Graphic by Trinity Kendrick ‘22
By Annabelle Shea ‘23
Staff Writer
According to a Tufts University study from the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement, 94.6 percent of eligible Mount Holyoke students registered to vote in the 2016 election, but only 73.2 percent of that group actually voted. Members of MHC Votes!, a new student initiative hoping to increase voter participation on campus, seek to address this disparity.
MHC Votes! was officially launched in June but started recruiting new students during the fall 2020 semester. The group gained momentum after two of its co-founders, Kate Murray ’22 and Jaxzia Perez ’22, participated in a student internship program with the nonpartisan organization Massachusetts Public Interest Research Groups.
Throughout the summer, Murray and Perez were joined by five other Mount Holyoke students to form the group MHC Votes! The mission of the organization, according to MHC Votes! co-founder and president of the Mount Holyoke Democrats Maggie Micklo ’21, is to achieve 100 percent eligible voter participation. “We want to both increase voter registration and close the gap between registration and voter turnout,” she said.
Despite Micklo’s involvement, MHC Votes! remains a nonpartisan organization. “The whole point was always to stay nonpartisan. We wanted to make sure we weren’t dividing Mount Holyoke based on political parties,” Perez said.
MHC Votes! also works to increase political awareness among students ineligible to vote. “Regardless of whether or not you can vote, it’s really important for you to know either the politics of South Hadley or the politics of the United States as a whole,” Perez said. Because of this, MHC Votes! is also considering the experiences of international students and others eligible to vote.
“U.S. political decisions have a global impact,” Murray said. “While we make youth voter mobilization a priority, providing a platform to amplify student voices, regardless of their voter eligibility, is a key part of what we do.”
There are currently over 40 students and 15 staff and faculty involved with MHC Votes! The task force is divided into three “cohorts”: “Regional Research and Voter Awareness,” “Get Out the Vote” and “Social Media and Events.”
Micklo works alongside co-founder Emma Watkins ’23 as a coordinator of the “Regional Research and Voter Awareness” cohort. This cohort is responsible for compiling information such as the different questions and initiatives listed on ballots from all 50 states.
Describing her duties as a regional cohort coordinator, Watkins said the organization has students “, “working to gather information about everything that will be on the ballot in each state. So essentially we divided the U.S. into four regions, and students have been becoming experts in the states they have chosen to work with.”
The “Get Out the Vote” cohort, led by co-founders Murray, Perez and Lily James ’21, is responsible for informing students of logistical information such as voting deadlines and how to register.
The cohort also holds voting workshops for student organizations and has challenged student groups to pledge 100 percent voter participation. The group has attended Community M&Cs and the College’s Interfaith Lunches to reach a wider audience. This commitment of MHC Votes! leaders to reach various student organizations stems from the philosophy of coordinator James, who believes that “We need to meet students where they’re at.”
For James, the remote setup of the fall semester presented unexpected challenges. Reflecting on the 2018 election, James said, “We did a lot of tabling, which is obviously not possible now. In 2018, we tabled for over 22 hours in one month. We had a thousand stamps, a thousand envelopes and we printed out voter registration and absentee ballot forms.”
Many of the events and available resources MHC Votes! leaders had planned for the fall, such as setting up information tables in the Dining Commons and distributing printed absentee ballot requests and posting voting information in the dorms, are now impossible due to the remote semester. Instead, students have facilitated Zoom workshops for student organizations and first-year seminars.
But such remote efforts have their limits. “The way to activate nonparticipants, the way to ‘get out the vote,’ is face-to-face canvassing,” Assistant Professor of Politics Adam Hilton said.
Nonetheless, Hilton believes that MHC Votes!’s efforts can still have a significant impact.
Hilton believes that the MHC Votes! student workshops in both student groups and first-year seminars may help reach nonparticipants.“They could hook people early,” he said.
In an attempt to address a more apolitical audience, MHC Votes! student leaders have reached out to the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Association as well as the College administration and leadership centers. “We really wanted to think beyond the typical outreach for these efforts. People who would attend a[n] MHC Democrats meeting or follow us on Instagram are probably already going to vote,” Micklo said.
The “Social Media and Events” cohort, led by coordinators Madeleine DesFosses ’21 and Sydney Williams ’23, also seeks to expand the audience of MHC Votes! Recalling her role in mobilizing students during the 2018 midterm elections, DesFosses said, “We’re doing more social media [engagement] for this election than the 2018 midterm because that’s the major way we’re communicating with students right now.”
When asked about the future of MHC Votes! following the upcoming presidential election, Perez said, “I don’t want MHC Votes! to stop [after the 2020 election]. I want voting to be internalized into our institution as much as our traditions are. I want, in two years, when we have midterm elections, that students still have these resources available to them and that it’s still accessible.”
For Hilton, the mobilization of student voters through MHC Votes! is an indicator of greater growth for the group in the future. “The roots MHC Votes! is putting down now will pay off enormously when we are back physically on campus,” he said.
“The research is pretty clear that getting into habits of civic engagement and voting early usually lasts a lifetime,” Hilton added.
Students interested in learning more about MHC Votes! can visit the organization’s student page or send an email to MHCvotes@gmail.com.