Recent federal actions have introduced new barriers for colleges and universities working to support student voter participation. In 2023, attorney Cleta Mitchell raised unfounded concerns about polling locations close to dormitories on campuses, citing fears of students voting without being properly informed. These sentiments have only grown since the current administration launched a probe into the Tufts University research project, the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE), alleging that it violated the federal student data privacy law.
NSLVE is a long-standing, nonpartisan research initiative used in higher education to assess student civic engagement. More than a thousand universities and colleges rely on NSLVE’s nonpartisan research statistics to understand student voter engagement. They are not using the program to determine who students are voting for.
Yet, in an attempt to further restrict advocacy efforts to increase student civic engagement, the Education Department claims that the institutions are “illegally sharing college students’ data with third parties to influence elections.” The Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, shared in a press release that the Biden Administration supported the research service and only ‘encouraged institutions to…target certain populations.’
Despite NSLVE stating that “the program uses publicly available data to conduct its research while also maintaining students’ confidentiality,” the administration continues, without any evidentiary basis, to claim unlawful conduct in an attempt to restrict young voters.
Advocates, alongside school administrators, report that the impact of the probe is already being felt. The Education Department has released a guidance letter directing institutions to refrain from using any NSLVE report data until the investigation is completed. The letter also threatens to withhold or withdraw federal funding from institutions that do not comply with the directive.
As the midterm elections approach, schools are left with little to no information on how to address student voters, who are historically less likely to vote. A couple of months prior, a letter was sent to institutions stating that it is unlawful to use federal work-study funding to employ students to assist with voter registration and at polling sites.
As Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has shared, these actions undermine “decades of bipartisan recognition that …voter registration is a core public-interest function of institutions of higher education.” Students have a constitutional right to vote where they go to school and youth voter turnout is more important now than ever.
