For the first time in about 2015, we actually had data about how many college students were registered to vote and were turning out to vote. And that's data that was never collected by states or the federal government. It only came about because a research institute called the Institute for Democracy and higher education at Tufts University created the study. And so for the first time, we knew that turnout was actually a lot lower than we even thought, right. We knew students were really interested in political engagement. We're really caring about different issues. And we knew that college graduates vote at higher rates than non college graduates. But we didn't know that students themselves are voting at lower rates.
Voter turnout in the 2020 US General Election soared to levels not seen in decades. Yet. Even with that surge, only 63% of eligible voters went to the polls in the US when it comes to voter participation, even that high point trails about 30 other democratic countries worldwide. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College, I'm your host, Steve fast. One strategy to get more voters to be engaged is to get them to start early and build a habit when they're young. A nonpartisan effort to engage college campuses in fostering civic engagement with efforts such as voter registration and voter education, has been reaching out to voters to get them to take part in the democratic process.
My name is Jen dominico Goldman and I'm the Executive Director of the Allen campus democracy challenges civic nation. That's a lot of words. But what it means is that my job is to help college students across the country at more than 960 colleges and universities in all 50 states plus DC, including your very own Illinois, and Heartland Community College do the work of nonpartisan democratic engagement. And we define that as civic learning, political engagement and voter participation.
Tell us a little bit about what do the students do to engage in civic activity? You mentioned political engagement, what counts towards these efforts that you're trying to foster amongst college students?
That's a great question, Steve. And, you know, I think it's, it's a set of nested answers, right. So college students come to us already with civic knowledge already politically engaged in their communities, some of them have already voted and elections, and others, it's quite new, right, they may not have had that experience in their K 12. Experience, they may not have been old enough to vote for the first time or even to register to vote for the first time, they may not have had a chance to be as politically active, or they may not realize that some of the work they've already been doing is political engagement. And so part of the work that all it does is to really help connect campuses and connect, particularly the administrators and the faculty and staff and to help them understand legal requirements that they have. So the federal government actually requires that college campuses getting federal funding, make a good faith effort to register their students to vote. We also know that there are opportunities on campus around civic learning. And so for instance, your civic engagement certificate at Heartland is a great example of that. And we try to help campuses share things that are working. And we realized that having a robust culture on campus that helps create a pipeline for students to be engaged to talk about what they're learning in the classroom, in the community to think about what issues might be on the ballot and how they feel about them and how they might want to vote. And that local elections, for instance, are just as important as state and federal elections to the issues they might care about. I mean, all of that in a non partisan context. So certainly helping students find their own kind of beliefs, but really making sure they have the information they need to navigate that process. And just to give you a tiny bit more background, I think when we were founded in 2016, part of the reason we were started is for the first time in about 2015, we actually had data about how many college students were registered to vote and were turning out to vote. And that's data that was never collected by states or the federal government. So it only came about because a research institute called the Institute for Democracy and higher education at Tufts University created the study. And so campuses like Heartland participate in the study. And so for the first time, we knew that turnout was actually a lot lower than we even thought, right? We knew students were really interested in political engagement. We're really caring about different issues. And we knew that college graduates vote at higher rates than non college graduates. And that includes someone who only graduates with an associate's degree or even someone who's only attended college for a brief period. But we didn't know that students themselves were voting at lower rates. And so we set about to create the program of the on campus democracy challenge to ask campuses to make a public commitment to doing better at this work. To create a voting Coalition on campus. A nonpartisan voting coalition that includes campus administrators includes students has local election officials or other nonpartisan organizations that might be part of that like the League of and voters to create a data informed campus action plan for how they might increase their voting rates. And that they might think about the fact that their political science students are voting at higher rates, but their science majors are voting at lower rates, or that their seniors are voting at pretty high rates. But their first year students aren't, or their older students are voting at higher rates, but they're 18 to 22 year olds aren't. And so really doing that work. And then we do a lot of recognition for that work and lift up the stories. And so I think, you know, while we do that work with the institution, and at that level, it comes back down to the students, because those folks on that campus are there, you know, election cycle, the presidential and then the midterm and urine, and you're out, and helping to ensure that the students have a structure within which to then do the work themselves to help motivate their peers to vote.
