Student-Led Voter Engagement Innovation
Even the best civic engagement plans can falter without student engagement and integration into already-used technologies. At Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, students like Charlie Stephens have stepped up to ensure peers are able to cast their ballots in every election. To do this, Charlie embraced TurboVote, and came up with novel solutions to increase students’ engagement with LSU’s TurboVote site within existing student technology.
“I appreciate the ease of use and low barrier to access information regarding the civic process to be the best thing about TurboVote,” Charlie explained. “It also allows Geaux Vote to track our impact on campus and at the ballot box.”
Regarding LSU’s voter engagement work in 2022, Charlie shared that he is, “...most proud of our efforts to institutionalize voter registration and engagement by integrating TurboVote into a homepage button on CampusGroups for club management.” Charlie also worked with campus planning and development to create the first comprehensive listing of residential addresses at the university.
LSU began using the CampusGroups community platform (branded as TigerLink for their campus) in 2021. Charlie coordinated with campus leadership, including the Dean of Students, a Graduate Assistant for Involvement, and the Campus Life Marketing & Communications department, to develop a way to capture students’ attention and direct them toward their TurboVote site within this new platform.
“With this help, we were able to include the TurboVote link on TigerLink on August 29, 2021, only a few weeks after it was launched as the new campus engagement software at the university,” Charlie notes. LSU linked to its TurboVote site from an image on the main page of TigerLink to get around having to create a popup, extension, or other solution from scratch.
LSU campus housing also did not have mailing addresses, which made it difficult for students to understand how they were supposed to register without an address if they wanted to vote in Louisiana elections. Geaux Vote, the campus organization Charlie is part of, tackled this issue by working with LSU and the City of Baton Rouge to create and standardize these addresses. After this process was completed, Charlie shared this list of addresses with TurboVote to create their campus address dropdown menu, making it easier for students to find their address and register to vote.
When asked what he would advise to other students leading civic engagement and voter participation efforts on campus, Charlie responded, “Be persistent and be prepared with research about what the university’s peer institutions are doing in regards to civic engagement, and use that research as a catalyst to enable change on your campus through conversations with your university, department, and student leaders.”
In addition to these spot-on tips, it can be helpful to:
Leverage TurboVote customizations to flag campus-specific address formatting details.
Share your voter engagement program events with relevant media outlets, as Geaux Vote did with LSU’s student newspaper, the Reveille.
Put together an action plan in coordination with stakeholders and other implementers.
Although Charlie graduated from LSU in December and it’s his last semester with Geaux Vote, his work will help drive more voter engagement on campus for years to come, and prepare future student leaders to take up the torch.
