MTV teams with Florida college students to get out the vote
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College students across South Florida are expanding voting access on their campuses ahead of the midterm elections, thanks in part to reality show hitmaker MTV.
Why it matters: 90% of U.S. college campuses had no early voting options in 2020, and 74% of campuses didn't didn't have any in-person voting options on Election Day either, according to research shared with Axios from MTV and Duke University data science master's students.
- Lack of access is more pronounced at two-year community colleges than four-year institutions, the study found.
- Predominantly white colleges had more on-campus polling places than predominantly non-white ones from 2012-2020.
Flashback: MTV has been encouraging young people to get involved in elections ever since the 1990s, after members of Miami's own 2 Live Crew were arrested for a performance that was deemed lewd and obscene.
- About 12 million people registered to vote through a subsequent campaign to "Rock the Vote."
- In 2020, the nonpartisan MTV Campus Challenge helped secure 24 voting options on college campuses, 19 of which remain open.
What's happening: This year, students at Emory University, Central Michigan University and Eastern Arizona College helped land new early-voting sites on their campuses through MTV's initiative with nonprofit Fair Elections Center.
- In South Florida, Miami-Dade College students worked this year to ensure that an early voting site remained on campus.
- Students at Florida Atlantic University have been promoting a new voting site at the school's Jupiter campus.
The intrigue: FAU's Boca Raton campus — which serves about 20,000 students — had been an early voting site in 2020, but this year, early voting was moved to the Jupiter campus about 40 miles north, which serves roughly 1,500 students.
- The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections office didn't respond to Axios' request for comment about why that change was made, but a student newspaper reported it was due to underperforming results at the Boca campus, compared with Jupiter and Palm Beach Gardens during the 2020 elections.
- One report found that in 2020, of 27,753 FAU students eligible to vote, 83.4% registered and 71.1% voted on Election Day.
Of note: Voting will take place on both of the university's campuses for the general election.
What they're saying: "I've noticed that a lot of the [Jupiter] students don't necessarily drive, and so this gives them an opportunity to go and vote," 20-year-old Katie Kelly, an FAU Jupiter student participating in the MTV Campus Challenge, told Axios.
- Kelly said she and other campus organizers used QR codes to help students register to vote. She said they also got 3,500 already-registered students to pledge to vote during "Donut forget to vote" and K-pop themed events.
Janeth Zaldivar, a 19-year-old political science student at Miami-Dade College, helped promote early voting on the Kendall campus as her group organized events like pizza giveaways and a carnival.
- "Coming out of the pandemic, it's been sort of difficult to bring students to campus, as they have the option of online classes," she said.