‘There are some really strange things going on on campuses,’ says Wisconsin Voter Alliance President Ron Heuer.
The upcoming election will likely be less about changing voters’ minds and more about rousing the faithful and getting them to the polls.
America’s students, who according to an analysis by Tufts University helped elect Biden in key swing states in 2020, could prove to be pivotal in this regard, both as targets and as foot soldiers in the party’s get-out-the-vote drives.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit currently moving through Wisconsin courts appears to provide a case study for how these campaigns translate into election wins for the Democratic Party.
In February, Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted that the government is paying college students to register voters.
“We have been doing work to promote voter participation for students. And, for example we … now allow students to get paid through Federal Work Study to register people and to be nonpartisan poll workers,” she said.
Ms. Harris said the Biden administration has been able “to charge federal agencies with doing the work that they rightly can do to inform the American people of their right to vote.”
Paying students to canvass is the latest component of an initiative originated under former President Barack Obama to increase student voting. Initially this was carried out in conjunction with private nonprofit organizations such as Civic Nation.
Founded with the support of President Obama, his wife, and Joe Biden in 2015, and led by former Obama staffers, Civic Nation now boasts a partnership with 1,700 colleges and universities and a reported budget of more than $16 million in 2020.
Its stated goal is “fighting for gender equity, social justice, and more,” and it leads the “All In Campus Democracy Challenge” that engages with university administrators to get them to sign up student voters.
All In runs school get-out-the-vote competitions in all 50 states. According to its website, it has partnered with 994 institutions and signed up more than 10 million students. As part of the “challenge,” schools agree to share student voting data.
Civic Nation receives much of its funding from a network of progressive charitable funds managed by Arabella Advisors, which oversees a network of nonprofit vehicles that finance left-wing political campaigns.
Under the Biden administration, however, the student get-out-the-vote campaign is now being run with federal funds, spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Education.
