Created by NASPA and the Campus Vote Project, the Voter Friendly Campus designation is a program created to help institutions develop plans to coordinate administrators, faculty, and student organizations in civic and electoral engagement. The Voter Friendly Campus designation program helps administrators develop a strategy to engage students in election processes. The work campuses put into implementing voter engagement plans keeps students engaged in public issues and participating in the electoral process as they enter and move through their time at school.

To earn the Voter Friendly Campus designation, campuses had to submit a plan and report the results after implementing the plan for the general presidential election.

A shared mission for strengthening our democracy connects Campus Compact and the Voter Friendly Campus designation program.

83% of the current Voter Friendly Campuses are Campus Compact member institutions, including the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte, whose Democratic Engagement Plan has been highlighted as an exemplar by the Voter Friendly Campus designation program. In their plan, UNC Charlotte details how they targeted voter registration, voter engagement and voter mobilization on their campus, and made it easier for students to remember important dates and steps to take to register to vote. UNC Charlotte also incorporated TurboVote, a platform created by the American Democracy Project that keeps track of registration and vote-by-mail rules, in their plan. TurboVote offers a variety of voting tools that UNC Charlotte used, including mailing services, and text and email alerts to students before important voting deadlines. UNC Charlotte’s plan also included setting up accessible campus voter registration sites, faculty to student communication, social media engagement, hosting an early voting kick-off event, and providing shuttles to polling locations during the early voting period.

As shown by the conclusion of their plan, UNC Charlotte’s efforts to make voting and democratic participation more engaging were received positively, with over seven hundred students registered on TurboVote, and approximately eighty students who used the shuttles to vote early.

Congratulations to all Campus Compact Member Institutions who received the Voter Friendly Campus Designation this year!

For more information and a complete list of all of the campuses who’ve been designated as Voter Friendly Campuses, check out Voter Friendly Campus’ website here.