Student leadership development is a crucial way that movements for full voter participation can build power. How might we measure it?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Student Vote Research Network is a space to share new data about student voting and have important conversations about what questions and findings are most important for local leaders developing strategies to move towards 100% student voting. This piece is part of a series called “What should we study?” where members of our community make arguments for investigating certain questions. You can see past articles in this series here, here, and here. Additional submissions of this kind are welcome! If you have an idea please email Danny Fersh at danny@slsvcoalition.org.

The Student Vote Research Network has supported studies focused on whether certain nonpartisan strategies such as in-class civics modules, dialogue dinners, or personalized digital outreach increase student voter turnout. Other studies supported by this network focus on the role of higher education institutions in increasing turnout by building strategic capacity or developing nonpartisan action plans. And still more studies supported by this network have sought to understand how student voter mobilization efforts connect to surrounding communities.

These projects all answer important questions that speak directly to the urgent work local leaders are pursuing to educate and mobilize student voters all across the country. This research helps local leaders design better programs and helps give funders and institutional leaders the confidence they need to continue investing resources in nonpartisan student voting coalitions.

Last summer, Allison Rank shared results from her investigation of what student leaders learn from leading student voter engagement programs.

She shared that while many students report learning valuable skills, most campus voting programs lack the capacity to implement assessment programs that would demonstrate these outcomes in ways that campus leaders need to see to expand investment. Dr. Rank also observed that these programs are typically implemented through outside organizations or student affairs offices and often don’t include faculty relationships or intentional disciplinary connections that would dramatically enhance their educational value.

The future of voting in the United States depends on developing new leaders and professionals committed to building a democracy where every voter can confidently and equally participate in every election. In order to develop these leaders, movements for full voter participation need to identify talented young people and introduce them to opportunities to serve as local election officials, civic educators, voting rights lawyers, legislators, election board members, and other roles where they have the power to shape the future of our democracy.

Even if they go into an unrelated field professionally after college, student leaders involved in voting programs in college can still go on to join or lead their local League of Women Voters chapter, do board service for a democracy nonprofit, serve as a poll worker, or volunteer in support of voting rights.

From this vantage point, the movement for 100% student voting becomes much more central to the future of voting in the United States.

Does it matter more for the long term power of movements for full voter participation in America if a particular nonpartisan student voting coalition increases turnout on their campus by 2% this year, or whether one of the student leaders involved in that coalition gets drawn into a career where they have the power to administer elections for everyone in their county or write election laws in their state?

The movement for 100% student voting is not just one of many efforts to ensure a particular constituency with unique needs is able to participate (although it is that!). It is also one of the primary ways that we establish a pipeline of leaders who can serve in positions throughout the American elections landscape and wield power to build a more inclusive future for American democracy.

In a recent post on his newsletter, The Art of Association, Daniel Stid seeks to lift up the value of funding networks of “rising leaders” as an “untapped opportunity for impact.”

In recent years, however, many sociologists and journalists have documented one group of funders who actually have been tapping into this particular opportunity quite effectively over the years: political conservatives. Jane Meyer has described how the Olin Foundation approached its work with young conservative faculty members:

Through these carefully curated programs, the foundation trained the next generation of conservatives, whom Joyce likened to “a wine collection” that would grow more valuable as its members aged, increasing in stature and power. The foundation kept track of those who passed through Huntington’s Olin program, proudly noting that many went into public service and academia.

Amy Binder, who with Jeff Kidder wrote the 2022 book The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today, describes how this orientation towards leadership development on the right shows up in the opportunities available to students.

What’s happening on the right these days is interesting. When I was doing interviews for both Becoming Right and Channels, some conservatives were involved in campaigns, especially those who joined College Republicans (makes sense). But campaigning and GOTV was subordinate to other more expressive forms of activism and activity, including going to CPAC, taking internships, doing summer programs—more of the leadership development stuff for politics, media, etc.

The students who lead our nonpartisan campus vote coalitions today can become the people who run and shape elections in America tomorrow. Nonpartisan student voting programs can have a huge impact by recruiting new and different types of people to pursue election administration and policy roles and by cultivating certain perspectives, world views, and commitments to democracy in the people who wield these types of power.

Anyone who has worked on student voting issues long enough has had the incredible experience of watching their former students go on to achieve professional influence. I can think of countless stories in our community of hugely impactful policymakers, advocates, and civic leaders whose journey to their current role began in a nonpartisan student voting coalition.

But even though these experiences suggest that nonpartisan student voting programs are having a deep and broad impact on student professional trajectories, there are still many important unanswered questions about leadership development in student voting programs:

• How many and what kind of students are participating in formal fellowship programs to support their work leading student voting efforts on their campuses? Are these fellowships supported by external partners, on-campus partners, or both?

• What kind of financial and training support is attached to the experiences student leaders are having while working on voting issues?

• What pathways are students finding through both on-campus and off-campus opportunities as they grow in their leadership from year to year?

• What are the short, medium, and long-term civic and professional outcomes for student leaders who take on leadership roles in their campus voting programs? How many are still working on these issues after leaving college?

• How do college experiences working on student voting issues continue to shape how these student leaders pursue their professional and civic lives after leaving college?

• What networks are students developing through their work in student voting coalitions? Are these networks valuable to them as they pursue their careers?

It’s crucial to answer these questions because quality matters when building programs focused on developing leaders. Just like some strategies are far more effective at turning out voters than others, some strategies are far better at developing leaders. Practitioners need more and better research to understand which strategies are most effective at shaping the civic and professional trajectories of student leaders in ways that build long term power for voting rights movements in the United States.

In the Student Vote Research Network, scholars from many disciplines are represented. It’s fantastic to have so many political scientists doing sophisticated work evaluating if student voting programs are increasing turnout (Spoiler: yes, many are increasing turnout).

Colleagues in sociology and history bring complementary knowledge to the network as well. Their work suggests that increasing turnout is not the only important thing student voting coalition programs do to expand voting rights in America. Their work persuasively argues that members of this network should seriously consider the role student voting programs play in enabling movements for full voter participation to cultivate new leaders who can administer elections, run advocacy organizations, develop policies, do research, and pursue all the other things that need to happen to create a society where everyone can fully participate in our democracy. There are many amazing opportunities to explore these questions in the Student Vote Research Network! Please reach out to me if you want to be a part of shaping and exploring research on this question.

Sam Novey is Chief Strategist at the University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement. He also serves as Secretary of the Baltimore City Board of Elections and Chair of the Executive Committee for the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. He can be reached at snovey@umd.edu.