Harvard Votes Challenges Launches Ballot Day Initiative to Encourage Absentee Voting

Harvard Votes Challenge organized its first-ever “Ballot Day” on Saturday to encourage students to mail in their absentee ballots before Election Day next month.

The Ballot Day event marked one part of a broader initiative called “Democracy Days,” which aims to get Harvard students to turn out for elections. The event — an initiative of the Harvard Institute of Politics — came just before absentee ballot request deadlines in many states.

At the event, HVC provided students with free food, prizes, and stickers. They also gave students envelopes and stamps for their absentee ballots.

The event also featured four activities for attendees: bagels in front of Straus Hall, a voting help center in Harvard Square, a group walk to mail absentee ballots, and a Texas-Georgia football watch party in partnership with the Harvard Undergraduate Texas Club.

Zoe Yu ’27, who leads the Democracy Days initiative, said that while past voter advocacy efforts on campus have often focused on Election Day itself, Ballot Day hoped to target the majority of Harvard students whose primary addresses are in other states.

“I think some students obviously would love to vote and be civically engaged, but there are kind of a lot of operational barriers surrounding that,” Yu, a former Crimson Editorial editor, said.

At the voting help center, students affiliated with HVC shared information on how to request an absentee ballot and helped attendees come up with a plan to send them in.

“I didn’t have any good way to get stamps,” Bettie L. Closs ’25 said. “For people who are sending in their ballot and they’re kind of far away from home — they’ve never voted before — it was super helpful.”

In Harvard Hall, dozens of students gathered to watch the Texas-Georgia football game while filling out mail-in ballots and enjoying food from Raising Cane’s.

Texas Club President Taryn M. Riddle ’25 said event organizers hoped to make voting “fun” and encourage freshmen as they cast their first-ever ballots.

“I’m really glad that we did have that collab,” Steven A. Birkner ’28, the treasurer of the Texas Club, said. “I know that being from Texas and being in Massachusetts, it really is kind of a hard transition to go from being in that state and knowing how to register to vote and stuff like that.”

Julia J. High ’26, one of HVC’s co-chairs, said the event was aimed at helping students navigate differences between states’ voting laws that often made the process confusing for young voters.

“It’s really, really hard for students to know when they’re supposed to request their absentee ballot, to know about the different deadlines, and to know about the different requirements for each state,” High said.

Jordan D. Schwartz ’27, the other HVC co-chair, said that though Saturday’s event was just Ballot Day’s first iteration, they anticipate the initiative to continue for years to come.

“We would love for it to happen at least every two years — possibly every year,” Schwartz said.