Do you have any sense of really where college age voting tends to be? And has been? Has it been getting better hasn't been getting worse, looking at least short historical history of this? It hasn't been decreasing. He said it was less than anticipated. But how have the numbers played out over the years?
Sure. So part of what Olin talks about is we want to help to decrease voting gaps that exist in our broader electorate, both based on age and race, in particular. And part of that is that our youngest generation, our Gen Z student voters, and including some of our millennials, as well, and older students, there are some of the most diverse population we've they are the most diverse population we've ever had in this country. And they've been voting at lower rates. And so you're right, we have seen improvement. And in fact, I was looking Heartland Community College join Dahlen in 2018. So before the 2018 midterm, and your campus had a student voting rate in 2018, have somewhere between 30 and 39%. I know that because if you were to look at your page on our Web page, it says that you earned a silver seal of recognition, right? And so we give these seals out. And we base the seal rate for midterm election like 2018, on what the data for the 2014 midterm election was, which that data was under 20% of college students had turned out to vote. Right. And that's what kind of sent a little bit of a shockwave through of we knew younger folks were voting lower. We kind of assumed that college students were voting at pretty reasonable rates. And, and the answer was no. And they face a lot of obstacles, right. So I think I always tell story of when I was a first year in college, which was a long time ago, I was really, you know, I knew it was a presidential election, I knew who I wanted to vote for I was pretty engaged. But I was trying to get along with my roommate, I was trying to pass calculus as someone who ended up as an English major. And I think if my mom at the time hadn't sent me my absentee ballot, like the form to like fill out to request absentee ballot, I don't know that I would have voted in that election, not because I didn't intend to, not because I wasn't even registered. But because I was registered three hours away at home. You know, I was at school, three hours down the road, I didn't have a car, I was super busy trying to pass calculus. And I would have thought about it the week of the election and maybe two weeks before and it would have been too late to go through the paperwork, right. And, you know, maybe I would have had other options of re registering in the place I was, but I didn't view that as home yet. In my first semester, I think I called school home for the first time over like Thanksgiving break, right. And so, you know, there's all of these pieces that make it more complicated for college students, they have the right to vote at their permanent address, but also at their school address, they need to have ID in some states, like they may need to make sure their address has been updated to get their materials. And so that's part of what we're trying to help campuses navigate.
Well, you bring up some interesting points about the barriers that exist towards voting. I know that a lot of the efforts that the all in democracy challenge addresses is awareness. When there's a general election for President, for instance, or even the midterm elections or general elections for higher profile like National nationwide offices, I think for the most of us, we hear about it, right? We know it's coming. There's this enormous amount of money spent on advertising of all types on all types of media. You can't click on a YouTube video without seeing a political ad and in some of those seasons, but for municipal elections, local elections, I think that there's a pretty low awareness of even what's on the ballot sometimes. And regardless of somebody's they might have opinions, political opinions of who they would want to support. But if they don't even know what's going on, there is little chance and these aren't always on November 2, for instance, these are different across the country at different times these elections. So that sort of effort seems to be really where you can make a huge dent in civic engagement.
