Pandemic forces campus campaigners to get creative

RALEIGH, N.C. — Chase Gaines wishes he could get more young people in North Carolina to answer their front doors and take his GOP flyer.

Rick Hart longs for the days when he would wake up at 6 a.m. to prep for a day of campaigning in the streets of Atlanta to persuade his classmates to elect Democrats.

The two college students are on opposite ends of the political universe but facing the same challenge: reaching young voters when campuses are empty and students are scattered across the country.

“The pandemic really did hit us significantly,” said Hart, an unpaid student volunteer at Morehouse College who was working in Georgia on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, but is now back at his parents’ home in Laurel, Md. “The country kind of came to a shutdown and we were like, ‘What do we do next?’”

Campaigns, advocacy groups and registration organizations say they’re still struggling to answer that question — and looking for creative, largely digital solutions.

The coronavirus has forced many colleges to adopt online-only classes, eliminating hopes of large in-person registration drives on campus. Outdoor festivals, sporting events and other public gatherings are canceled, cutting off more easy access to college-age voters.

Groups dedicated to rallying young voters have worries that go beyond registrations. With campuses closing, college students are especially transient, causing confusion about whether they should register at their home or school address. The shift to mail voting raises other unexpected hurdles for young voters, including a lack of familiarity with the U.S. Postal Service and even improper cursive penmanship that can lead to rejected votes.

“Younger voters are behind the eight-ball to begin with, and covid is just going to make it worse,” said Daniel Smith, a professor and chair of political science at the University of Florida, who has studied mail-in balloting.

All these worries are a bigger headache for Democrats, who are more dependent on college voters’ support and, in a traditional campaign, their volunteerism. Voters younger than 30 made up 13 percent of the electorate in 2016, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. This year, polls show that the age group favors Biden by a wide margin. And if they vote, they could also play an important role in Senate, House and down-ballot contests.

But traditional outreach to college voters has been upended. There are no tables set up in many student unions or young people carrying clipboards at concerts and rallies, said Patrick Schuh, Michigan state director for America Votes, which supports Democratic candidates and progressive causes.

“All of these visibility events are important. They show energy, they help with engagement,” Schuh said.

The Democratic National Committee and Biden’s campaign have greatly restricted staff travel, effectively eliminating coordinated in-person voter contacts. The advocacy group NextGen America said it doesn’t have paid staff members on college campuses.

The initial impact was clear. In North Carolina, which President Donald Trump won in 2016 and Democrats are hoping to flip, registrations among people 18 to 29 dropped sharply when the virus forced campus closures in March. That has begun to rebound.

Kate Fellman, executive director of the nonpartisan voter registration group You Can Vote, said the organization set a goal this year to register 30,000 people, 18 to 25, in the state. She said the team had 4,391 new registrants before the pandemic hit in mid-March. But in the four months since, the group registered just dozens of people.

Making up for that lost ground has meant getting creative. Individual students are turning to the social media platforms to persuade young people to register to vote. NextGen is sifting through Twitter to find potential voters and is directly messaging them. Some groups and campaigns have gone old-school, ramping up phone-banking efforts and noting an increased rate of responses from young people stuck at home.

Republican campaigns have been more willing to conduct outreach in person. Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager said the campaign has 73 target campuses and more than 550 students working to assist with recruitment, training and activation on campus and online.

“Our youth engagement efforts will continue both virtually and in-person,” she added.

Anderson is a corps member for the AP/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.