HARVARD VOTES Getting eligible Harvard students to vote in US elections shouldn’t be hard, should it? After all, the University prides itself on being a training ground for emerging leaders, inculcating into successive generations of students the values and importance of civic engagement and democratic governance. But it turns out that many of these same students don’t exercise what is arguably democracy’s core right and responsibility while at Harvard: showing up at the polls. Voting participation numbers for young Americans are low. Indeed, in some elections, particularly when a presidential race is not at the top of the ticket, turnout can be abysmally low. For example, in the 2014 midterm elections, a record low 19.9 percent of voters aged 18–29 cast a vote according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. That year, students at Harvard voted at only a slightly higher rate than their peers around the country, with an estimated 24 percent of eligible undergraduate and graduate students turning out for an election that tipped control of the US Senate and statehouses around the country. Getting Out the Youth Vote Academics and commentators struggle to explain why the overwhelming majority of young people stay away from the polls, in 2014 and most other recent elections. Reflecting on the 2014 vote, Peter Levine, who previously headed CIRCLE at Tufts, posited that campaigns simply failed to mobilize young voters. Looking back at the dismal 2014 turnout figures, he pointed to a Pew Research Center survey concluding that voters aged 18–28 were least likely to 8
Communiqué
Spring 2019
Melissa Winslow Axelrod
Ash Faculty, Staff, and Students Lead the Charge in a School-wide Campaign to Get Students to the Polls