Steve, I think that's a really true insight. Right. And I think we find that a lot of the issues that students and young people care about are the same issues other folks care about. They vary right from things about student loans, to the climate, to LGBT rights to cannabis to whatever it might be right. And you know, I think Often they see things about how that might play out in a presidential or a governor election or something like that. Sometimes they don't see that it's gonna play out in their local elections. And I think that's part of what we try to talk about and try to provide resources for campuses. So some of that comes about in terms of social assets that we give and toolkits that they can share on different channels with decent deadlines and information about, you know, upcoming elections and things like that all obviously nonpartisan, we don't talk about stances on issues and things like that. But we do try to say, you know, you care about policing, then you want to make sure you vote for sheriff, right, you care about climate issues, like there are different people on your ballot who have a say, in your local water authority, or you know, all of these different pieces. And I think that information comes a lot from whatever is going on in that locality, which is why a national group like on is important, but it's also important for that voting coalition, and that those folks on the ground to be able to talk right, so to be able to get information about a local election, and when they change where that might be held, or to be able to talk to a local league of women voters or another nonpartisan group that puts together a ballot guide, right about some of those things like I don't have the ability to create a ballot guide for every school board election in the country, right. But we can help campuses understand how to find that information locally, we can help make sure that students who down the road Illinois State who might not be from Illinois, or from a different part that they know where they can go to find some of that information. Right. I think that becomes really important. And I think the barriers that we talked about, you know, are a lot of the things I think any of us could name right. So you know, Ohio just passed a law that doesn't allow campus IDs to count as Voter IDs, and in fact, has gone so far to say they actually have to have an Ohio driver's license or Ohio, non driver's ID, right? State ID, right. So they can't have an Illinois ID and then proof of residency in Ohio to cast a ballot. And then that's not obviously just for students. But you know, those things make it harder, it means that not only did they have to think about things I had to think about as a student, but they have to think about other kinds of pieces, right? And figure out how they're going to get to the place to get their ID or that they're going to change and vote absentee ballot. And so did they, you know, did they get that information at a time? You know, I think so many of our students aren't just students, right, their parents and their caregivers or their family members, and they're working full time. And so how are they finding that and so we find that student voting rates are higher, frankly, on campuses participating in all in so we have data from the 2020 election that campuses that are participating in our program are outperforming peer institutions. And that's been great data to see. In fact, the more engaged in the more of the steps they're taking. And the more they're working on these action plans and creating these coalition's the higher their rates have been because they're making sure people are hearing about it, right. And we also know though, that states that allow early voting or same day voter registration, these kinds of things that make it easier for all people to vote, are helping college voting rights as well. And so I think, you know, the work of all in gets to the pieces of that. And part of one of the things we do, for instance, is we have a specific set of work we do with community colleges. So we really think about the fact that community colleges aren't, well, one aren't a monolith. But they also aren't the same as a lot of campuses that have huge residential populations, right. So those campuses, you know, need to think about different kinds of things in our community college. My right, so we do that kind of work. We also have state voting challenges. So we work with some different partners in Illinois, for instance, to help make sure that campuses in Illinois can be in contact with each other and talking about what's working. So we did some work around the Chicago mayoral election, for instance, right. And so I think helping pull campuses together and in these cohorts where they can learn from similar institutions, whether it's other community colleges about tactics that work, or other campuses in a state like Illinois, to really think about, you know, how different rules and election guidelines change and how that might impact students is part of the work we do as well. You had
mentioned earlier that all these efforts are nonpartisan. And unfortunately, there's been a narrative over the last several years to politicize how people vote, where they vote, what their vote means, depending on how it is allowed to be counted in various parts across the country. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why these efforts truly are nonpartisan and how that overall, is the goal is to increase engagement. It doesn't necessarily align with any particular political party or ideology other than the fact that it's democracy. And that's part of the process. Sure.
