Why ‘Just Voting’ Isn’t That Easy for Out-of-State College Students

This story is part of our monthly series, Campus Dispatch. Read the rest of the stories in the series here.

Around 1 in 5 college students in the United States attend school outside their home state, a figure that has been growing over the past few decades. For four years, these students have two homes—in legal terms, dual residency—which enables them to choose whether they want to vote at their pre-college or campus addresses.

Convenience and politics play a role in students’ decisions on where and whether to vote. According to a 2020 report by Tufts University, students who register at their campus address turn out to vote at higher rates. Students are also more likely to register at their campus address if they attend college in a battleground state, such as Florida or Wisconsin.

But battleground states are often the most difficult places for out-of-state students to cast their votes—and this will not be unique for the upcoming presidential election. Early registration deadlines, strict voter identification requirements, and a lack of nearby polling stations discourage students from voting at their campus addresses and suppress the youth vote. When such laws are in place, out-of-state students are unable to make a meaningful choice on where to vote.

Tait Ferguson graduated last year from Denison University in Ohio, where he served as co-coordinator of the student group DU Votes, which works to educate students about voting and get them registered. In the 2020 presidential election, Denison had the highest voter registration rate in the country from the more than 840 institutions that participated in a nationwide challenge, at 99.6 percent. Ferguson attributes DU Votes’ success to the group’s “hyper nonpartisanship” and a robust public engagement campaign that included text-banking, voter registration reminders on housing forms, outreach by student ambassadors, and speaker events.

“It was an as-much-as-we-can, all-the-time approach,” he said.

According to Ferguson, out-of-state students at Denison, who make up 78 percent of the student population, face many challenges when trying to vote. For one, college students, already inundated with information, often struggle to keep track of registration deadlines that vary by state. In particular, those who opted to vote in Ohio but previously lived in other states were caught off guard by voter registration deadlines that hit 30 days before the election. In addition, Ferguson noted that partisan groups, which historically played a role in motivating and mobilizing voters four years ago, had weakened at Denison in the pandemic’s aftermath.

Complying with the law

But the biggest challenge for out-of-state students in Ohio emerged in 2023 with HB 458, which requires Ohio voters to present photo ID at the polls.

Emily Vermillion, associate director of Denison’s Alford Community Leadership and Involvement Center, said that prior to the law, the university could provide students with cost-free utility bills—accepted as a form of voter ID—through a partnership with on-campus mail services. After HB 458 passed, students in Ohio who wanted to vote in-person had to obtain a photo ID from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, or present a passport or military card.

Not only was this process difficult for anyone with limited transportation options, but obtaining an Ohio photo ID also meant that for out-of-state students, their home state driver’s licenses would be invalidated. Out-of-state students are also unlikely to bring documents necessary for obtaining an ID, such as birth certificates and passports, to their dorms.

Out-of-state students could file absentee ballots with the last four digits of their Social Security numbers rather than photo IDs. However, increased use of absentee ballots made it more difficult for student outreach organizations like DU Votes to follow up with students to remind them to cast their ballots, Vermillion said.

“More students, anecdotally that I’ve heard from, are choosing to not register in Ohio, primarily because we’re one of the places where it’s more difficult to register and to vote in the country,” said Alexis Crosby, Ohio state coordinator for the Campus Vote Project, which works with colleges, universities, and election officials across the country to reduce barriers to the student vote.

Crosby underscored the detrimental impact that limited access to in-person voting can have on campus civic engagement.

“Much of the excitement around voting is the ability to vote in-person,” Crosby said. “And if you don’t have a voter ID and you’re running into barriers, you don’t have that option to vote in-person in Ohio. And so, a lot of the turnout events on different college campuses have had to shift in terms of how to create excitement around participating in our democracy, etc., when no matter where you’re voting, you’re going to have to vote by mail regardless.”

Crosby and Vermillion both raised concerns over the recently introduced HB 472, which would require an Ohio photo ID to register to vote and request an absentee ballot, replacing the existing regulation that allows for the use of a Social Security number. If passed, the law would drastically limit out-of-state students’ ability to vote in Ohio.

“Students would not be able to vote in the state of Ohio unless they surrender their out-of-state license and get their Ohio ID,” Vermillion said.

Protecting students’ ability to vote at their campus address is crucial to promoting democratic participation. Crosby pointed out that in college, out-of-state students’ lives are not completely centered in the places they and their families are from.

