{"id":7396,"date":"2021-10-24T18:39:55","date_gmt":"2021-10-24T22:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/?p=7396"},"modified":"2026-03-16T10:34:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:34:53","slug":"we-made-it-americas-best-colleges-for-student-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/2021\/10\/24\/we-made-it-americas-best-colleges-for-student-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"We Made It! America’s Best Colleges for Student Voting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Thanks to a campus-wide effort and with strategic leadership from the Harward Center’s Peggy Rotundo and students Amalia Herren-Lage ’22 and Ashka Jhaveri ’22, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is recognized by the Washington Monthly<\/em> as America’s 4th best college\/university for student voting. For the Fall 2018 election season, more than 85% of eligible ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student voters were registered to vote. Only three institutions posted a higher percentage than ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½: Maryland Institute College of Art, Northwestern University, and Haverford College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the 2020 presidential election, unprecedented numbers of 18-24 year olds cast ballots, constituting what Daniel Block of the Washington Monthly<\/em> describes as “one of the most striking shifts of any demographic.” (Full article here<\/a>.) Key to this increase in youth electoral participation in 2020 was the prior campus-based work of students, faculty, and staff at colleges and universities across the nation, who developed new programs and structures to encourage civic participation despite the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the cultivation of “informed civic action” is a pillar of our institutional mission, with voting as a crucial form of such action. Under the auspices of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½Votes moniker, students serving as Vote Captains created a peer-to-peer network to mobilize their fellow students. Students also created a video series called “Commons QuickBites,” in which they shared their motivations for registering and voting, as well as a vigorous social media campaign. They held “virtual couch parties” over Zoom during which attendees filled out voter registration cards together; they “tabled” at Commons and elsewhere on campus; they made class visits to register their peers; and they used brightly colored chalk in strategic locations around the campus to generate enthusiasm for voting among the campus community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½Votes was (and is) intentionally nonpartisan, with this as the mantra: “We don’t tell you how<\/em> to vote or where<\/em> to vote, but at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, we all vote.” Even international students, undocumented students, and others who couldn’t themselves register and cast a vote in U.S. elections joined the important work of cultivating informed civic action through electoral participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, the initial focus of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½Votes is on encouraging students to participate in next month’s local elections, including support for a virtual Candidates’ Forum featuring City of Lewiston candidates for mayor, City Council, and School Committee. After that, we’ll begin preparing for next year’s midterm elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A thriving democracy depends on the active and informed participation of all citizens. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½Votes is proud to help students establish themselves as voters, laying the foundation for what we hope will be a lifelong habit. We’re also proud of our better-than-85% registered voter accomplishment. We’re hoping for 90% next time around!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to a campus-wide effort and with strategic leadership from the Harward…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"bates_author_byline_override":"","_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly","with-sidebar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7396"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10305,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7396\/revisions\/10305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/harward\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}