Student Voting in 2020: ‘Weird Is Probably an Understatement’

Election Day 2020 will be remembered as a masked affair and, at many colleges, a subdued one.

Nearly 10 million young Americans cast their ballots ahead of Tuesday’s vote, and the result at campus polling sites was evident. Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement said that people ages 18 to 29 made up about a tenth of the record number of Americans who voted early.

Chronicle reporters who visited colleges in three battleground states on Election Day found short lines, if any, and calm, determined voters, as higher ed hunkers down during the resurgent pandemic. They also found plenty of politically engaged, mask-wearing students who said they’d taken the advice of organizers and voted early.

The campus of Temple University was relatively quiet on Tuesday morning, a sunny, cool day in Philadelphia. Classes have been remote since a spike of cases among students in early September. While some students stayed near Temple because they’d signed leases in off-campus apartments, others left town.

So what has the runup to the 2020 elections been like here?

“Weird is probably an understatement,” said Samuel Hall, a junior and the Temple student government’s director of government affairs.

Philadelphia is a key city in most presidential elections, especially this one. In 2016, Donald Trump won Pennsylvania, where Joe Biden was born. For Biden to win the state, he’ll need to see high turnout in this mostly blue city, a feat that has been complicated by the president’s baseless claim that Pennsylvania cheats in elections, his warning that he and his supporters are “watching you, Philadelphia,” and his campaign’s attempts to videotape voters there. Republicans recently lost a court fight in which they tried to prevent the state from receiving absentee ballots after Election Day.

So the city is important. And despite an empty feeling on campus, Hall said students are motivated. He and his roommates, who are staying in an off-campus apartment near Temple, all voted early. Even Hall’s rugby teammates, who don’t always talk politics, are having “productive” conversations about it.

“You can tell everyone is much more politically minded than they were when we left campus in March,” Hall said.

George Floyd’s killing and Philadelphia’s Black Lives Matter protests have also contributed to the feeling of political urgency this year, Hall and other students said. Last week, another Black man, Walter Wallace Jr., was killed by police officers here, which prompted new protests, curfews, and arrests.

Chronicle photo by Nell Gluckman

It’s not to say that something major isn’t lost when much of the student body is dispersed. As productive as the individual political conversations have been, Hall said, it’s been hard to get student groups involved in organizing get-out-the-vote efforts. He’s doing what he can, though. This week, Hall is one of about three Temple students who are working as ballot counters in Philadelphia’s enormous convention center downtown. He was scheduled to start work there Tuesday afternoon and he doesn’t expect to emerge until 7 a.m. Wednesday.

Most of the Election Day activity at Temple was focused at the Liacouras Center, an early voting location where people could still drop off absentee ballots, and the Bright Hope Baptist Church, a polling site for the neighborhood’s residents and Temple students who live on or near campus.

Organizers stood outside the church handing out stickers and telling people to text three of their friends to encourage them to vote. A poll worker told people where to go. Students and residents voted steadily throughout the day, though the only lines were early in the morning.

Some Temple students who did not vote early said it was because they hadn’t gotten their absentee ballots in time. Jeff Montinar, a sophomore, did so because it’s midterms week and he thought it would be easier to go in person. He voted Tuesday afternoon for the first time, right after taking an exam, he said. Alizee Duloisy, a sophomore from Ohio, said the days leading to the election had been chaotic and stressful. She interns at PennPIRG, a research and advocacy group, where she’s been making phone calls urging people to vote.

“Some people don’t want to hear about it and shut you down,” she said. “Other people have been really nice about it and like, Oh yeah I’d love to vote, give me the information.”

Michala Butler, a junior who voted three weeks ago, said some students left town because they were worried about possible rioting in Philadelphia. She said that she felt pretty safe, but that she planned to get home at 8 p.m. and stay in to watch the returns. Downtown, stores were boarded up and the streets were empty.

If there is violence, people like David Brown, an assistant professor of instruction in the college of media and communication, will be called. He’s a pastor and has been trained to de-escalate violent situations. On Tuesday morning he stopped by the Liacouras Center to see how things were going. He was dressed for both his jobs, wearing a Temple mask, a Temple baseball cap, and a Temple windbreaker over a black shirt with a white pastor’s collar.

Brown’s job as a pastor is taking precedence today, he said. His church in West Philadelphia is five blocks from where Wallace was killed last week. He spent the morning criss-crossing the city checking on polling sites where he said everything was still calm. Polling sites saw long lines early in the morning, but many had cleared.

“I’m trying to hope and pray that it stays normal,” he said.

—Nell Gluckman

R
ay Trapp has a joke. If North Carolina A&T State University never hosted another voter-registration drive on campus, that’d be just fine. Registration numbers are consistently high, said Trapp, director of external affairs in the chancellor’s office. But turnout? That’s another story.

Compared with other age groups, youth turnout is historically lackluster. And in 2016, turnout at historically Black colleges and universities took a nosedive, dropping by more than 10 percentage points, according to an analysis from Tufts University. At A&T State, an HBCU in Greensboro, N.C., only 63.2 percent of registered students voted. When considering all eligible student voters at A&T, that number drops to 43.2 percent. (The national average was 50.4 percent.)

Chronicle photo by Emma Pettit

Those numbers made the university “kick into action,” Trapp said. They focused on educating students not only about the big, flashy races but about smaller ones, too, like why they should care who their state attorney general is. One reason? George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. State attorneys general often play a role in prosecuting — or not prosecuting — police officers involved in fatal shootings. That issue resonates with many students at A&T State, whose nearly 13,000 students make it the nation’s largest HBCU.

The university also started a “Poll Pals” program. Students who are educated about the election can accompany other students — who might be first-time voters or who are nervous about voting — to the polls. And the university encouraged everyone to vote early, on campus. That way, said Trapp, students can deal with any discrepancies ahead of time — discrepancies like the one that Miracle Jenkins had to deal with.

