Mount Holyoke College reported that 84.7 percent of the student body voted in the 2020 election. Photo courtesy of The Michigan Review.
By Cydney Socias ’25
Staff Writer
With less than a month until the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Mount Holyoke students have started preparing to vote in pivotal elections. All House seats are up for election, as well as 35 of 100 Senate seats. 36 states will also be electing governors according to Ballotpedia.
Mount Holyoke College has supported voter preparation by facilitating resources via weekly emailed newsletters. The College highlighted an 84.7 percent voting rate among students in 2020 as “significantly above the 66 [percent] national average for students at U.S. institutions of higher education,” according to the Sept. 28 edition of email newsletter MHC This Week. Whether the 2022 midterms will have a similarly remarkable turnout is to be determined.
Mount Holyoke’s political student organizations have been spreading the word about the importance of voting in these elections. Emma Cranage ’25, the president of the Mount Holyoke College Democrats, is passionate about the importance of these elections.
Cranage notes that many young voters choose not to vote in elections because they do not resonate with political leaders who tend to be much older than them. She urges them to “pay attention to a candidate’s ideology more than their age.” Cranage explains that “it’s really important to realize that a lot of the people running the campaigns and creating that messaging are, in fact, typically between the ages of 21 and 28. … I think that it’s really important to think about how to build winning coalitions among younger people, to support the politicians that we’ve currently got, and how creating that network of knowledge within younger people will eventually … create opportunities for [candidates] who are younger.”
To facilitate student voting, the Mount Holyoke College Democrats have been actively working to get members of the Mount Holyoke community registered to vote. The MHC Democrats have also worked with the College’s Planned Parenthood Generation Action chapter to table in Blanchard Hall and help students register to vote.
Cranage also made sure to extend resources. “I think one of the biggest challenges that we face is being able to reach people beyond campus limits. …While we were tabling, we tried to make sure that we were passing on the resources to staff and faculty as well as just the students because they are vital members of our campus community too. Obviously, they deserve to have a voice.”
“I think the biggest obstacle that a lot of students might see this late in the election is [if] their voter registration deadlines have already … passed, or their absentee ballot deadline requests [have] passed. But that should be the exception, not the rule,” Cranage said. With Nov. 8 only weeks away, time is essential as eligible students ensure they are registered and have requested absentee ballots if needed.”