“They can’t get back to where their families live to make sure they can still cast the ballot if, for instance, their mail-in ballot doesn’t come on time,” Crosby said. “But if they switch their registration, if there’s issues with the mail or things like that, then they can vote in-person pretty easily.” In Ohio, though, “that is no longer the case.”

Ohio isn’t the only state where college voters have faced mounting barriers to democratic participation.

In 2011, Wisconsin passed Act 23, which enacted strict voting laws, including requiring student IDs include an issuance date, an expiration date within two years of issuance, and a signature to be used for voting. It also required students to show additional proof of enrollment when using this form of identification to vote. Caroline Smith, the programs director at the student voting rights advocacy nonprofit Andrew Goodman Foundation, which challenged the law in court, characterized it as one of the country’s strictest voter ID laws. While overall student voting rates increased between 2012 and 2016, Wisconsin saw one of the largest declines in student voting rates in that same time period.

“Students are working to mobilize to get new student IDs that comply with state voter ID specifications until we can get that law changed,” Smith said.

Andrew Goodman ambassadors at a number of schools, including Western Carolina University and University of Wisconsin-Madison, have worked with their administrations to have existing student IDs approved as voter identification or create new cards that students can obtain free of charge to vote at their campus addresses.

In addition to voter ID laws, restrictions on early voting also limit college students’ ability to vote. In 2018, the Andrew Goodman Foundation, alongside the League of Women Voters and student plaintiffs, sued Florida Secretary of State Kenneth Detzner for a 2014 administrative rule prohibiting college campuses from serving as early polling locations. After a federal judge struck down the ban, nearly 60,000 residents—disproportionately youth and people of color—voted at college polling locations in 2018.

“We’ve gotten into other legal battles, one of them being at Bard College in New York,” Smith said. “That legal battle happened over a decade and finally resulted in establishing a polling site on Bard’s campus, and then actually a law later on inspired by that win that mandated polling sites on campus in New York for campuses that have over 300 registered voters.”

What college administrations can do

According to a report released by the Brennan Center for Justice, 28 states now have more restrictive voting laws than they did during the 2020 election. Despite rising barriers as the 2024 election approaches, there is no shortage of activism to safeguard voting rights and promote democratic participation. Students are hosting campus voter registration drives across the country, and organizations such as the Brennan Center and the League of Women Voters are challenging restrictive laws in court.

University administrators can also take some steps to facilitate student participation in democracy.

Tedd Vanadilok, director of Santa Clara University’s Center for Student Involvement, said that the university added a voter registration reminder that always appears in the college’s learning management system, which students use to access their coursework.

“That way, if they’re in the system daily, it’s basically an ad that they’ll constantly see,” he said.

Thomas Dunne, Harvard College’s dean of students and the former deputy dean of undergraduate students at Princeton University, started Princeton’s Vote100 campaign in 2018 after noticing low student voter turnout rates.

“There’s not voter apathy—what there is is this information gap,” Dunne said. “And so, our top priority was filling that information gap with additional resources.”

“For many of these students, the first time they vote in a national election is when they’re in college,” Dunne continued. “People are looking at their first decision being, do they want to cast a vote where they’re living as a student, or do they want to vote in their home community? I think that a lot of students very reasonably have a strong commitment to casting their ballot in their home state.”

To support students voting in a number of different constituencies, the Vote100 campaign provides students with information on deadlines to request and submit absentee ballots, as well as video guides on where drop boxes are located. Princeton also integrated up-to-date voter registration reminders through TurboVote into student onboarding.

At both Princeton and Harvard, Dunne has encouraged students to mail their absentee ballots as early as possible so that academic obligations didn’t get in the way of voting. Dunne added that for many students, mailing in a ballot will be the first time they use a U.S. postage stamp.

“Making stamps accessible on your campus is a big deal,” Crosby said.

While colleges cannot provide stamps for free, they can make them available at bookstores and other on-campus locations.

“The process of voting by mail is pretty complicated,” Crosby added.

Smith also pointed out that one of the biggest barriers for student voters (and voters in general) is time.

“Students often have classes, exams, sports practices, jobs, and other obligations on Election Day that leave them without enough time to vote in person,” Smith said. “The more opportunity someone has to vote, the more likely they are to be able to do it. Any effort to limit that flexibility is voter suppression, and we know this is especially true for students.”

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