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Students at the University of Vermont fill out voter registration forms to participate in March 2020.
Michelson is the dean of arts and sciences and a political science professor at Menlo College. Liñero-Lopez is the Ask Every Student program manager at the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition.
In the average lifetime there are a handful of major transitions during which an individual can reinvent themselves and their place in society. These are moments that stay with us forever, like moving to a new city, starting a new job, or joining the military. Or voting for the first time.
Reams of social science have demonstrated humans' powerful commitments to our identities. In any given situation, we ask ourselves, "What does someone like me do?" and then decide accordingly how we act, dress and, increasingly, how we engage with our democracy.
That's why the long-term health of our country depends on our ability to foster democratic participation as a core tenet of our population's identity. To do that, we need to create successful "civic transitions" for every American. Once someone has voted for the first time, they tend to adopt an identity as a voter, and then vote again in subsequent elections. Getting young people to adopt voter identities by inviting them to participate in our democratic processes can create a lifetime of civic engagement.
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In 2020, multiple student-serving organizations came together to help young people incorporate civic participation into their lives during a time of profound identity transition: enrolling in college. Through an initiative called Ask Every Student, they set out to increase college student voter registration by attempting to reach each individual student on nearly 200 participating campuses. An open-source framework enabled leaders to incorporate voter education and outreach into universal programs like student orientations and core curriculum courses. Campuses included private and public institutions, community colleges and minority-serving institutions such as historically Black colleges and universities.
An extensive study into the initiative's efficacy points to one clear conclusion: Just a few minutes of direct interaction has the power to profoundly impact a person's civic identity — especially when that person is new to the democratic process.
A survey of 2,267 students from 14 campuses that participated in the AES initiative (and approximately the demographics of the AES initiative as a whole) found that students who recalled hearing about an AES program on their campus said they were 8.3 percent more likely to register to vote, and 5.6 percent more likely to vote, than those who hadn't. Among first-year students — the group most likely to be experiencing profound life transitions at the time — those who recalled being encouraged to vote by an AES program on their campus were 14.2 percent more likely to register to vote.
In all, approximately 76.1 percent of students surveyed reported hearing about an AES program on their campus. Assuming a similar percentage holds true for the nearly 3 million total students enrolled in colleges that participated in AES, we estimate that millions of students were reached through this initiative and that tens of thousands of them registered to vote in part because of it.
Of course, registering to vote and voting are not the only acts of democratic engagement that matter. Community service, activism, dialogue across differences, and many other facets make up the full spectrum of a vibrant civic life. But by introducing college students to the bedrock functions of the democratic process we open the door for them to positively impact their communities in multiple ways.
One of the study's most exciting takeaways was the degree to which students shared information they learned from an AES program on their campus with their families. In our conversations with students at these campuses -- we held 24 focus groups across the 14 study campuses — students noted how they shared AES program information with their families, spreading the initiative's impact.
Most Americans will experience some kind of major life transition in the next decade. These times of transition, especially for young people, are an opportunity to shape their civic identity for the better — but only if we commit to reaching them where they are.
American democracy is experiencing its own transition moment, challenged by increasing partisan polarization, decreased confidence in public institutions, and increased incidents of anti-democratic attitudes and behaviors. Against this backdrop, applying the lessons of Ask Every Student at scale will foster participation and positive identities as voters, as well as strengthen our democracy.
Earlier this year, I joined in the work of Urban Rural Action, founded by Joe Bubman. URA's primary mission is to bring together Americans across geographic, political, racial, and generational divides to build relationships, strengthen collaboration skills, explore different perspectives and tackle issues that impact all communities.
Being fully transparent, I am often suspicious of bridge-building efforts and I initially was reluctant to fully embrace the work. This is not because I do not believe in the premise, but because the end goal is often simply civility. Put another way, if we all just agree to not critique or debate then we can all just get along. Joe and I have had this discussion and he admitted in his own reflection that "We bridge-builders too often view the problem through a narrow lens."
For many of us this is hard to admit, but even our well-intentioned initiatives privilege some voices over others and in subtle ways uphold the status quo. As a result, consensus is formed and we spend more time, in the words of Anand Giridharadas, marketing "the idea of generosity as a substitute for the idea of justice." Ghiridharas related this to what he called the Aspen Consensus, which says, "Do more good" — not "Do less harm." (The Aspen Institute from which this consensus is derived, is in a loose network of many of these bridge-building organizations.) Rarely is consensus a road to justice.
