Ginsberg Gets Out the Vote: UMICH Votes & Big Ten Voting Challenge

Midterm Elections are in just a few weeks, and the Ginsberg team is hoping for the highest midterm student voter turnout that the University of Michigan has seen yet. Ginsberg’s Associate Director Dave Waterhouse and Democratic Engagement Lead Erin Byrnes have joined the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Creative Campus Voting Project, the UM Democracy & Debate Initiative, and Turn Up Turnout in steering the UMICH Votes coalition through its first midterm election cycle. UMICH Votes offers campus programming affiliated with the Big Ten Voting Challenge: a nonpartisan effort to increase student voter turnout at Big Ten schools in the form of a friendly competition. After seeing midterm turnout among students nearly triple between 2014 and 2018, the UMICH Votes leadership team is eager to repeat and even exceed the campus’s past successes.

UMICH Votes has launched an exciting menu of campus engagement opportunities in the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections, focusing on both reducing barriers to voting and educating students on the issues. Most prominent among these is a cohesive digital campaign to inform and register voters on all three UM campuses (Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint). UMICH Votes’ redesigned website at govote.umich.edu, funded by UM Democracy & Debate, provides simple pathways for student voter registration: whether they choose to do so on one of the University of Michigan’s three campuses; elsewhere in Ann Arbor; elsewhere in Michigan; or in the state of their permanent residence. Additionally, the @UMICHVotes Instagram account keeps students informed using a mix of in-feed posts, stories and reels circulating the coalition’s nonpartisan, pro-voter message.

Another UMICH Votes opportunity offers more tailored voter education in a peer-to-peer setting. Turn Up Turnout’s Dinners for Democracy provide a venue for guided dialogue on a variety of issues of importance to student, including student loans, abortion, gun safety, racial justice, voting access, and the judicial system. These workshops are developed and delivered by students and for students, alongside faculty mentors. To date the catered small-group discussions have attracted nearly 1500 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students, including some international students, from a wide range of schools and majors. Critically for UMICH Votes’ focus on tri-campus coalition-building, both presenters and participants represent all three campuses of the University of Michigan.

UMICH Votes is also working to expand voting access at UM’s Ann Arbor campus and in the surrounding community. In 2020, UMICH Votes partnered with the Ann Arbor City Clerk to set up a satellite voting office at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) where more than 5,000 people registered to vote, and more than 8,500 used the absentee ballot drop box. Building on that successful experiment, this Fall UMICH Votes powers two satellite City Clerk offices: one on Central Campus at the UMMA, and one on North Campus at the Duderstadt Center. Designed by the Creative Campus Voting Project team, these offices allow students—but also staff, faculty, and community members—to register to vote, request or submit an absentee ballot, and cast their votes in person come Election Day.

UMICH Votes is aiming for at least 55% voter participation among both undergraduate and graduate students this year, an 8% increase from the 2018 midterm elections numbers. Reflecting on UMICH Votes as the coalition's big day approaches, Dave Waterhouse explained the significance of the moment: “There has been a lot of discussion about how fragile Democracy is, and it is through this increased engagement - both in an election season and even more importantly, between elections - that we will strengthen civic participation and build life-long habits of democracy.” 

Don’t yet have your voting plan?

Visit govote.umich.edu, follow @UMICHVotes on instagram, sign up for a Turn Up Turnout dinner to learn more about the candidates and issues, or stop by one of the UMICH Votes satellite offices! The UMMA and Duderstadt offices are both open for questions, voter registration, and absentee ballot requests or submissions from now until November 8th, when you can cast your vote in person.