Marist Voting and Registration Rates Increase

The votes are in – on Sept. 19, Marist received a comprehensive report of campus voting and registration rates from the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections, revealing an increase in student participation across the board. 

This change comes after a number of student-led initiatives on the college’s campus sought to galvanize students’ civic engagement; but despite notable success, Marist continues to lag behind national averages. 

In February, Dr. Melissa Gaeke, a political science professor at Marist, attended the National Campaign for Political and Civic Engagement conference at Harvard University alongside Marist alumna Julia McCarthy and Marist students Pam Armas ‘20 and Gabrielle Salko ‘21. 

After the conference, Marist partnered with the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University and joined the institute’s National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) to gather data about student civic participation. 

The data gathered shows that Marist’s voting rates increased by 12.7% and registration rates increased by 16.5%, approximately, between 2014 and 2018. Marist maintains a high voter registration rate – almost 80% – but less than half of those eligible votes went to the polls. Other statistics share more encouraging insight; namely, the number of absentee ballots submitted skyrocketed from 79 in 2014 to 428 in 2018. 

McCarthy spearheaded this effort with her honors senior thesis project, organizing voter registration across campus ahead of the 2018 midterms.

While happy with the improvements, McCarthy said, “it’s really disappointing to see where we started.” Even with the increases, Marist’s statistics lie well below the national average. The 2018 voting rates for all institutions in 2018 was 39.1%, compared to Marist’s 30.5%. In 2014, less than 20% of the student population voted. 

McCarthy now works at When We All Vote, a nonpartisan not-for-profit dedicated to closing the race and age gap in voting, which has enhanced her own insight into the challenges that face young voters across the nation. Certain states do not allow student IDs as a valid forms of identification or enforce stricter voting registration criteria, among other challenges. Other times, McCarthy noted that potential voters talk themselves out of going to the polls, daunted by worries of not being well-informed enough to cast a vote. 

“You need to meet people where they already are and you need to give people the tools to empower them to feel as though they are qualified and capable of casting a ballot in an educated way,” McCarthy said. She added that “you don’t have to be a political science major and you don’t have to watch the news every second of every day to be an educated voter or to know which issues matter to you most and to be able to find out what candidates align with your values.”

Moving forward, Gaeke said that Marist may join with ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, a non-profit organization that would analyze Marist’s NSLVE data and help “change civic culture and institutionalize democratic engagement activities and programs” on campus, per the organization’s website. 

McCarthy echoed the importance of institutionalizing on-campus initiatives so that when student leaders graduate, these programs live on and become accessible to more students. Working with First Year Programs and including voter registration tables at orientation would further integrate these initiatives to reach more students and potential voters, changing the college culture toward civic engagement. 

“‘Advancing the Social Good’ is a pillar of [Marist’s] strategic plan, and increasing students’ civic participation needs to be a priority in achieving that goal,” McCarthy said.