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This may be problematic to some of you, but our beloved President Abraham Lincoln stated, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it." Our calls for unity cannot come at the expense of those on the underside and while we are on the issue of slavery, we have to stop treating it as a footnote to American history and truly wrestle with how it has and continues to shape our nation.
Wrestling with our collective past has the potential to free us from guilt and move us toward reclaiming our shared humanity. As James Baldwin stated, "Guilt is a very peculiar emotion. As long as you are guilty about something, no matter what it is, you are not compelled to change it."
Wallowing in guilt is not the way forward, but neither is pretending that it never happened. Going along just to get along may be the easiest way to navigate this system, but it is also a sure way to maintain more of the same. Some of us need to become more comfortable in being uncomfortable. And perhaps even more challenging, some of us need to become comfortable in making others feel uncomfortable. It will be crucial to individual and shared growth. Too often we want to silence disruptors who insist on remembering, but every critic is not an enemy.
This past fall, I had the privilege of being chosen to participate in the Civic Saturday Fellowship, a program of Civic University. Civic Saturday is a civic analog to a faith gathering. Civic Saturdays are arranged in this format because the founders understood that organized religion has figured out a few things about how to bring people together, about how to create a language of common purpose and about how to use story and narrative to spark people's reckoning with their own shortcomings, weaknesses and aspirations.
Civic Saturdays serve to remind all of us that we are in this together, shaping the future of our communities and country. While we all approach it differently, we are working to realize the promise of our democracy. Many think democracy is already established, but democracy is an idea that is still being perfected and until we break our routines, democracy will remain static.
In one of my civic sermons I stated, "we have to embrace the discomfort that true patriotism requires and be willing to contend with difficult questions. An example of this would be to ask, how do African Americans hold in tension the legacy of systemic racism and have pride in this Country?" We are too quick to move past the fact that Black people arrived on these shores as legal property and even after their citizenship was achieved Black Americans' relationship with democracy has remained complicated.
This an issue that for many creates discord, but it must be acknowledged. So when we gather together to embrace democracy, we must hold on to that tension and refuse to flatten the texture and grain of our varied lived experiences. Many of us want to find ways that our voices can flourish together, but we must anticipate that it might take what sounds like struggle along the way. Perhaps through this grappling, we will save our civic souls.
Places with more climate change protests were found to have modest increases in youth voter registration, per recent research by CIRCLE at Tufts University.
The 2020 election not only saw a significant increase in youth voter turnout, but also prompted more young people to become active in social movements. However, continued growth will require additional support in the form of resources and collaboration, researchers found.
Half of people under 30 voted in last year's election — up from 39 percent in 2016, according to research from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. And more than a quarter of Americans ages 18-24 reported participating in at least one march or protest last year — a big jump from just 5 percent of young people in 2016.
The rise in both youth activism and youth voter turnout in 2020 led CIRCLE researchers to examine how the two trends connect. They found that young people who participated in social movement organizations gained more knowledge about the electoral process and voting rights.
For the first part of its research, which was mostly qualitative, CIRCLE identified and studied five social movement organizations, focused on climate change and gun violence issues, that were geographically and racially diverse: Sunrise Movement, Youth Climate Action Team, March for Our Lives, GoodKids MadCity and Palmetto Youth Movement.
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Although some of the people involved in these groups believe that voting alone is not sufficient to effect change, they do largely agree that voting is extremely important.
More than half of people who participated in these organizations said they learned a lot about how government elections affect their community, how to impact government policy and how to educate voters. A majority of young people also reported they learned a lot or a moderate amount about voting rights, how to get involved in local elections, how to help others register to vote and how to persuade people to vote.
While young people became more civically engaged last year, they also faced a number of challenges, including the Covid-19 pandemic and a national reckoning on racial injustice.
"Amidst these reiterative crises of health, social isolation, economic downturn and systemic racism, the young people in our study displayed outstanding resilience, mobilizing quickly to meet the needs of their communities and developing new solidarity practices," the CIRCLE researchers wrote in the report, released last week.
