Young and college student voters showed up in force in 2022, which saw one of the highest youth voter turnout rates ever in a midterm election, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). The Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition, a nonpartisan network of more than 400 national, state, and local organizations dedicated to growing the student vote, gathered today to recognize 11 exemplary organizations for their extraordinary, nonpartisan efforts to make voting easier, more accessible, and more equitable for college students in their communities and throughout the US, including Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project.
Campus Vote Project received the 2022 SLSV Award for exemplifying the SLSV Guiding Principle of “Contributing to an Equitable Democracy” for its work ensuring that every college student in the US has the information and resources they need to confidently participate in their democracy, helping create new resources and conduct workshops that help campuses throughout the country welcome student voters into the voting process.
In the ten years Campus Vote Project has been working with campuses and empowering student voters, we have grown the Voter Friendly Campus program to support nearly 300 campuses around the country, training nearly 400 student Democracy Fellows, and conducting dozens of student voting summits each year. Throughout all this work we seek to meet the needs of a diversity of campuses and students, including creating paid positions and spaces that center Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Minority-Serving Institutions, and Community Colleges.
“Campus Vote Project is grateful to SLSV for this recognition and their continued partnership in advancing the student vote. College students are critical, but often overlooked members of our democracy,” said Mike Burns, National Director of Campus Vote Project. “I am incredibly proud of our CVP team, who continue to impact change on campuses across the country.”
“The 2022 SLSV Award recipients exemplify the guiding principles that have fueled the growth and success of the nonpartisan student vote movement,” said SLSV Coalition Co-Founder and Executive Director Clarissa Unger. “Each of them performed amazing work that made a tangible difference in the lives and experiences of voters in 2022. We’re proud to count them as partners, along with hundreds more organizations doing the work every day to help college students make their voices heard in our democracy.”
The awards, given to leaders at the national, state, local and college campus levels, were announced at the closing ceremony of the SLSV Coalition’s annual Post-Election Gathering on December 8, a three-day event which featured speaking appearances by US Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Dr. Nasser H. Paydar and White House Office of Public Engagement Senior Advisor Hannah Bristol.
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Fair Elections Center is a national, nonpartisan and non-profit voting rights and election reform organization based in Washington, D.C. which uses litigation, public education and advocacy to remove barriers to registration and voting, particularly those disenfranchising underrepresented and marginalized communities, and to improve election administration. Its non-partisan Campus Vote Project works to institutionalize students’ civic engagement into the academic mission of colleges and universities.
