Election 2024
How Miami students are shaping America’s future
Evan Stefanik
Caitlin Dominski
Editor’s Note: This information was collected prior to the election results.
The 2024 U.S. presidential race was one of the most revolutionary elections in the nation’s history. Donald Trump, the world’s most controversial leader, went up against new opponent Kamala Harris, who, unusually, already had experience in the White House.
Far from the political epicenter of Washington, D.C., lies the small town of Oxford, Ohio, home to one of the most crucial voter blocs in this year’s election – college students.
Like campuses nationwide, Miami University buzzed with political activity leading up to Nov. 5. Local partisans and civic-minded citizens stood on sidewalks with clipboards, knocked on dorm room doors and guest-lectured in classrooms. Their relentless determination boosted student voter registration, prompting them to participate in politics like never before.
Historically, the demographic of voters ages 18 to 29 has had the lowest turnout, according to associate political science professor Kevin Reuning. Close to 4 million Generation Z voters were eligible to vote but had not yet registered on the last day to do so in Ohio. However, 2024 marked the first time the current generation at Miami could choose the President.
Out of a random sample of 25 students in Armstrong Student Center, 11 voted for Harris, eight voted for Trump and six either declined to vote or voted third-party. Half of those who voted mailed in their ballot and the other half planned to go in-person.
Only five of these students voted for anything else besides the President. Those with no intention to read the entire ballot mostly cited not understanding what to vote on and why.
Senior Mollie Duffy, the Associated Student Government’s (ASG) secretary of governmental relations, founded the Democracy Bus before last year’s general elections. Her project shuttled students to and from campus to vote in-person or drop off absentee ballots. Despite its convenience and proactive marketing approach, it only attracted a handful of students.
“The biggest impact was letting students know that there was an election,” Duffy said. “It was a living way to encourage students to make a plan and vote.”
Her effort exposed a lack of education as the top challenge to student voting.
Offices at the university strived for students to get active in this election. Senior Maddie Hayden, a SEAL ambassador for civic engagement, networked with other campuses for inspiration in the democracy-related training sessions and workshops she put on. Her pop-up on the campus seal on National Voter Registration Day welcomed an impressive number of first-years. She pushed students to vote by giving free stamps, correcting ballots and driving them to the Butler County Board of Elections (BCBE) each week, specifically targeting low-turnout demographics such as those in Farmer School of Business and STEM majors.
Besides students’ general unawareness about what her service offers and does, Hayden discovered most of them only knew their decision for president, not for anything statewide or local.
“Miami can be a bit more sheltered from the broader issues in Butler County,” Hayden said.
Other confusions point to House Bill 458’s changes to the voting code that enforce stricter voter identification. Now, if a voter cannot provide an unexpired Ohio photo ID, the state government requires them to use a passport or other physical form, which students often have a harder time obtaining.
Junior Daniela Morales works 10 hours a week as a democracy fellow for the Campus Vote Project and advocates for looser restrictions on Ohio’s voter identification laws.
“It’s a law that was created to disenfranchise students in particular,” Morales said. “It creates a lot of mixed emotions among the student body.”
Elizabeth Wardle, co-president of voter services in Oxford’s chapter of the League of Women Voters (LWV), opposes the policy because it leads to out-of-state students not voting. About a month into registering individuals to vote, she realized most believed they must replace their original license to vote here. Instead, they should cancel their registration in their home state.
She blames state election boards and the Secretary of State’s website for complicating this task.
“You will not easily recognize that you could register to vote,” Wardle said. “You should just be able to go online and do that. It's a struggle for them to know what's available.”
LWV writes a comprehensive voter guide for every election. It features important information about issues, questionnaires from federal to local candidates and much more. Accessible online, this year’s packet sprung up at farmer’s markets, Oxtoberfest and in a variety of student spaces. The league recruited up to 10 student members this year and enabled King Library’s HOWE Writing Center undergraduate consultants to receive and send students’ ballots. It improved voter registration beforehand by placing its blank form in 8,000 new students’ orientation packets, according to Wardle.
When LWV tabled at MegaFair, it ran out of the form three times.
“Miami is a huge part of our work. It’s easier to get the word out here because we’re so local,” Wardle said. “Suddenly, younger people are interested in voting as a democratic right again. It used to be boring.”
The presidential election helped skyrocket student voting this year. It granted LWV greater access to student organizations and classrooms, spurring a stronger political presence at Miami. John Forren, executive director of the Menard Family Center for Democracy, views this evolution as a chance for more civil civic engagement.
“American society is very polarized right now, not only in points of view on issues, but even in the lack of connections to people who disagree with us,” Forren said. “In college, students have a real opportunity to build bridges to other people.”
To set itself apart from similar attempts by other universities, the Menard Center spreads across Miami as an independent entity rather than functioning in one department. It assigns up to 25 civic summer scholarship students to research projects commissioned by the state department, attracts audiences of about 300 to its semesterly Janus Forum debate and facilitates up to a hundred yearly non-partisan programs, events and courses.
Partisan student organizations, such as the College Republicans (CR) and College Democrats (CD), aim for the same goal as Forren’s institution. The two coexist by opening meetings to students of any major or political affiliation and both witnessed a higher active membership this semester. CD President, Patrick Houlihan, hopes to combat political stigmas on campus.