However, despite their resiliency, young activists still reported high rates of burnout, limited funding and complexities in organizational structure. To mitigate these issues, CIRCLE researchers offered several recommendations to voter engagement groups led by older people, funders and other organizations that collaborate with young people.
For voter engagement organizations, researchers recommended continuing collaborations with youth-led groups and amplifying their work, while also exploring new partnerships. Funders are encouraged to make more long-term investments to help with sustainability. And other organizations should look for ways to integrate "get out the vote" efforts with other issues, as well as offer leadership development opportunities for young people.
The second part of CIRCLE's study used quantitative analyses to show the links between youth voter turnout and youth activism. Researchers found a sizable increase in protest participation during Donald Trump's presidency, with a sharp spike in 2018. However, protest accessibility was not the same across the country. Young people in the Deep South and Great Plains had to drive on average more than 75 miles to the nearest in-person protest.
Simply having a protest did not have a measurable effect on voter registration, researchers found. Places where there were more protests about climate change did see modestly high rates of youth voter registration, though.
However, following the killing of George Floyd by police and the nationwide protests that ensued, voter registration among 18- and 19-year-olds saw a modest, but significant uptick.
To better tap into protests as a means for getting young people to the polls, CIRCLE researchers recommend organizers facilitate voter registration efforts and follow up with participants about voting in upcoming elections. Researchers also noted that many young activists may already be likely to vote, so organizers should partner with schools to target individuals who are less engaged with politics.
Coalition building is the bread and butter of the democracy reform movement. Working together helps organizations expand their reach and grow momentum for change.
A recent example of this collaborative nature is the merger, announced Tuesday, between Civic Nation, a civic engagement nonprofit, and We The Action, a community of more than 41,000 lawyers who offer pro bono services to address issues that include voting rights, racial justice and immigration.
Civic Nation houses several initiatives started during the Obama administration or by Barack and Michelle Obama themselves after they left the White House. We The Action will join the nonprofit as its seventh venture, alongside initiatives like It's On Us and When We All Vote.
"Civic Nation continues to grow and we are excited to welcome We The Action into the fold," said Civic Nation CEO Kyle Lierman. "We look forward to engaging their community of lawyers to continue to protect voting rights, advance gender equity, combat the Covid-19 pandemic and respond to crises wherever they arise."
Other recent mergers within the democracy reform community include End Citizens United and Let America Vote, Make America Dinner Again and Living Room Conversation, and the Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum.
Collaboration has been integral to Pearce Godwin's work with the Listen First Project, which aims to bring people together across differences. When first starting the organization in 2013, Godwin said his "instinct was to see if we can have a greater impact by working together, by collaborating to reach farther and impact greater than any one of us could alone."
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The Listen First Project has now grown its bridging divides coalition to more than 350 organizations across the country. Their collaborations consist of "all hands on deck" national efforts and smaller, more focused initiatives in local communities.
A newcomer to the Listen First Coalition is The Great Reset, a nonprofit that encourages civil conversations around divisive issues, such as health care, immigration and racial inequality. The Great Reset started two years ago with a simple gathering of people around Kalinda Fisher's dining table in Nashville, Tenn., and from there it has grown to establish community roundtables in 26 states and 10 countries.
Joining the Listen First Coalition has been beneficial for a small nonprofit like The Great Reset, Fisher said, because she can connect with other organizations and learn from them, rather than "reinventing the wheel" herself.
"I was simply thrilled to connect to other organizations that are working to empower others to have conversations and civil dialogue," Fisher said. "It's not about any one of us getting bigger and better and faster and further, it's about all of us doing well. And so that collaboration, to me, is imperative."
At a time when there are dire threats to American democracy and Congress is mired by partisan dysfunction, the only way to find real solutions is by "mobilizing we the people," said Carolyn Lukensmeyer, former executive director of the National Institute for Civil Discourse and founder of AmericaSpeaks.
A vast majority of Americans know about these issues and they want to do something about it, but they may not have the tools to do so or know how to get involved, Lukensmeyer said. As a result, over the last several years, there's been an explosion of groups dedicated to strengthening American democracy and building collaboration from the community level to a national scale.
"Now more than ever in the 30 years that I've been doing this work, it is a time where collaboration is both needed and more possible," Lukensmeyer said.