On Tuesday morning, the college senior arrived at A&T’s gleaming Academic Classroom Building only to discover that she is registered in her home county of Columbus, a three-hour drive away. She hadn’t received her absentee ballot in the mail, she said.

A canvasser told Jenkins to go inside and try voting with a provisional ballot. Half an hour later, Jenkins emerged, a smile visible under her mask. It had worked. She voted.

Aside from the occasional hiccup, A&T’s precinct was serene, with a slow stream of foot traffic. Outside, canvassers called out to passing students, “Have you already voted?”

“I sure did!” one student shouted back.

“You go on with your bad self,” a canvasser cheerily replied.

Many A&T students told The Chronicle that voting had become a major topic of discussion this semester. They noticed all the registration drives and the yard signs affixed to campus lawns, telling them to get to the polls.

That level of student engagement isn’t isolated to A&T. Hayley Hill, membership director for the College Republicans at nearby High Point University, said in a phone interview that it feels like people in her age group are more interested in this election than past ones.

Though Hill, a freshman, used to think that Trump was “an absolute lunatic,” over time, she acclimated to his personality and eventually supported him. “After he was elected, you can’t deny the fact that he has pulled this country back together,” Hill said.

At A&T, Leslie Barley, a sophomore food science major, proudly sported an Obama-branded knit hat and her “First Time Voter” T-shirt on Tuesday.

Barley voted early, with her mom by her side, to avoid big crowds and ensure everything went smoothly. On Tuesday evening, Barley was planning to accompany her friend to the A&T precinct. It’s her first time voting, too — something they want to share together.

When he talked to his peers about voting, Julian Woods, a sophomore English major, liked to tell them, “You might not be that interested in politics, but politics is very interested in you.”

Take gerrymandering, for example — an infamous pastime in North Carolina. For the 2016 general election, A&T’s campus was split down the middle. Republican state legislators had drawn a congressional map that divided A&T into two districts. Students saw the maneuver as a way to neuter their voting bloc.

But in 2019, a panel of North Carolina judges blocked that map from being used in 2020 elections, the Associated Press reported, ruling that voters “had a strong likelihood of winning a lawsuit that argued Republicans unlawfully manipulated district lines for partisan gain.” The lines were redrawn. This year, all of A&T is in one district.

Students were very active around the gerrymandering issue, Woods said in an interview over the phone. They also pushed for an early voting location on campus for the 2020 primary. In just a year and a half’s time, he’s seen political engagement on campus grow.

For Woods, that’s all he can ask for. He wants to wake up on November 4 confident that he did everything he could to ensure that students exercised their right to vote.

—Emma Pettit

Loc Tran, 24, lives down the street from Miami Dade College’s Kendall Campus. The sophomore, who is studying data analytics, cast his ballot for Joe Biden at the campus polling place on Tuesday. There were no lines to vote, and Tran was in and out in 15 minutes.

Alice Moreno for The Chronicle

Tran doesn’t consider himself a Biden supporter, but he said he had seen enough during the past four years to know he wanted a change in the White House. Tran criticized Donald Trump for his mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and for repeated instances of corruption in his administration. Tran said he also disagrees with the values of the current president.

“For some reason, he kind of, like, ignites a little bit of hate in people,” Tran said.

Tran moved to the United States nine years ago from Vietnam, a country that has been mostly successful in containing the coronavirus. He said that life in Vietnam is essentially “back to normal” while life here in Miami is still overshadowed by the pandemic.

“You can’t go anywhere here without feeling unsafe,” Tran said. “It’s kind of like living in fear.”

Tran said he knows of two friends — students who also hail from Vietnam — who have returned to their home country. The reason: Their parents were afraid of the high Covid-19 risk in the United States.

Tran said he does have some concerns about Biden, including his health. But “I’m willing to take my chances,” he said.

One of the Election Day volunteers helping Tran at the polls was Christopher Yera, a 19-year-old student at Miami Dade’s Honors College. Yera arrived at the polling location at 6:30 a.m., and spent most of his time helping voters identify their correct polling place, which can often be a source of confusion. Yera also flagged a malfunctioning ID machine at the Miami Dade site when voting first began.

Why did he volunteer?

“It’s been a crazy year,” Yera said. “And regardless of who you want to vote for, that doesn’t really matter to me, but this is one of the biggest elections of our lifetime. I didn’t have anything else to do, so I thought that it would be great to just come out here and stand up for democracy.”

Yera grew up in the Miami area, and both of his parents are from Cuba. Yera said there have been spirited political discussions within his family — he is a registered Democrat who regards himself as generally independent. Many of his older relatives are registered Republicans.

But Yera said his family largely avoids conflict when talking politics. The reason: No one is trying to persuade anyone to join their side. Instead, the conversations are focused on mutual respect, with each person largely sticking to the facts when explaining their point of view.

“It’s not really an argument,” Yera said. “It’s just telling you, This is what I think, and why.”

“My views might not agree with a family member or anything, but they have the same right as me to have a different belief,,” Yera said. “That’s the beauty of a country like this. We can agree to disagree, and still be able to make our voices heard about what we want.”

Across town, at the University of Miami, the campus was similarly quiet. A steady trickle of voters showed up to cast ballots in an efficient but mundane process.

But students said the moment was still heavy with historical significance. Elizabeth Cronin, a New York native, is registered to vote in Florida because, she said, her vote counts more in a big swing state. A Biden supporter, Cronin said she is voting to protect a woman’s legal right to abortion and also to protect the rights of LGBT individuals to be treated fairly.

“A lot of people’s rights are at stake here,” Cronin said.

—Michael Vasquez