California Colleges Compete to Register the Most Students to Vote
Credit: grandriver / E+ / Getty Images- The California University and College Ballot Bowl is a biennial competition where higher education institutions across the state compete against each other to register students and organize events promoting civic engagement.
- Since 2018, the competition has had around 111,000 students register to vote or update their registration.
- This year, campuses are focusing on voter registration and educating students about statewide ballot propositions and local elections.
As Election Day approaches, colleges and universities in California are in a race of their own: the California Ballot Bowl.
The California University and College Ballot Bowl competition, hosted by the California secretary of state and held every two years, aims to promote student voter registration and civic engagement.
Over 229 campuses across the state are eligible to participate, including California Community Colleges, California State Universities (CSUs), University of California (UC) campuses, and private institutions.
During the competition, campuses track each student registering to vote in California or updating their registration. Counts for each campus are updated weekly during the competition, which began on Aug. 12 this year.
The overall winner of the competition is the campus with the highest number of points in all three categories: number of students registered to vote, percentage of the student body registered to vote, and the Civic and Voter Empowerment Action Plan (CVEAP) score.
There are also four winners per category, each from a different higher education system (community college, CSU, UC, and private institutions).
The top campuses are celebrated in an awards ceremony hosted by the California secretary of state where each institution gets to give a presentation about their campus’s voter registration efforts.
Since 2018, the Ballot Bowl has seen more than 111,000 students register to vote or update their registration, according to a spokesperson from the secretary of state’s office.
“I’m just excited to see you folks so engaged in this whole process, being innovative about it and committed to it, because I know what happens at this point in your life, it will become your life forever,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said during an event celebrating Stanford’s achievement in 2022.
“… It is extremely important that you’ve registered and that you vote in every election because that really determines not only the present, but the future.”
Going Beyond Voter Registration
Jodi Balma, a professor of political science at Fullerton College, a community college in Orange County, California, told BestColleges that her campus’s strategy in the Ballot Bowl is not just to register as many students as possible but to encourage them to show up and vote.
All registered voters in California are sent a mail-in ballot, but only a small fraction of those ballots are returned. In Orange County, over 439,000 young adults ages 18-34 were sent a ballot for the 2024 primary election. Only 18%, or just over 80,000, returned their ballots.
“The reality is, in California, we’re kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum of voter access. We have done a really good job … young people make up a big percent of the registered voters,” she said. “Where we haven’t done a good job is actually getting young people to vote.”
Balma said Fullerton College’s schedule of events leading up to Election Day have included voter education events focused on California’s 10 statewide ballot measures, local school board candidate forums, and virtual voting parties.
“We really do try to do a whole spectrum of events to engage and inform students,” she said. “Voting can be complicated. Voting can be hard. The media sort of only highlights the presidential elections, and so then you get a ballot, and it feels like a pop quiz that you haven’t studied for.”
In the fall, California voters will have the opportunity to vote on 10 ballot propositions along with candidates for national, state, and local offices.
Ricki Burgener, director of university partnerships and civic engagement at CSU Long Beach, told BestColleges that her campus’s Ballot Bowl effort is prioritizing educating students about ballot measures beyond the presidential race.
The university will host events focused on a couple of key propositions important to the students, including Proposition 3, which would update the California Constitution to remove language stating that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and Proposition 33, which would repeal a law that limits the kinds of rent control laws cities and counties can have, according to the California secretary of state’s office.
“What I’m hearing from so many of the students, especially this year, is how many of them are just feeling like ‘What can we do? … We can’t really make an impact on the presidential election.’ What is so heartening for me are the comments from students who are engaged and how they’re reminding the students that, yes, you have a voice. Your voice is the vote,” she said.
Building a Coalition Across Campus
Burgener emphasized that voter engagement programming must meet students where they are at, whether that is with puppies at a “puppies and propositions” event about ballot measures or free food at a “ballot and boba event” aimed at understanding your ballot.
These events, alongside several others, are facilitated through a collaborative effort involving multiple departments across campus, including the Department of Political Science, the Department of Communications, and the Associated Students, Inc. (ASI), CSU Long Beach’s student government.
The university’s “Go Beach Go Vote” partnership between the university, the League of Women Voters, and ASI, shares competition updates on social media (one post reads “#1 every week, maybe we should slow down and let the others catch up”), tabling opportunities, and voter engagement events.
“We have been consistently in front of students,” Burgener said. “They do tabling weekly wherever there are students, meaning we have a table, we have posters, we have a QR code that says, ‘Register here.’ And they’ve been promoting it on social media, regularly posting on social media.”
At Fullerton College, Balma says the Ballot Bowl competition has brought together more than 70 student clubs and community partners, including the Registrar of Voters, various local candidates, and the League of Women Voters. She also emphasizes the campus’s focus on larger issues at a local level.
“If you care about criminal justice, you need to care about who’s on your city council hiring a police chief. If you care about police brutality, you need to care about the state Legislature in California, which does not make public the reason that police have been fired for cause,” she said.
California Prioritizes Civic Engagement
One of the three categories campuses participating in the competition are evaluated on is their Student Civic and Voter Empowerment Plan. CCC and CSU campuses are required by law to develop a Civic and Voter Empowerment Action Plan overseen by a nonpartisan Civic and Voter Empowerment coordinator.
UC campuses don’t need to have these coordinators or plans, but they are strongly encouraged to do so.
This requirement is among several components outlined in Assembly Bill 963, also known as the Student Civic and Voter Empowerment Act, signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 to increase civic engagement among young voters.
“For these students, a comprehensive education should not end in the classroom but extend into the real world,” AB 963 author Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris said in 2019. “We want to provide our students with the necessary tools to be engaged citizens, to shape their own political reality, and create the future of the great state of California.”
Burgener, who serves as the AB 963 coordinator at CSU Long Beach, says that the Ballot Bowl is just another way to get students excited to vote and turn out for the election
“I think this year, the students’ involvement and engagement is because they feel like [they] can make an impact. And if we can win the Ballot Bowl, how great would that feel?”