A Drink for Your Vote: StanfordVotes Partners with On call Cafe

Creating a culture of civic engagement

StanfordVotes was featured in the September 25, 2024 StanfordReport as one of the student organizations striving to increase turnout for the 2024 presidential election.

Democracy Day 2023 sweeps Stanford

On Tuesday, Americans across the nation hit the polls for state and local elections. At Stanford, it was an academic holiday – “Democracy Day” – for music, boba, swag, community building, and lots of thoughtful discussions about the importance of civic engagement and the state of democracy, both at home and abroad.

Stanford students honored for Ballot Bowl win

Stanford students registered the most students – 1,046 – to vote as California residents in the 2022 general election, winning the state’s Ballot Bowl among 234 California colleges and universities.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber congratulated students for these efforts on Thursday during an event hosted by the Haas Center for Public Service and the Office of External Relations.

StanfordVotes featured on Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Election Connection Podcast

We're incredibly proud that a local college in Santa Clara County won the Ballot Bowl Championship by registering a whopping 1,046 new voters in 2022! In this episode, we interview Stanford Votes and recognize their passion for civic engagement and commitment to democracy.

Stanford gears up for Democracy Day

On Tuesday, Nov. 8, voters across Stanford and the nation will head to the polls to cast their votes in the 2022 midterm elections. Democracy Day, as it’s known at Stanford, is a university-recognized holiday; no classes will be held and the Stanford community is encouraged to participate in numerous events designed to support civic engagement.

Stanford students gear up for mail-in voting

With the midterm elections fast approaching, student groups and administrators are making their annual push for higher voter registration. This time around, that has meant ensuring that students not only know how to vote by mail, but also that they physically can — something that has proved difficult during the last two elections.

Want to vote in the primary elections? Here’s how.

With the Texas primary election commencing on March 8, the midterm election season is quickly approaching.

The Daily sat down with StanfordVotes co-directors Cameron Lange ’24 and Emily Handsel ’24 to learn about how students on campus can participate in primary elections across the country. StanfordVotes is a nonpartisan student-led initiative that seeks to enhance civic engagement, voter registration and voter turnout at Stanford.

Stanford students and professors anticipate University’s inaugural Democracy Day

Next Tuesday will mark the University’s inaugural Democracy Day. No classes will be scheduled on this day, and Stanford organizations, including the Center for Deliberative Democracy, the Haas Center for Public Service, the Stanford Prevention Research Center and Stanford in Government (SIG), will sponsor events scheduled from 10:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Following a year’s worth of student advocacy, the Faculty Senate voted on Jun. 10 to implement an Annual Day of Civic Service — an academic holiday meant to provide students, faculty and staff the opportunity to participate in civic activities.

This year’s Democracy Day will include a small group deliberative democracy event in Wilbur Field, a virtual discussion with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a faculty panel discussing civic engagement moderated by former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and a showing of the 2020 documentary “Boys State” at Meyer Green.

The establishment of Democracy Day demonstrates the power of student advocacy, StanfordVotes Co-Director Cameron Lange ’24 said. She anticipates that an academic holiday on Election Day will increase student voter turnout in years to come.

“Democracy Day demonstrates Stanford’s commitment to fostering that sort of engagement,” Lange said. “Designating a day to put some of the chaos of daily life at Stanford on pause and to facilitate reflection on what it means to be a citizen should prove incredibly valuable.”

Stanford student political organizations react to new California mail-in voting law

Student leaders of Stanford Votes and Stanford Democrats praised Governor Gavin Newsom’s approval of permanent mail-voting in future California elections, saying it will remove barriers to voting and increase turnout while maintaining election integrity.

On Sept. 27, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 37 (AB 37) into law, a bill designed to “extend the requirements to mail a ballot to every registered voter to all elections and apply them to all local elections officials.”

With Newsom’s authorization, state election officials will begin mailing ballots no later than twenty-nine days before every election to every registered voter. The reception of a mail-in-ballot will not encumber those who want to vote in person, according to the bill.

This new California law differs from those of states like Pennsylvania, where voters who receive mail-in ballots but choose to vote in person must actively void their mail-in ballot or vote by way of a provisional ballot subject to review...

StanfordVotes releases ‘Ultimate Sept. 14 CA Recall Election Guide’

A nonpartisan student group dedicated to increasing voter turnout among Stanford students has released “The Ultimate Sept. 14 CA Recall Election Guide” to help voters understand the ballot and cast their votes.

StanfordVotes helps students to register to vote, check their registration status, receive absentee ballots and get information about candidates and issues. This fall, Emily Handsel, a sophomore and co-director of StanfordVotes, hopes students will turn to the website for information about the upcoming recall election...

