Experts say the college vote is being intentionally suppressed — here’s what to know about gerrymandering in college towns
Many state legislatures make it intentionally difficult for college students to vote by gerrymandering their districts, creating polling places miles away from campus that can disincentivize casting a ballot.
This article is republished as a part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
Voting on Campus: Students at North Carolina A&T made it to the polls in 2020, despite complications due to gerrymandering and the pandemic. Courtesy of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
With many students registering to vote where they go to college, the youth vote is large in college towns. The youth and college-educated vote has historically leaned Democratic, and was essential in propelling President Biden to victory in the 2020 presidential election. But as states redraw their legislative maps, many college campuses fall victim to the practice of gerrymandering, which is the manipulation of districts to favor one political party over another.
Typically, the party in power will redistrict in its favor, although Republican legislatures use this practice more often than ones controlled by Democrats.
“Republicans have sought to isolate college towns in terms of gerrymandering,” said Dr. John White, a professor of politics at Catholic University. “The vote in college towns skews heavily Democratic for lots of reasons, especially views on social issues.”
Some colleges and universities, like Villanova University, can have up to four different polling locations for students who live on campus, but none of the polling places are actually on the campus.
Students have to travel off campus, sometimes up to several miles, in order to vote. With many universities not giving students Election Day off of classes, students are forced to compromise their attendance in order to cast their ballots. What should be a quick process turns into a much larger time commitment, including traveling to polling locations, waiting in line, and then eventually heading back to campus.
In many college towns, the legislators in charge of redistricting want to suppress or divide the youth vote.
“A majority of a population that, if students were to get registered and vote, they could have real sway, especially on local councils, and so gerrymandering becomes a really potent tool for officials who would like to keep that power in their own hands to draw lines that dilute the student vote,” said David Daley, a senior communications fellow at FairVote, a nonpartisan organization that researches and promotes voting reforms to make voting more accessible and representative in the United States. “And then, even if students do show up, they find that it is harder to speak with one voice on the issues that matter to them.”
Students and professors involved in Villanova University’s Let’s Vote ‘Nova voting initiative directed students to shuttles on Election Day to make sure they got to the correct polls. Courtesy of The Villanovan Photography.
Gerrymandering as disincentivizing
Making it difficult for college students to vote — many of whom may vote in their first elections their freshman year of college — can potentially have negative impacts on their voting habits for the rest of their lives.
“Students are not all that different from every other American who gets to vote, and that is that convenience matters,” said Nancy Thomas, the director of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts University. “And the more convenient voting is, the more likely it is that somebody is going to turn out. There is certainly a correlation between convenience and turnout.”
College towns also include long-term residents, but Daley said the consequences of the gerrymandered town are not as severe for long-term residents as they are for college students.
“The 55-year-old white guy who lives in town, he didn’t have to prove how badly he wanted to vote by taking, you know, a shuttle across town,” Daley said. “It’s always college students who have to show how badly they value it and work harder in order to have that right.”
Students posed with their sample ballots ahead of voting in the 2020 election. Courtesy of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
Students struggle to vote
With college students already being busy with classes and extracurricular activities and also managing their personal lives, voting can seem like a burden that there is not any time to spare for.
Many students struggle with voting in their college towns and end up mailing in absentee ballots to their hometowns or abstaining from voting altogether. Especially when colleges hold classes on Election Day, students may not have the time or motivation to get to the polls.
“I think a lot of Villanova students chose not to vote in Pennsylvania due to the way our campus was split up,” recent Villanova graduate Sarah Wiesniewski said. “I heard a lot of students complain that it was too complicated, or they did not have a transportation method to get to polling sites. It definitely decreased the amount of voters from our campus which decreased interest in politics overall.”
During the November 2022 midterm elections, Wiesniewski was enrolled in a course titled “Media and Politics.” The students in the class partnered with the university’s nonpartisan voting organization, Let’s Vote ’Nova, which is run through the Student Government Association, for a semester-long project.
From tabling and helping students to vote, to presenting to other classes about Let’s Vote ’Nova and how it was there to help students get registered, to manning the shuttle stops on Election Day to make sure students were getting on the correct vehicles to the correct polling locations, students in the class worked hard to make sure other Villanova students were able to vote, even though the campus was heavily gerrymandered.
