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MTV launches campaign for more polling stations on campuses

Texas A&M University

One of the newly established polling stations is at Texas A&M University in Galveston.

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Sara Swann
By Sara SwannFeb 25, 2020
Sara Swann

As a staff writer, Sara covers a variety of democracy reform issues, including voting rights, money in politics, gerrymandering and civic education. Prior to joining The Fulcrum in May 2019, Sara reported on local government on Maryland's Eastern Shore for the USA Today network. She is a native West Virginian and a graduate of Syracuse University.

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College students represent a crucial voting bloc in the election, but for many young people voting isn't readily accessible.

A group of organizations promoting youth voting is partnering with MTV to change that. Launched last week, +1 the Polls is a first-of-its-kind campaign that aims to ease voting for students by establishing new polling locations on college campuses across the country.

The 2018 midterm election saw a massive increase in voter turnout from college students: More than 40 percent of them voted, double what happened in the midterm four years before. Expectations for youth turnout are similar, if not higher, for this year's presidential election — especially since Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, boosted by significant support from younger voters, has surged forward as the Democratic front-runner.

The Alliance for Youth Organizing, Students Learn Students Vote Coalition and Campus Vote Project are collaborating with MTV for the +1 the Polls campaign. Since 2012, more than 1,000 polling locations have closed, making it harder for young people to cast their ballots. Together these groups are offering resources and funding opportunities to open and protect polling places on public, private and community college campuses.

Four new polling locations, on campuses with a combined student population of 73,000, have been established so far. Three will be available for voters on Super Tuesday a week from now — at the College of Canyons in Santa Clarita, Calif., Texas State University in San Marcos and the Galveston campus of Texas A&M University. The fourth, at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., will only be used for the general election.

The campaign is also on course to establish another dozen polling locations in seven states, on campuses with a combined student population of 438,000. Two more are in Texas, one is in reliably Democratic New Jersey but the rest are in states on the list of presidential battlegrounds: four in Florida, two in Ohio and one each in Minnesota, Arizona and Georgia.

Two historically black colleges and universities are part of this initiative: St. Philips College in San Antonio and Bethune Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Any groups or individuals interested in participating in the +1 the Polls campaign can request a toolkit and sign up for office hours and webinars that offer resources on how to help expand campus voting accessibility. The organizers are also offering "minigrants" to those who want to help, but don't have the financial means to do so.

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‘Obama, You're 15 Years Too Late!’

The mid-decade redistricting fight continues, while the word “hypocrisy” has become increasingly common in the media.

The origin of mid-decade redistricting dates back to the early history of the United States. However, its resurgence and legal acceptance primarily stem from the Texas redistricting effort in 2003, a controversial move by the Republican Party to redraw the state's congressional districts, and the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. This decision, which confirmed that mid-decade redistricting is not prohibited by federal law, was a significant turning point in the acceptance of this practice.

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Hand of a person casting a ballot at a polling station during voting.

Gerrymandering silences communities and distorts elections. Proportional representation offers a proven path to fairer maps and real democracy.

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In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." (Watch the video of his speech.) As a politically aware high school senior, I was shocked by the venom and anger in his voice—the open, defiant embrace of systematic disenfranchisement, so different from the quieter racism I knew growing up outside Boston.

Today, watching politicians openly rig elections, I feel that same disbelief—especially seeing Republican leaders embrace that same systematic approach: gerrymandering now, gerrymandering tomorrow, gerrymandering forever.

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Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

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In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

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How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court during an oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford to call for an end to partisan gerrymandering on October 3, 2017 in Washington, DC

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How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

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