When it comes to voting, UW-Madison students have regularly reigned Big Ten champs. There’s never been a formal competition for the highest voter turnout among the 14 universities, but reports from nine of the schools show UW a clear leader.
During the 2014 midterm elections, 36 percent of eligible UW-Madison students voted — a rate four times greater than some Big Ten schools, and nearly double the national average for college students.
But UW-Madison’s grip on that voting title appears to be loosening. In the 2016 presidential election, the university’s voting rate fell below the national average for college campuses and was middle-of-the-pack among Big Ten schools. One reason, voting experts say, is simple: the state’s strict new voter ID law.
“Voter ID legislation by definition makes it more difficult to vote, and we’ve definitely seen a change in Wisconsin,” says Kathy Cramer, director of the Morgridge Center for Public Service. “That’s undeniable.” A recent study conducted by a UW-Madison political scientist (with funding from the Dane County clerk’s office), found that the recent Wisconsin voter ID law could have deterred 17,000 to 23,000 people from voting in just Dane and Milwaukee counties in 2016.
Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell says that, at minimum, hundreds of UW-Madison students didn’t vote because of changes to the voter ID law. But he says the majority of these students wouldn’t have been represented in the study because it wasn’t designed to measure student voting.
Cramer and others worry that this trend will continue. “Chances are, given the increased burden put on students to cast a vote, [turnout] is likely to go down,” she says.
Voting rates for younger people tend to be much lower than the turnout among older segments of the population. This divide is even more prominent in midterms when there’s no presidential election.
Nationwide, 36 percent of eligible people turned out to vote in the 2014 midterms. Of those 30-and-younger, 21 percent voted. On college campuses, about 19 percent voted. The reports for on-campus data and Big Ten schools comes from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, which UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden says are accurate.
Edie Goldenberg, a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan, learned about these trends a few months ago. When thinking about how to get younger people to vote, she came up with the idea of a conference-wide competition among Big Ten schools.
“I just felt, having taught students all these years, that I wanted to try address that, try to understand why and try to find ways that would help us increase the civic engagement of our students,” Goldenberg says.
In March, she brought the idea to Mark Schlissel, the University of Michigan president, who then reached out to the other 13 Big Ten schools.
Six months later, every Big Ten president and chancellor signed onto a letter announcing the Big Ten Voting Challenge, a non-partisan competition that “seeks to increase voter registration and turnout among students on all of our campuses.” Goldenberg says all of the other campuses were excited and quick to get on board.
Two universities will get trophies after the 2018 midterms — the school with the highest turnout and the one with the most improved turnout. The challenge will use data compiled by the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University and subsequently shared by individual institutions to determine winners.
Wisconsin voters as a whole, like UW-Madison students, have historically voted in high numbers compared to the rest of the country. In the 2014 midterms, almost 57 percent of eligible Wisconsinites cast ballots. Only Maine had a higher turnout that year.
But in 2016, Wisconsin’s voter turnout declined from the 2012 presidential election. A drop also occurred on UW-Madison’s campus, from 53.1 percent in 2012 to 48.8 percent last year. It was one of three Big Ten universities, along with Michigan State University and the University of Minnesota, to have a lower turnout in 2016 than in 2012, according to reports from 11 Big Ten Colleges.
Of the states with Big Ten schools, two now have strict voter ID laws — Wisconsin and Indiana. Cramer says there may be several reasons for the decline aside from voter ID, noting that Hillary Clinton didn’t visit Wisconsin after the primary.
The university is now strategizing how to get students to the polls next year. “There’s a lot of different entities on campus coordinating together to provide information and to help students register well in advance of the election,” Cramer says.
UW-Madison junior Billy Welsh, who was student government’s vote coordinator last fall, attributes the university’s historically high voter turnout to strong campus activism. Last year, the Associated Students of Madison helped register around 3,500 students to vote, Welsh says. Other groups, such as the Vote Everywhere Ambassador Team, College Democrats and College Republicans, also helped register students to vote.
One reason that voter ID affects college students in particular is that many don’t have Wisconsin driver’s licenses, either because they are from out of state or haven’t yet started driving. In recognition of this, UW-Madison at orientation now offers new students a free voting-compliant ID card when they receive their Wiscard student ID, according to university spokesperson Meredith McGlone. During last year’s election, the university also set up stations at campus polling locations where valid IDs could be printed on the spot.
For the last election, McGlone says the university issued about 7,400 cards, though some were reissues for lost cards.
While UW-Madison is battling to maintain its previous midterm voting rate, other universities have ambitious goals to improve. Eligible students at the University of Michigan voted at a 14 percent rate in the 2014 midterms. In 2018, Goldenberg hopes to double that — at a minimum.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Goldenberg says. “In my more optimistic moods, I’m trying to think of getting us up well into the 30s, the 35 percent range. I have no idea if we’re going to be able to achieve that. It’s quite a big leap.”
Burden says college students have the potential to be a powerful voting bloc. “If students in particular register at the place they’re enrolled — so in Madison or these other college towns — they have real influence on elections results,” Burden said. “Just the presence of thousands of young adults voting in one place causes politicians to pay attention to them.”
Editor’s note: This article was corrected to note that the Institute for Democracy & Higher Education at Tufts University is not judging the Big Ten Voting Challenge. However, it compiles data for each school about voter turnout, which the schools have agreed to share.