“Let’s Vote ’Nova really opened my eyes to student experiences and perceptions of voting,” Wiesniewski said. “I learned that many students aren’t interested in voting from the jump. So colleges who experience gerrymandering not only have to try and resolve one issue but rather two: getting students interested in voting to begin with but also navigating different voting wards.”
Gerrymandering is especially common at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), like North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
Tylik M. McMillan is a 2019 graduate of North Carolina A&T, and he became well-versed in the topic of gerrymandered HBCUs while attending the university.
“We always see a target to our communities, but I think it’s important that we get ahead of the ball beforehand,” McMillan said. “Whether it’s like going to our state legislatures and encouraging a commission … to redistrict.”
Now, McMillan works in the civil rights space, doing political advising and movement strategy for issues that affect Gen Z, like student debt cancellation, police reform and voting rights. A political science major while at North Carolina A&T, McMillan went into college knowing he wanted to get involved with the campus voting scene.
He was aware that North Carolina A&T fell victim to gerrymandering before starting as a student, but it took getting to campus and getting involved with voting to realize how much of an issue gerrymandering was for students.
“I wasn’t aware of the severity of it until actually having to, you know, do the on-the-ground work,” McMillan said.
When students on his campus had to reregister to vote every year based on where they were living on campus, his voting advocacy was met with resistance from students who did not want to go through the hassle of re-registering.
“Just trying to get them to do it was the struggle,” McMillan said of registering to vote.
McMillan shared that even registering to vote had to be incentivized for students because of how time-consuming the process was. Especially when students had done it in years past, they did not want to go through the process and fill out the forms again.
In addition to reregistering, North Carolina A&T students faced other issues, like faraway polling locations, shutdowns of early voting sites and strict voter ID laws.
Voting strategies in a gerrymandered district
While voting in gerrymandered districts may be difficult and frustrating, there are ways students can encourage other members of the student body to exercise their civic duty.
“My advice would be to encourage your friends to vote with you,” Wiesniewski said. “It can be really rewarding to know you did your civic duty, and what’s better than having that experience with your friends. Friends can help you navigate the system, learn about candidates and issues, and be there to carpool to voting sites.”
McMillan urges students to keep in mind the importance of their vote, despite the obstacles they may face.
“Elections have consequences, and elections also have opportunities,” McMillan said. “And no matter how difficult the challenge may be, we just have to keep fighting to ensure that voting is accessible.”
Colleges can do more for their students when it comes to voting as well.
“The institutions should be doing everything that they can to ensure that students can exercise their civil right to vote,” Thomas of the Institution for Democracy and Higher Education at Tufts said. “And that might mean fighting for a polling location on campus, or it might mean beefing up educational programs around the mechanics of voting.”
Thomas believes colleges can do more to ensure that students vote.
“We really need to put our energies into motivating students to follow through once they are registered,” she said.
Thomas’ organization puts out a yearly voting report, which analyzes the voting behavior of college students. The data is broken down by demographics and even by departments. She advises that colleges analyze that data and identify the gaps in who’s voting, which are usually found in STEM departments.
“Look at the fields of study and see where the gaps are and fill them,” she said.
FairVote, the advocacy group where Daley works, focuses its efforts on finding better ways to vote that would render gerrymandering useless and make the voting process more representative.
“The more we’re able to mainstream and expand the usage of rank choice voting, it’s a great tool for voters especially in gerrymandered districts to come closer to electing someone who represents their politics,” Daley said.
Daley encouraged colleges and universities to hold discussions about gerrymandering and voting, especially since many universities have access to experts in the field within their political science or government departments.
“Political science departments ought to be very active and involved in talking about the effects of the way we hold elections on representation,” he said. “Universities are great places to be holding these types of forums and discussions and panels.”
Lydia McFarlane (she/her) is a senior at Villanova University, majoring in Communication and Political Science, and pursuing a career in journalism. Previously, she has interned with Resolve Philadelphia and Education Week, and will join The Hill’s editorial team as an intern this fall. She is particularly interested in questions of identity, race, and intersectionality, and hopes to tell the stories of those whose voices have been historically quieted with her career as a journalist.
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This article is republished as a part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org. The Democracy Day project is supported by Democracy Fund and sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
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