To Vote or Not to Vote? There’s No Question

You might expect that students would be happy to embrace an extra school holiday.

With this in mind, I had high hopes when, as a member of the Harvard Votes Challenges, I circulated a petition to make federal Election Day a University-wide holiday.

I was disappointed. The students I encountered were far from eager to sign — my efforts were largely met with disinterest, and sometimes even with disdain.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. The lackluster response I received calls attention to broader trends of youth disengagement from voting that demand urgent attention.

Compared with other age groups, young people across the nation have lower rates of participation in many political activities, including voting.

We cannot simply assume young people have declining interest in voting and move on — in fact, relative to older cohorts, young people are likelier to report barriers to voting, such as trouble with registration deadlines, difficulty accessing polling locations, and delayed receipt of absentee ballots. Voting is already confusing, and the proliferation of complicated voting laws across the nation only makes matters worse. This process is even harder if it’s your first time.

Despite these institutional obstacles — indeed, because of them — we must remain committed to political participation. We must ensure young Americans can successfully and responsibly vote, and help our communities back home do the same.

While young people face numerous barriers to voting, Harvard students possess a unique edge.

We have access to voting instructions and resource packages that campus civic engagement groups diligently compile, peers and faculty intimately familiar with barriers to voting and how to overcome them, and a wealth of academic resources that enable us to research each election with gusto.

Given this advantage, we have fewer excuses not to vote. We must commit to checking our voter registration status, double-checking the voting policies of the states we plan to vote in, and securing absentee and mail-in ballots if we’re voting away from home.

And when we do vote, we must know who and what we’re voting for.

“Low-information voters” — voters who lack a robust understanding of the candidates or issues they’re voting for — represent a substantial portion of voters nationwide.

That matters. The catchphrase “your vote is your voice” only holds true when your ballot truly represents what you want to say. Casting an uninformed ballot can reduce the change-making potential of your vote or, worse, skew political change in a direction you might find undesirable.

Accordingly, students must rigorously research the ballot before we vote. Because this research can be time-consuming, it is critically important to proactively form a voting plan well ahead of Election Day. There exist numerous easy-to-use resources to make this planning process less daunting and drastically more efficient.

We must pay close attention not only to the glamorous national races, but also to local elections, many of which happen every year and can have a greater direct impact on our communities but face lower rates of voter turnout.

Finally, eligible voters of the Harvard community must export these voting practices from the streets of Cambridge to our homes. Most people lack the wealth of civic resources on Harvard’s campus, especially individuals belonging to communities that have historically faced disenfranchisement.

Sometimes it feels as though our political system is designed to prevent young people from engaging with it. Voter suppression and disengagement are structural issues that can’t be solved overnight.

But we need not lose hope. There are millions of voting-eligible college students and young folks in this country. If we vote, and vote right, we hold immense amounts of power to elect candidates that truly represent us and, unflinchingly, hold elected officials accountable once in office.

With dedication, we can make meaningful progress on the structural failures of the United States voting system and, in turn, the failures of government itself.

We are the next generation of leaders, and that leadership must start now. By ceding to voting barriers, we risk extinguishing the sparks of civic engagement; by voting, we can fan them into political change.

Layla L. Hijjawi ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Grays Hall and is an organizer with the Harvard Votes Challenge.