Last week, The Tufts Daily published an article about JumboVote, the non-partisan organization on campus that seeks to increase voter advocacy and civic engagement, and its effort to pass a resolution through the Tufts Community Union Senate to include voting information in syllabi. The goal of this resolution is to increase access to voting resources, especially for students of color and STEM students. We would like to clarify our position by explaining why including voting information in syllabi is a powerful tool for reducing the access disparities seen at Tufts and encouraging professors to adopt this effort into their syllabi.
JumboVote is proposing this resolution in response to disparities across our campus. The 2022 data from the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement revealed that only 33.1% of eligible Tufts students voted in the 2022 midterm election, a 10.7% drop from 2018. Even more alarming are the disparities among student groups. Eligible Black students had only an 18% voter turnout and eligible Hispanic students had only a 26% voter turnout. Furthermore, eligible students in the School of Engineering had a mere 26.5% voter turnout. To JumboVote, these disparities and low voting rate overall point to a lack of direct access to information, a key factor in helping students participate in elections.
Our low voting rates are alarming. Youth participation strengthens democracy by bringing unique perspectives to the table, building resilient communities and ensuring that our institutions truly represent different age groups and marginalized communities that have historically faced barriers to voting. Furthermore, Tufts relies on federal funding, which is potentially subject to change depending on the administration we vote into office. This directly affects students and faculty research, student loans and more. Also, national events, such as the detainment of recent Tufts graduate Dr. Rümeysa Özturk, shaped by the agendas of the political parties in power, directly affect the Tufts community. On a more local level, all Tufts students live in and participate in, to some extent, the greater Somerville and Medford areas, and are thereby affected by any policy changes and elections in the local area. Politics and elections affect every student, which is why those eligible to vote should do so, using their voices and bringing their experiences to the table. We recognize that voting can be difficult and confusing, which is why we are proposing this resolution to help.
We would also like to clarify some statistics on young people, and how they vote. While Political Science Professor Brian Schaffner mentioned that many adults cite a lack of interest as a reason for not voting, this statistic isn’t generalizable to college-aged students. 36% of young people share a lack of interest as a reason for not registering to vote while 48% of youth who didn’t vote shared that they heard “not much” or no information on registering to vote. Furthermore, research shows that direct access to information can help build interest in voting. Tufts’ Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement states that environments where youth “can learn, discuss, and wield political information can build confidence in political involvement and lead to higher likelihood of voting.”
Youth are interested in political action, care about the future of democracy and believe in the power of their generation to make a change, but may not have the tools to act on their beliefs. A survey completed by CIRCLE found that 55% of young people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and 76% believe their age group has the power to change things. Despite this belief in the ability to create change, many youth don’t feel prepared to make informed voting decisions. Youth belonging to historically marginalized groups feel less qualified. CIRCLE found that 34% of youth of color say they feel qualified to participate in politics, compared to 44% of white youth.
We want to help youth feel qualified to vote, and we know that a primary step in that is providing direct access to information. Although not every professor would agree to participate in the initiative, we want to reiterate that we are simply asking for another method of information exposure for students as they become accustomed to engaging civically, given that voting while in college is often a young person’s first real experience engaging with local, state and federal government entities. While crafting our resolution, we drew inspiration from other schools that have seen high success rates from including voting information in their syllabi. It’s also worth noting that the current syllabi given to students already provide valuable non-curricular information, such as information about Ears for Peers and the STAAR Center.
We agree with Schaffner’s assertion that a more effective way to get students to vote would be to have them pledge in person, contact them before elections and ensure that all students are surrounded by a supportive community that helps them understand how to be active citizens in their communities. We also recognize that while ideal, this is an impossible task for JumboVote to carry out due to a lack of institutional support for voting.
JumboVote has spearheaded the majority of voting initiatives at Tufts. Tufts students have the day off on Election Day, a voter information module during orientation, coordination with the mailroom for ballot processing, notary services, dedicated office hours and weekly tabling. These initiatives are either provided by or heavily supported by JumboVote. Students also have access to TurboVote — a service that JumboVote pays for — which helps students pledge to vote online, provides them with resources to research their ballots and sends them up-to-date text reminders before elections. TurboVote is the resource that professors would be encouraged to include in their syllabi, and is the closest that we can get to getting every eligible student on campus to pledge to vote, given that JumboVote lacks the budget to hire students to pledge others to vote, the membership to have adequate volunteers and the institutional access to all students.
Truth be told, we would strongly support more comprehensive university-wide action to encourage eligible voters to participate in civic life. Still, we believe that including voting resources in class syllabi is an important and practical first step. Direct access to information is critical to increasing youth civic participation, and conversations about voting can foster a sense of efficacy, empowering young people to engage in the democratic process. For that reason, we encourage students and professors alike to spread voter registration information in any way they can; we can start simple, with our syllabi.
