NESCAC Votes, as the nonpartisan initiative is called, is seeking "to fulfill a responsibility of higher education to graduate informed and civically engaged citizens and to push for a more inclusive democracy," the colleges declared in their announcement statement.
The eleven schools are Bowdoin, Bates, Colby, Hamilton, Trinity, Amherst, Connecticut College, Middlebury, Williams, Tufts, and Wesleyan. Their first goal is to drive up the voting rate among their combined 31,000 students by at least eleven percentage points. That would add up to a 64 percent turnout in the 2020 elections.
The initiative addresses a longstanding problem of very low voter turnout among college students. Political scientists have found that voting (or not voting) is a habit, one often formed during young adulthood and lasting a lifetime. A remarkably high percentage of undergraduate students fail to form that habit, perhaps because of the residential mobility college life requires.
In the past few years, more colleges and universities have begun embracing civic participation and informed voting as part of their educational missions. At Bowdoin, Andrew Lardie, who works for the McKeen Center, launched the voting initiative Bowdoin Votes in 2016. He was also one of the drivers behind the formation of NESCAC Votes.
Inspiring young people to vote complements his work as associate director for service and leadership for the McKeen Center. “I think it's a fundamental aspect of a healthy life and an important part of our job as educators," he said. "And I happen to work in a department where our mandate is to help people understand how they fit into the common good."
For his work with young people, which includes "demystifying the governing and election process," Lardie is a finalist for a 2019 American Civic Collaboration Award, or Civvy. "Some of his big ideas include empowering any campus club or team to bring voter registration and absentee ballots to their group and lobbying the entire NESCAC athletic conference to commit to supporting civic learning and democratic engagement in 2020," according to The Civvys.
It's National Voter Registration Day!
In keeping with that model, Lardie and his student workers set up tables in Morrell Lounge and in Thorne Hall on Tuesday morning, National Voter Registration Day, to help students, staff, and faculty register to vote in Maine or another state, or request absentee ballots from their home state.
Penny Mack ’22 and Will Donaldson ’20 were stationed in Morrell Lounge by 9:00 a.m. when the effort officially kicked off. Students will work the tables all day, calling out to passersby, "Hey! Are you registered to vote?"
Both Mack and Donaldson—who've been hired this year by Bowdoin Votes to serve as McKeen Center Fellow for Election Engagement and Democracy Ambassador, respectively—said they were drawn to these campus jobs because of their nonpartisan nature.
Mack explained that after doing some campaign work in 2016 and 2018 she wanted to shift focus. "It was important to me to come at this issue in a nonpartisan way because I was hearing from people that they believed the system was messed up or that their vote didn't matter," she said.
Donaldson said he's disturbed by the amount of "outrage" in our political environment now. By focusing on voter turnout, he can work in a political space that's hard to find fault with. "I can't see how anyone can disagree with encouraging more voices in a democracy and more civic participation," he said.
Throughout the morning, students with new addresses stopped by to register to vote or to request an absentee ballot be sent to their SU box. Bowdoin Votes is covering all postage costs.
Jason Oliver ’20 stopped by to renew his Maine voter registration since his address had changed. A California native who has voted every year since he was eighteen, Oliver decided to switch his registration from California to Maine last year, partly because the political environment on campus was so exciting, and partly because he thought his vote could make more of a difference in the state.
"Last year had a different vibe around voting—everybody wanted to do it," Oliver said. "People wanted to go out and make a change."
