Center for Civic Engagement celebrates increase in student voter turnout

The Center for Civic Engagement, in collaboration with campus and community partners, continued its successful work to register students to vote and provide information and resources to help students act as informed voters. The CCE and on-campus partners registered over 2,000 students to vote and assisted over 750 students with absentee ballot requests. Over 1,400 students cast ballots at the on-campus polling place, quadrupling the number of students who voted on campus in 2014.

Voter engagement was truly an institutional effort, with support from faculty, student organizations and campus offices. The CCE offered voter registration in over 50 classes at the request of faculty, registered over 700 students to vote at new student orientation, partnered with Residential Life to host the 4th biennial residential life voter registration competition, and provided training and support for student organizations interested in hosting voter registration drives. The Pipe Dream provided robust coverage of election-related news, including printing responses to candidate questionnaires for local, state and federal races. Binghamton University was also a sponsor of the NY-22 Congressional Debate hosted my WSKG and the League of Women Voters.

This collaborative commitment to student civic engagement is central to the CCE’s mission to develop students as active, engaged citizens and our institutional goal to prepare students for lives of purpose.