Mercer Votes, a student-led bipartisan organization, has worked for years to improve civic engagement at Mercer by educating and encouraging students to exercise their voting rights. This year, a crucial midterm cycle, the group has been working overtime, diversifying their outreach and wading into uncharted territory in hopes of making this year their most succesful yet.
“The prong of our plan that I’ve been leading has been collaborations with other student organizations,” explained Democracy Fellow and Partnerships Director of Mercer Votes Harris Wallace ‘27. “Any student org that wants to host a nonpartisan civic engagement event on campus, we will help with advertising and voting resources.”
In addition to partnering with and providing other student organizations with resources, Mercer Votes is attempting to increase student voter turnout through the Voting Champions Initiative. Wallace says that the initiative helps decentralize the process and makes it more widespread on campus.
"Faculty and staff agree to show presentations [about the initiative] in class, and it’s a really great way to expose their students to all of this voting material within the classroom environment,” said Wallace.
Mercer Votes has conducted many other events and strategies throughout this year to promote voting across campus.
“We did our event Registration and Ramen where we were giving out free ramen to any student who wanted it,” said Wallace. “While they were stopping by our table, we’d talk to them about voting, see if they were voting, and ask them if they’d take the pledge to vote," he said.
Mercer is also a member of the All-IN Campus Democracy Challenge, said Wallace. Students who join the initiative take a pledge to vote and compete against other universities to have the highest voter turnout.
“We want to have a high percentage of our campus that has taken the pledge to vote,” said Wallace. “It’s a great way for students to start their plan to vote because the website you take the pledge on will automatically send you an email the week before Election Day.”
For Democracy Fellow and member of Mercer Votes Isabelle Rueggeberg ’28, civic engagement is inherently tied to Mercer’s identity. “At Mercer, every student majors in changing the world. And one of the easiest ways to do that in the Civic Engagement process is by casting your vote in all local, federal and state elections," she said. “All of our interests are represented on the ballot, so it’s really important that we as students are enfranchised, as we’re all here to get an education, and so we are well-informed on how to make those good decisions."
Democracy Fellow Shafa Gilani ‘28, also a member of the organization, explained the specific challenges that many voters face today. “People sometimes feel like it’s a little bit difficult to get directly involved because of the fearmongering that happens surrounding voting especially if you’re from a marginalized community, but also because of how polarizing every single issue and challenge is," she said.
Gilani said she feels outreach programs like Mercer Votes are more important in light of those challenges.
“It’s been very gratifying to see that we as Mercer Votes have been able to get into contact with these people and provide them a way to feel very seen with these challenges” said Gilani.
For many of the members of Mercer Votes, helping students register to vote and become more informed about their representative candidates is personally fulfilling as well.
“It’s really exciting when an event comes to fruition," said Gilani. "For example, we just planned a 'What’s on your ballot?' presentation and collaborated with a nonpartisan organization from Atlanta called Georgia Muslim Voter Project, and it was so lovely to see more than 15 people come attend and engage with the slideshow," she said.
“Everyone at Mercer Votes is able to empathize with the fact that so many people especially at Mercer come from such different backgrounds, and not all of them have had access to the resources we’re able to provide them," she added.
"So seeing them, when they walk up to our tent, or reach out to us when we’re tabling or at an event, seeing them being open to receiving this information about voting has made us feel very hopeful," she said.
Early voting begins Oct. 13 and ends Oct. 20 in the state of Georgia. Election Day is Nov. 3.
Editor's note: "Cluster Notes" is a new series from the Cluster that will feature stories that spotlight how midterm cycle political issues might affect or are affecting Mercer students and university students writ large. The series will run periodically through Election Day and the month of November.