I mean, so, you know, our, our laws allow anyone 18 and older to cast a ballot and to be part of to be in franchised, right, and to be part of that system. You know, some states allow 16 and 17 year olds to pre register or to vote and things like that. And so some of that work is done in high schools. And that's great. Some of those students show up on campuses already registered. And they need to help understand that they can continue that registration and vote that way. Or they have a choice to change that, just like other adults do, right? Just like I'm originally from upstate New York. And we talking about snowbirds not as actual birds. But as humans, like my uncle who lives part of the year in New York and part of the air in Florida. Well, he has to decide which one of those is the one he is going to call his permanent residency. And he's going to vote in, in which one is he just going to live in part of the time, right. And so the college students have those same rights. They're not different than other adults, right? And that sense, but they also do need, you know, all of the evidence shows that it's harder to vote that person, you're not on people's lists. So all of that media that you probably get in your mailbox, like you're not getting, you're not getting the door knocks, right, you're not getting a lot of that attention. And so unless you're choosing it, you sometimes are not as by other people as tuned in. Right. And so I think that's really important. I also think I think the research shows that once you vote for the first time, you're likely to continue to vote, and that you'll have a one off year that you don't vote because of some family emergency that took you away or something else, but like you become a voter. And so it's that first hurdle that becomes really important. And college has happens to be one of the structures that we can help do that because it's the first time so many students have been able to vote in their on our campuses. And we have a legal requirement to do that from the higher ed act right, the Federal hieratic, we also have an ethical and moral and educational, I think, purpose for doing that. And so we don't talk about how folks should vote, we don't talk about those kinds of things. We're trying to make sure that the education is there to help make sure that students know the rights that students understand how to navigate the process. And a lot of that trickles over. So on a campus like heartland, it often means that other members of the community are seeing that right. A lot of community colleges host polling sites in their communities. And they're not primarily even reaching students, because many of them don't have residential students. They're reaching the community, right? The community and community college is really important, right? That's part of the history they call democracies. Colleges, right. And so I think that that that piece is, is really important, you know, and I think part of our roles is to just help lift that up to help realize that while we realize our students want to vote, they hadn't been voting as high levels as we perceived and that we can help them do that. And we don't know how they're voting like, I don't there's exit polls, there's other things but like, I'm not tracking, I don't have any way of tracking that that's not my goal is not the school is not to indoctrinate other than saying, like, you're part of our democracy, and you have rights and responsibilities that come with being a part of that. And so thinking about what that role is, and what that role is not just at the ballot box, but what that role is, as whatever professional, you're going to become, I think becomes really important. You know, I do also just want to say, to pivot slightly, like Heartland engagement with us has been really critical. And so we were excited recently. And I think this is part of how we got in touch Steve, right to recognize one of your students as part of our second annual student voting on our own. And so we recognized about 175 college students across the country across 39. States just about a month ago.
Yeah, our student Hunter Spencer made that. Right. And that's out of tremendous number of students nationwide that only has what 10%, something like that, that are involved. Yeah, that on a roll.
So you know, Hunter was nominated by one of your contacts, who helps lead the voting coalition and his leadership position with Portland's Political Science Club, some of the work he's done around partisan voter activities, you know, helping to have different ways that Heartland can be engaged, I think, has been a really critical and prime example of the work that college students around the country have been doing right. And so to be able to lift up those stories of students who've helped find polling campuses on campus who've hosted candidate forums that bring candidates from all the political spectrum, you know, her running for an office to campus so that students and community members can hear directly from them. That's the kind of work that we see that students are doing, and that we're trying to kind of lift up and also trying to help them, you know, see what other campuses are doing to get ideas. Right. And so I think students like Hunter, that are why Heartland is doing as well as it's doing are why we're seeing college student voting rates increase. And, you know, and why, frankly, I do the work I do.
Well, it's interesting to to see, you know, not every student who's engaged with this, or every student that just is, you know, more informed in decides to take place in voting activities is motivated to do some of that, you know, go that extra mile like, but one thing that some of these students do in these civic engagement efforts is they they volunteer to work at the polling places to see a little bit more about that process, which is completely nonpartisan. It's required to be nonpartisan. So this is an activity where, if you have questions or concerns or just want to learn more about the process, and how it works, this is first In knowledge, you you're helping move it along. Yeah. And
that's definitely something we encourage campuses to do, which is to encourage not just students, but other faculty and staff to serve as poll workers, right as the workers who are helping to administer our elections. You know, Steve, I don't know if you've had a chance to do that in your in your life. But it's, it's definitely one of the most rewarding experiences you can have. And you meet folks in your community that you've never met before. I am a huge fan of different methods of voting and having early voting and vote by mail and all of these different methods that allow folks to have safe and secure ways to cast their their ballots. But I love the in person element of it. Like when I am able to go and get my sticker and see people in my community and like, physically kind of cast my ballot, there's kind of a joy it brings to me and I think that giving folks the opportunity to be part of that side of the process really helps them understand part of an essential element about how our democracy works.