“Miami gets an unfair reputation of being too conservative,” Houlihan said. “But the vast majority of people are friendly to the Democrats’ belief system. It’s natural to be curious during such a big election.”
Victoria Rivas, CR Director of Communications, agrees that Miami fosters a healthy, educational environment, considering she entered college with little political knowledge. However, she notices students sometimes hesitate to contribute to it.
“We need to be cautious with friendships and certain topics we can't get into because they might be touchy,” Rivas said. “There's a lot of people on campus that feel one way politically and are afraid to speak up.”
Students like Morales and Hayden avoid partisanship altogether. In the Campus Vote Project, a student told Morales that people feel pushed away or annoyed when they encounter it from voter registration proponents. Houlihan said that includes the one frequently spotted at the Phi Tau Delta gates and outside of Armstrong, a full-time hire by the Ohio Democratic Coordinated Campaign. Hayden’s students talked to her about their difficulty finding a neutral space on campus.
Throughout its history, Miami has remained a tamer campus in terms of activism. Compared to other collegiate protests about the Israel conflict, it only surfaced participants in the dozens, not the hundreds. Students’ overall disengagement with politics worsens with social media because it convinces them to censor or misconstrue their opinions. Reuning studies the interaction between media and voters.
“There's more concern from young people about saying the wrong thing because it’s really easy to go viral on social media,” Reuning said. “That has changed how students perceive politics.”
Political atmospheres influence voter ideologies. Factors like the coronavirus pandemic revealed how unsettling politics can be for students like those Morales sees.
“People have doubts and those are pushing them to vote,” Morales said. “Students are voting because they have a fear for the future of our democracy.”
For college students, voting means manifesting an ideal post-graduate life. They tend to discuss the high cost of living, insecurity coming into the workforce, the housing crisis and student loan procedures on the federal level.
Local candidates, like Democrat Chantel Raghu for Butler County Commissioner, wanted to earn students’ attention. Her campaign hired some as employees or interns for door-knocking and data entry and communicated with their organizations on campus.
“It’s challenging with local politics because a lot of students don’t know how it affects them,” Raghu said. “They’re just as important as the presidential election but are widely misunderstood. Especially for students moving into the community, they’re in a black hole of what’s going on here.”
As Oxford’s Vice Mayor, part of Raghu’s agenda was to replace the city’s lead pipes for cleaner water. Due to federal legislation in the Inflation Reduction Act, she could now allocate funds to this goal if she wins her election.
Hayden said students should care because ultimately, all voting is local. Morales, an out-of-state student, feels the same and updated her registration to impact her new location.
“There’s been issues of people that have lived here for years feeling uncomfortable with out-of-state students voting within this county, but students contribute as much as them and are entitled to vote wherever they want,” Morales said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It's more of a question – where do you think your vote is going to matter?”
Absentee ballots, usually more popular for out-of-state students, decreased at the BCBE since the 2020 election. Ohio praised BCBE as a top board in the state, according to BCBE’s deputy director, Eric Corbin. It recently onboarded 40 extra poll workers or part-time positions to handle the growing enjoyment of in-person voting.
Corbin said he informs voters of their best practices. For example, he reminds voters to modify their address ahead of time, or else he deals with many provisional ballots during each election.
Controversy over voting fraud arose this year as HB458 passed and the Ohio Secretary of State purged 160,000 alleged false voters from its rolls. Houlihan and Rivas both voted in person for pride and ritual, but Houlihan thinks mailing the vote keeps it safer, while Rivas worries about interference.
Until the next election, Miami prepares to uphold fairness and freedom for its students. Duffy pursues voting curriculum in required UNV101 classes and hopes ASG legislates Election Day as a national holiday for increased student accessibility.
“Recognize your privilege of democracy,” Duffy said. “When students turn out in large numbers, it sends a message to candidates that they need to prioritize student issues.”
The election season chaos carried into student life because politicians sensed the significance within the average college student.
“Oxford being a small, college town, helps mobilize a lot of politics. Students build up muscles the more they vote,” Reuning said. “You can change the election if you campaign to low-intensity voters.”
But regardless of whether student voters educated themselves on each vote, the future of the government hung in the balance before Election Day. When Harris rose to candidacy over the summer, Rivas and her Republican peers felt shaken considering how other Miami students reacted to the change. She quickly adjusted.
“Kamala got a lot of the younger people, but I think as people watch the debates, it's eye-opening. I think they help us out a lot more,” Rivas said. “We still have high hopes, but we have to keep putting in more effort and registering people to vote.”
Houlihan echoed her sentiment as the election neared. He and his fellow Democrats focused on the rest of the ticket in order to make a difference rather than spending optimism on an ideal President.
“Ohio is not necessarily in play for Kamala Harris,” Houlihan said. “Of course, we're excited that Kamala is on the ballot, and we think that she's a really great candidate, but it is more important to lean fully into reelecting our senator, Sherrod Brown.”
He stresses the details on the ballot to his members, explaining that a vote means more the closer it comes to home. Most voters only care about electing the President, therefore excluding the seemingly smaller issues affecting a student’s everyday life.
“The hardest thing to do is make students more aware of the power of their vote and its importance,” Morales said. “Local politics play a pivotal role.”
Students at Miami envisioned the next four years of their lives in this election. The whole country depended on them – and it all started right here on their campus.