California’s new vote-by-mail system is a big win for marginalized groups

This week, California became the eighth state in the country to make universal mail-in ballots permanent. On Monday, the day before National Voter Registration Day, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 37. The bill makes the temporary practice of receiving mail-in ballots, which has been in place since the 2020 election because of the coronavirus pandemic, the new standard for voting across the state.

BIPOC voters in the CA recall work to curb voting inaccessibility

Kevin Thor ’24, a resident of Fresno, CA, has spent his time leading up to the California gubernatorial recall election translating mail-in ballots and voter information for the older members of his Hmong community — one he feels has been left behind in this election. Fresno is home to one of the two largest urban Hmong communities in the U.S., with about 34,000 Hmong residents.

“My community of Hmong folk hasn’t lived here for as long — they are fairly new to this country, and don’t know the process of voting,” Thor said, as he picked up the voter materials he’d set aside next to him. “These things don’t have Hmong translations to them, so it’s tough for the older community to vote.”

Thor is one of many Stanford affiliates who have been working to increase voting accessibility in marginalized communities across California in preparation for Tuesday’s recall election. The recall election will determine whether Governor Gavin Newsom will be recalled, and if he is, who his replacement will be. As Californians across the state gear up to cast their ballots, many voters still face significant hurdles in the voting process, from voting materials in languages they can’t read to a lack of accessible information about candidates.

Within many small, marginalized communities in California, the responsibility of informing voters about how to participate in the election and dispelling misinformation has fallen on younger community members...

Stanford a leader in national effort to get out the vote on college campuses

Stanford is currently ranked first in the nation for the most college students registered to vote on the digital voting platform TurboVote. The feat is the result of a major campus-wide campaign to increase voter registration and turnout this election season...

How Stanford Used TurboVote to Mobilize for the Midterms

In the spring of 2018, Stanford faculty, staff, and students met to discuss how to improve voter participation. They grappled with the fact that, according to NSLVE data, fewer than 16.7% of eligible voters at Stanford participated in the 2014 midterm election. They had no idea at the time, but that meeting would spark a campus-wide effort that mobilized hundreds of people from every corner of the university to help take Stanford from a school where less than one in five students voted in the 2014 midterm elections, to one that made 19 appearances on the TurboVote Leaderboard, our biweekly ranking of campus partner signups...

Why college students could draw new attention in 2020: Their turnout doubled for the midterms, study finds

College students across the United States more than doubled their rate of voting between the 2014 and 2018 midterm elections, according to a study published Thursday by Tufts University — a dramatic spike in political engagement that could draw unprecedented attention to these voters in next year’s presidential election...

Voting is a civic duty

Our right to vote is hard-won. It took centuries of struggle to establish this right — for property-less men, for women, for African Americans, and, in 1971, for all US citizens over the age of 18. The right to vote is fundamental to protecting, asserting and defining many of our other rights. Almost all of the social and economic rights Americans enjoy today — from Medicare and Medicaid, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, the Occupational Health and Safety Act, and the Clean Air Act — exist because citizens elected public officials who voted to enact them...

SIG hosts ‘Party at the Post Office’ event to increase voter turnout

Over 400 students showed up on Saturday to a voter turnout event organized by StanfordVotes, an initiative held by Stanford in Government (SIG)...

Voting accessibility, engagement increase under new StanfordVotes initiatives

Eligible voters will now have the option to register and vote in the presidential primary election at the new Santa Clara County Vote Center at Tressider Union between this Friday and Mar. 3, otherwise known as Super Tuesday...

New enrollment hold encourages students to register to vote

During the 2018 elections, only 61% of Stanford students were registered to vote. But before enrolling in next quarter’s classes, 100% of Stanford students will now at least have to think about it...

Toward a democracy that works for all

Last year, Stanford saw an unprecedented increase in campus voter turnout. StanfordVotes, a Haas Center initiative that seeks to register and mobilize voters, had registered over 2,500 people by November 2018. While less than 17% of eligible students cast their ballots in the 2014 midterms, that proportion shot up to 42.9% in 2018. Most significantly, the voter turnout rate among registered students more than doubled, from just over 30% in 2014 to just under 70% in last year’s midterms...

Thousands of Stanford students register to vote ahead of midterm election

A campus-wide campaign to encourage participation in next week’s midterm elections has helped students register to vote...

Thanks to StanfordVotes, thousands of students have registered for the midterm election

Thousands of Stanford students have registered to vote in recent months, following a campus-wide voter registration campaign. The push for civic engagement is, in part, a response to a historically lower-than-average voter turnout among Stanford students, compared to colleges and universities nationwide...