So as we wrap up here, I wonder if you could just talk a little bit more about where you see this going, and what goals that organization might have to get, especially community colleges involved, because there are different student populations in a number of different places and community colleges, I would say have some of the most diverse student populations across the country, because if we do so many different things that universities don't always do, or private colleges, talk about what you'd like to see the organization do to promote more involvement in community colleges?
That state is a great question. And I will say not only do you say, but the data bears it out that our community colleges, you know, our the diversity of our higher ed system, right and, and have had that place in our kind of ecosystem. And so you couldn't have set up a better question for me, but part of our goal is to really enhance our recruitment of community colleges, I will also say, of what the federal government calls minority serving colleges and universities, so Hispanic serving institutions, historically black colleges and universities, there's other types. And a lot of those also happen to overlap with community colleges, right. So, you know, as you speak to that kind of diversity. And so part of how we've been doing that is we've, you know, we've talked about the cohort, bringing cohorts of campuses together around states, we also bring cohorts of campuses together in what we call communities of practice. So we have communities of practice for community colleges, and also for HBCUs and HSI 's. And we have community colleges who participate just in the community college one, but who also participate in the Hispanic Serving Institution ones. And those groups are working with fellows that we have that are, I should back up for a second and say that the work that Colin does is with six full time staff members for the whole entire country. But we've added seven Community of Practice fellows who are faculty or senior administrators, at our campuses at either an HSI or community college, or historically black college or university, who have been doing the work successfully there who've been studying almonds, who've been implementing pieces of it, who are then working with cohorts of these campuses of folks from these campuses to have monthly calls to talk about what's working to create resources that benefit all of the campuses across all And and frankly, any campus that wants to come to our website, all of our materials are free to participate in to share. And so part of what we're doing is trying to figure out some of the things that are working right, and to be able to share them and to be able to start to do some studying of them, right. So like which of these things work better, right. And so one of the things we constantly talk about is the need to institutionalize different structures and processes. So the same way you and I might be asked to if we want to update our voter registration, when we go to the DMV to change our address, or, you know, get a new ID, we want to make sure that campuses have ways that we reach all students. So when they get a student ID or they asked if they want to register to vote, or if they need to update it. If they after they registered register for classes, might there be a pop up window that says hey, do you need to register to vote? Do you need to update your voter registration? Because you change addresses? If they change their address in the online system? Is there a space for that the one set of folks, all students interact with our faculty, right, particularly at community colleges, where so many of them don't have the time necessarily to participate in clubs and after school activities kind of things, right? And so are we giving them the nonpartisan information that they can share in just a factual way in their syllabus in, you know, in their course, whatever course management system software you have, where they can say, hey, you know, we're 30 days from this deadline for this local election. And if you want to vote, here's what you need to do that right. And they don't have to be experts, they can just point to a set of resources. And so that's kind of the work. We're trying to make sure that every eligible student is asked if they want to participate and give them the tools to do that if they choose to.
Well, Jen, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us about your organization and the initiatives that have been happening in colleges across the country and at Heartland Community College.
Well, thank you, Steve, and thanks to the entire heartland, Community College community to your voting cool Listen to Hunter and go Hawks.
Dr. Jen Donna Gaul Goldman is executive director of the all in campus democracy challenge at Civic nation. We spoke about the organization's initiatives to work across the nation with colleges to engage students in civic participation. If you are interested in other interviews about political science, civic engagement or other topics, subscribe to random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you found this one. Thanks for listening
