With less than 40 days before the 2024 presidential election on Nov. 5, Mercer Votes is providing students with the most up-to-date and crucial information about voting. Currently, the group is dedicating its full attention to getting students registered to vote as the window slowly comes to a close.
“We’re out tabling weekly in various locations on campus to help engage students (and) help answer questions if they have them. Even faculty and staff if they have questions, we’re happy to help,” Assistant Director of Service and Civic Engagement Margaret Rooyakkers said.
After the Oct. 7 voter registration deadline for Georgia has passed, all of Mercer Votes’ efforts and energy will be centered on voter turnout and making sure students have a plan to vote, she said.
Mercer Votes is a nonpartisan campuswide organization that centers on promoting voter activity on campus. It began as a student organization known as Mobilize Mercer in 2016 but transitioned to its current format in 2021 to bring together faculty, staff and community partners, said Associate Director of Engaged Learning Lauren Shinholster.
Mobilize Mercer began after then-student Joey Wozniak pitched an idea to the Visionary Student Panel to have Mercer compete against other Southern Conference institutions to determine who had the best voter registration and voter turnout rates. Mercer already had high voter engagement, but it was most often driven by partisan organizations such as the Young Democrats and College Republicans, Shinholster said.
To get students engaged with the voting process, there needed to be an action plan, and the organization needed to be nonpartisan. From there, Mobilize Mercer was born and helped carry out the competition, known as SoCon Votes. SoCon Votes would later become a model for most of the athletic conferences across the nation, particularly at the Division I level, which is overseen by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, Shinholster said.
“Mercer likes the competition. We would love to be No. 1 in all the things,” Shinholster said. “Having this voter engagement competition was really a rallying point to not only motivate us but motivate the other institutions in our conference.”
A few years ago, Mercer President William D. Underwood signed a commitment for Mercer to try to reach “full student voter participation,” Shinholster said.
To meet that goal, the University realized voter registration could not only be done around election time but offered year-round, she said. It was at this point community partners were brought in to help build the energy for the organization.
The New Georgia Project, Georgia Muslim Voter Project and Campus Vote Project are some of the community partners Mercer Votes has been working with to increase voter engagement over the years. Shinholster said Mercer Votes is partnered mostly at the national level, but there are also regional and local chapters involved as well.
She said that during the 2020 presidential election, Mercer’s voter registration rate was 91%.
“We might be at our ceiling as far as voter registration, but our turnout rate in the 2020 election was just shy of 73%, and so we’re trying to close that gap,” she said.
It is a goal for her and the organization to figure out why students did not cast their vote in 2020 even though they were registered. Knowing the reasons can give Mercer Votes a better understanding of where it needs to lend resources and help out, Shinholster said.
“We’re hoping to try to get that 73% that we were at in 2020, bump that up to maybe 76% or 78%, getting closer and closer to reaching that goal of full participation,” she said. “When you already start off kind of ahead of the game, at least compared to other institutions, it doesn’t leave as much room for growth, but it has left a lot of room for deepening commitments.”
In the past, Mercer Votes has targeted certain demographics that lagged behind in voting and encouraged them to vote in the election.
“One year we focused on STEM majors because we realized that that group wasn’t voting at the higher rates. So, it allows us to be a little more creative, a little more targeted in the work that we’re doing, and then we’ve seen some improvements based on those focused initiatives,” Shinholster said.
Mercer Votes emphasizes to students that their voices and opinions have value.
“Regardless of how students feel, I think they should know that their vote does matter,” Rooyakkers said. “There’s a lot of talk about how you can make a greater impact on the local level in your community, and we definitely want our students to be aware of what communities they can vote in.”
Over the summer, Mercer introduced vote.mercer.edu, a hub for all things related to voting and elections. Some of the resources offered on the website include checking voter registration status, how to request an absentee ballot, and what students should do if they are voting out of state.
“We spend a lot of time vetting and making sure the resources that we’re giving out to students are the most accurate, and it’s a really great hub for students, no matter where they are in their voting journey,” Rooyakkers said.
She said students also are welcome to reach out to her through the vote@mercer.edu email to get more information. Students also have the option to seek in-person assistance by scheduling an appointment via email and visiting the Campus Life Office to talk with her or a Democracy Fellow about any questions or concerns they have about voting or the election.
In addition to offering resources on the website, Mercer Votes’ Democracy Fellows organize presidential debate watch parties and panels with faculty and community members who are experts in the political landscape. During the panels, topics like misinformation, candidates and news literacy are discussed, Rooyakkers said.
“We’re not trying to push any political candidate or particular political ideology, but we want students to understand the impact of their votes and that these candidates are representing something,” Shinholster said.
Brandon Biel, a junior political science and history double-major at Mercer and Democracy Fellow for Mercer Votes, said he is excited about the upcoming election and the increased student interest and involvement in politics. This presidential election will be his first time voting.
“I’m just excited everybody else is here,” he said during a recent presidential debate watch party hosted by Mercer Votes. “They’re interested. They want to know more about politics of their nation. And I think that’s great.”
Shinholster said she is impressed with the energy students have been bringing to the upcoming election. It is rewarding not only to see students involved and engaged with voting and the election but that they understand how their voice can impact the outcome of democracy.
“Seeing that (students) are still energized about the election is definitely inspiring, and so for us, we’re just trying to build on that momentum,” she said.
