Nearly twice as many students voted in the 2018 midterm election as in 2014, raising turnout among student voters to a high-water mark. As recently as last fall, analysts confidently forecasted similarly record-breaking levels of participation in the 2020 presidential election. Fast forward 12 months and, needless to say, things have changed. The pandemic is impacting every part of the student experience, and civic participation is no different.
Back in 2016, ideas42 set out to investigate barriers to student voter participation by speaking to college students, faculty, and leadership across the country. Students intent on voting often face substantial structural barriers like restrictive ID laws, but we also identified behavioral obstacles that bear on student participation, many of which can be addressed through simple and proactive messages to help them navigate steps of the voting process like registering to vote or requesting a mail ballot for the first time. In the years since we published our initial findings, colleges and universities have made great progress helping students exercise their right to vote, but a pandemic that has thrust campuses nationwide into a chaotic fall semester now threatens that progress.
Understanding the Changed Landscape of Student Voting
To better understand how COVID-19 is impacting how students are thinking about the election — and what schools can do to support student voters — we conducted a national survey using Amazon’s MTurk platform over three weeks this August. Overall, we heard from just over 1,000 eligible voters between the ages of 18-25 years old who are enrolled at 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities across the United States.
The good news is that our survey indicated that most students report strong intentions of voting. The bad news is that even in the best of times the number of students who report that they intend to vote tends to outstrip the number who actually cast a ballot, and the pandemic has exacerbated many of the barriers that prevent civic-minded students from following through on their goal of participating in the election. Below we explore four such barriers that have taken on heightened resonance this year, along with concrete ways schools can help students overcome them:
1. Uncertainty about the process of voting
As new voters, students face a lot of uncertainty about the details and implications of registering to vote. Even in “normal” times, they lack the familiarity with the elections that helps more seasoned voters navigate the electoral process. As a deep literature from behavioral science demonstrates, when we experience uncertainty or ambiguity about a decision, we tend to shy away from it. While the pandemic has heightened ambiguity and confusion around how to participate for all voters, introducing a new dimension of uncertainty around the safety of different voting options. This is especially true for students, millions of whom are unsure where they’ll be living next month, let alone how they’ll vote in the election.
Over 90% of students reported that they intend to vote this fall, but if they have not considered how in-person options have changed in their states over the past few months they could confront unanticipated obstacles. Over 80% of surveyed students indicated that voting in person (either through early voting or on election day) is the voting method that feels most familiar or “normal,” but in-person voting is more complex and ambiguous this year than in previous elections due to changes in polling locations, new safety protocols, and new options in some states – such as early voting.
While some students are proactively considering other methods of voting besides in-person, this means that they’re even less familiar with the process. Nearly 33% of our survey respondents indicated that the way they intend to vote this fall is not what they consider normal. Students are already new to voting, and any knowledge they might have may not be applicable in a year when familiar options like the local polling place are no longer available, or no longer safe.
What students need:
- Simple and clear information about the different voting options and processes from a source that they trust.
What schools can do:
- Be prepared to answer common voter questions about registration, voter ID laws, mail ballot eligibility and relevant voting deadlines.
2. Indecision about where to register and vote
Students who choose to move away for college may be uneasy registering to vote at school. Some feel like they’re abandoning their hometowns — especially if they are connected to local issues that may affect their families and friends. Worse yet, many fear that registering in the wrong place could result in serious consequences like compromised financial aid.
Voting by mail is often a good option for students, and access has expanded even further this year, with nearly three quarters of Americans eligible to vote by mail. But with more options comes more opportunities for indecision, and students may be uniquely vulnerable to confusion over where and how to vote. Over half of the students we surveyed intended to register and vote using their campus address, but they may be unsure how to plan for sudden changes in their living arrangements between now and November 3 as a result of unanticipated COVID-19 spikes.
What students need:
- Reassurance that students can register “at home” and still be part of the student community, regardless of whether or not they remain on campus.
What schools can do:
- Deliver tailored registration and absentee ballot request information based on the requirements of student’s home states. In many states, students are eligible for absentee ballots, even without a COVID exception.
3. Low visibility of participation
During our initial research into student voting, we found that voting was not always visible or well-advertised on college campuses, and that schools rarely communicated an expectation that students should participate in elections. Over the last several years, colleges have made strides to make voting more salient, such as locating polling places in high-traffic campus locations, starting civic engagement initiatives, and using posters and in-person organizing to engage with students.
This year, with many students taking classes remotely, many of these efforts will be severely curtailed if not impossible. Students who, like the rest of us, look to the people around them for cues on what to do, might conclude that voting isn’t typical behavior. We know that social norms, or the perceived behavior of others, exert a powerful influence on whether or not students vote, and in an election where more people plan to vote by mail than ever before, there will be even fewer visible signals of student participation, such as the popular “I voted” stickers.
Our survey indicated that nearly half of surveyed students did not know whether or not their three closest friends intend to vote, and the fall semester’s absence of visible normative signals like tables at student centers, flyers on lampposts, or lines at campus polling places risks further undermining student participation and leaving many students in the dark on the voting behavior of their peers.
What students need:
- Clear messages that voting is normal, and expected, behavior for students, and opportunities for students to publicly share voting plans.
What schools can do:
- Participate in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, where campuses commit to increasing student voting rates. Many resources already exist through this project that can help schools create a salient norm of student voting.
4. Psychological distance between voting and everyday life
Voting is one of the principal ways that citizens of a democracy act on their political conviction. For younger Americans, however, it is not always a natural form of political expression. Our initial research rejected the notion that students are underrepresented in the American electorate because they are disengaged – when it comes to other forms of political participation like protesting, they are just as engaged as other Americans, if not more. Instead, we found that students often fail to link their everyday experiences to voting.
Our survey revealed that while many students do view voting as an impactful way to drive change in their communities, a sizable minority see donating money to causes (such as mutual aid funds or community based organizing) or protesting as more important. Heightened activism around pressing social causes that began earlier this year presents an opportunity to transfer momentum into student voter turnout, but only if students see voting as a consistent extension of, and not a substitute for, other forms of political participation that may come more naturally to them.
What students need:
- Support to think through the concrete details of voting for the first time, and an invitation to participate in the election to spark change around the issues they care about.
What schools can do:
- Frame voting as a natural next step for anyone who has previously donated money or attended protests — keep the momentum going!
How Schools Can Help Their Student Voters
Heading into a critical election at the outset of a highly irregular academic year, schools have an opportunity, and an obligation, to proactively address heightened barriers to student voting — and it’s not too late for schools to make a difference, even with limited resources. A final insight from our survey suggests great potential for schools to make an impact: one in four students could not recall having ever been contacted by someone at their school about registering to vote. While registration deadlines have passed in many states across the country, over 20 allow voters to register and cast a ballot on the same day in-person. And beyond registering to vote, schools have a unique ability to help students throughout every step of the voting process.
Nurturing strong habits of civic engagement among students is an obligation that schools can’t push to the back burner, even as they deal with unprecedented challenges brought on by the pandemic. In our new context, schools need to leverage their entire communications toolbox — email, social media, direct text messages, and more — to help their students understand and exercise their right to vote, wherever they are.
