrated that “classroom voter registration works” we have not yet had a rigorous multicampus mixed methods evaluation of the impacts of integrating voter registration into orientation. Orientation is a unique moment for student identity and it presents unique opportunities (and challenges!) as a space for voter engagement that are worthy of study.

Stony Brook University’s recommended five-step process for instutionalizing voter registration at new student orientation as laid out in the AES Toolkit. 

Connecting with Key Campus Partners to Facilitate Voter Outreach

One tactic unique to campus-driven voter engagement efforts is the ability to work with key campus partners such as the Office of the Registrar to identify and contact every student. 2022 AES Codesigner Cohort participants Dr. Teri Platt and Dr. Sabrina Riles from Clark Atlanta University obtained university and student permission to contact every student about their registration status, remind them of upcoming deadlines and election days, and encourage them to cast their ballots. This comprehensive student outreach is then accomplished by hiring students - which can be done by using Federal Work Study funds - to contact their peers. 

More research is needed to better understand the impact of campus-driven voter contact as opposed to candidate or political party-driven voter contact, especially since we know students are more likely to identify as a member of their campus community than with a political party. A 2012 paper by Neil Malhotra, Melissa Michelson, and Ali Valenzuela showed that voters are more responsive to voting related email that they perceive to be from government entities or other official bodies. Colleges and universities have a unique relationship with their students that is different from either the government or political campaigns and parties. More research is needed to understand how colleges and universities can best mobilize those relationships to expand voter participation and strengthen our democracy.

Using Federal Work-Study Funds for Voter Engagement

Campuses that receive Federal Work-Study Funds are required to use at least 7% of those funds on community service-related activities, which can include projects that increase civic participation. In a Dear Colleague letter issued in April of 2022, the Department of Education clarified that these funds can be used for voter registration. 

2022 AES Codesigner Natalie Sobrinski from Northampton Community College shared resources that can be found in the 2022 AES Toolkit that lay out how campuses can use federal work-study positions to promote civic engagement on campus. To our knowledge, there have been no evaluations completed to show the impact this funding can have on student voter registration and turnout rates. 

Sample Work Study flyer as developed by Northampton Community College and found in the AES Toolkit. 

Integration with Learning Management Systems

Learning Management Systems, like Canvas or Blackboard, are digital platforms that college students are regularly required to use. Campus leaders can create a one-stop shop for all things civic engagement right in students’ learning management systems through a module or course they have the ability to enroll in. In some cases, voter registration plug-ins can also be turned on. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about how - or if - this tactic works and what it would take to reach its full potential. 

Many questions remain about this more form of engagement. At what point in a student’s journey through an LMS is the best moment to place a voter registration opportunity? What information should be included to ensure students feel confident about not just registering but following through with the act of voting? These questions and so many others are still yet to be answered about the impacts of integrating voter registration with learning management systems. 

As you can see, college campuses and nonprofit partners have co-created many incredibly innovative and promising tactics to ask every student on campus to participate in our democracy starting with voter registration! But we still have more questions than we do answers about whether, how, and why these strategies work. We need more partnerships with scholars to study and evaluate these and other strategies in the AES Toolkit to help us understand their true impacts in both the short term and the long term. If you are interested in potentially studying any of these strategies, please reach out to me today! 

Clarissa Unger is co-founder and Executive Director of the SLSV Coalition. She can be reached at clarissa@slsvcoalition.org.