This is a guide for people who are taking the lead on their campus on election engagement

1. ORGANIZING A CAMPUS TO VOTE – A CONCISE GUIDE
The best place to start when getting together a campus vote initiative is the Campus Compact's
2012 Campus Election Engagement Project because it has some great voter engagement
resources. With that website, the Your Vote, Your Voice website, and the resources contained in
this package, this should be all you need to conduct a nonpartisan effort to register students to
vote, help them think through relevant issues, and encourage them to volunteer in the various
campaigns.
Use existing organizing resources: This is very important because there is no reason for
everybody to recreate the wheel at each campus. People have spent many hours putting
resources such as this one together. Doing a simple google search of “youth voting” or “college
voting” will turn up thousands of hits. Make sure you check out 2012 Campus Election
Engagement Project's resources, it offers great examples, explanations, and templates. Also, use
the checklist in this packet and the complementary Your Vote, Your Voice to summarize key
approaches.
Pick departments/organizations to engage and identify potential contacts. Once you have a
sense of the available resources and useful approaches, figure out which departments and
organizations you want to engage. Your initial contact list might be just the people you know,
but that is a good starting point. Don’t forget to tap into all different groups on and off campus,
including administrators, staff, faculty, students, and the surrounding community. You may
want to contact the local mayor’s office, city council, local political leaders, and definitely your
county elections board.
Establish communications: To coordinate within your election engagement group, set up
regular mechanisms to share information through email, phone calls, meetings, and online
interactive tools. You want to make one individual your prime contact person, but having a
backup in case you can't reach them.
Help your school fulfill its legal mandate: Campus Compact's Campus Vote Initiative is based
on tried and tested approaches, so engaging your school should be straightforward. If a key
department or office resists, remember that postsecondary institutions are legally required to do
their best to distribute voter registration forms to each degree or certificate seeking student they
enroll, so you're helping them to take that mandate seriously.
Integrate into current activities – then expand your efforts (create an action plan): Find out
what's already happening on your campus. Identify gaps in current efforts and figure out
together what would be feasible and effective. Build a team involving as many of the key offices
and departments as possible, in addition to anyone else who wants to help. Most campuses have
some logical starting places – the community service center, the office of student affairs, or the
student government. You may not know all the key people at first, but one office can usually

2. lead you to another. If you get enough energetic people involved, together you can engage all the
necessary offices and departments and follow up to ensure they're doing all they need to.
Help students volunteer – whatever their political views: As you're ensuring that every
possible student is registered, you can also create opportunities for them to reflect on their
political choices. Pass out information on local campaigns, encourage students to become poll
workers, or recruit students to help in your effort. This involvement can be particularly
important, because once students start volunteering in these kinds of efforts, they tend to
continue throughout their lives. You can help students connect with groups like the College
Republicans and College Democrats, or other on-campus efforts of political campaigns. If
students feel that the winner of their state is a forgone conclusion, they can volunteer with these
same national campaigns by calling voters in other states. They can also work for more
competitive local races, such as city council, county council, or state legislature. These
opportunities are often more meaningful than working on big national or statewide campaigns
because a volunteer has an opportunity to see a great deal more. While your first priority should
be to make sure your school works to register all eligible students, your second should be to
engage students with this election in all other ways you can, while respecting their diversity of
political beliefs. The more you reach out, the more you'll make it likely that both aspects
succeed.
Use the mapping tool to connect with others: As a part of this effort, a mapping tool has been
created to keep campuses connected with each other. Because this is a multi-campus effort, this
tool will track which schools are participating and how they are participating. This will allow
people to share ideas and collaborate. The tool is housed at http://www.campusvotemap.info/.
You can fill out a form with your information and the information of your efforts to start sharing
as soon as possible. The sooner you begin, the more impact you'll have.
Stay in touch: Feel free to contact me and let me know how things are going. I will help you in
every way possible. Be sure to stay in touch with all of the groups you are engaging on campus
as well. Remember to send reminders to those taking the lead--persistently enough to move
things forward, but gently enough not to annoy people. If you have recruited someone to help in
a particular function, make sure you always offer help.
Start NOW – don't wait till fall: Organizing may be difficult during the summer, because
many faculty, staff, students are away. To register and engage as many students as possible,
however, schools will need a structure in place before students return for fall classes. This is
particularly true if you want to engage them (and register them to vote) during programs like
first-year orientation. Start as quickly as you can, draw in more people as you go, and plan easy
ways for entering and returning students to jump in as soon as they arrive on your campus. You
might even form an official on-campus group so you can ensure access to great resources.
Start now:
• Use the summer to prepare for fall, building structures and procedures for when students
return.
• Skim through the checklist and websites to get ideas for your campus – They have all the
tools, models and templates you need.
• See what's already going on and who's involved.

3. • Work with existing efforts and enlist other strong allies to help.
• Identify gaps and consider ways to fill them, either through new initiatives or
strengthening existing ones.
• Contact faculty and administrators in charge of relevant offices or departments.
• Involve student leaders.
• Sign up on the mapping tool listed above.
• Develop an action plan, using the wealth of available resources.
• Share existing online resources and any new ones you find.
• Follow-up to make sure key aspects don't fall through the cracks.
• Spread relevant new materials, such as candidate and initiative information.
• Work (where useful) with other nearby schools.
• Have fun – you're engaging students in the core work of democracy!
Thanks again for taking on this task, as we all know how important it is. Remember, start early
and engage as many people as you can – even while many staff members and most students are
gone during the summer. By fall, your efforts should be off and running, and you’ll be able to
concentrate on keep people motivated and expanding your efforts. You'll then have a very brief
two months to engage those who haven’t gotten to yet. Remember that the official Florida
margin in 2000 was 537 votes, in New Mexico 368 votes, and the margin in the 2004
Washington State Governor's race, 129 votes. Whoever the students you help get engaged end
up supporting, you never know the difference that they might make.