Resources

Resources

The Faculty Guide to Student Voting in Your Classroom sorts resources into three categories: registration, education, and turnout. Given all of the incredible organizations working to support student voting efforts, this page highlights only a handful of the resources that exist. For more in-depth material, please check out the complete compiled list of student voting resources. 

How and Where to Vote

•  Campus Vote Project’s state-by-state guide offers information on voting regulations for students.
• ALL IN Out of State College Student Voting Guide
• How to Vote in Your State Guides – guide to everything you need to know to register and vote in your state.

Voter Education

• Periclean Voting Modules – set of curricular resources is for faculty, across all disciplines, who are interested in incorporating nonpartisan voter education into the curriculum. They represent a wide range of geographic regions and can be tailored for the fine arts, humanities, social sciences, and STEM.
• Keep 10 easy Steps, but simplify it
• A Band of Voters’ Vote Club Toolkit offers voter education resources and five key steps for hosting and running a Vote Club, with ready-to-share social media graphics, discussion guides, and interactive digital booklets.
• Nancy Thomas, of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education, wrote a blogpost, Educating for the 2020 Election: A Call To Action, with points for non-partisan discussion and dialogue in the classroom, in the context of the 2020 Election, published by the Association of American Colleges & Universities.

Steps to Take on Your Campus

Find out whether your school participates in the All In Campus Democracy Challenge, a national awards program recognizing colleges and universities for their commitment to increasing student voting rates, or is a Voter Friendly Campus, a designation awarded to institutions that develop plans to coordinate administrators, faculty, and student organizations in civic and electoral engagement.

Rutgers University’s RU Voting initiative offers a great model for universities to create a one-stop shop for students to register, get informed, and successfully cast their ballots this November.

IDHE Resources

The Institute for Democracy and Higher Education (IDHE), located at Tufts University’s Tisch College, has published many resources for faculty. Among them:

Supplementing the original Election Imperatives (Ten Recommendations to Increase College Student Voting and Improve Political Learning and Engagement in Democracy), IDHE’s Election Imperatives 2020: A Time of Physical Distancing and Social Action offers research-based recommendations for professors on ways to be involved in this and future elections, ranging from “nudging” (small reminders of deadlines and links) to managing politically charged issue discussions (pages 8-9).

Faculty across disciplines can review their institution’s NSLVE reports to see voting rates for students in their discipline. To see whether your institution participates in the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, check here.

IDHE has posted many resources for classroom teaching about political issues across disciplines.  You can find them all here. Some that might be helpful at this time are Readiness for Discussing Democracy in Supercharged Political Times and A Case for Academic Freedom.

IDHE also publishes short discussion guides, called our Making Sense of… guides for professors who want to add a discussion of a hot topic at the last minute.