UAlbany Recognized Among Best Colleges for Student Voting

A round "New York State VOTED" sticker is seen on a student's sweatshirt, which partially shows the words "Univerisity at Albany Presidential Honot Society: Scholarship, Leadership"

ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 1, 2022) — The University at Albany is among the best colleges for student voting, according to a new college guide published by Washington Monthly this week.

The report lists institutions on its 2022 honor roll, based on a repeated commitment to increasing student voting — and being transparent about the results. To be eligible, schools had to submit 2020 and 2022 action plans to the “ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge,” and also need to be signed up to receive data from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, which calculates college-specific registration and voting rates.

Washington Monthly annually releases national rankings of colleges and universities based on “what they do for the country.” Starting in 2018, measures of student voting were added to its ranking metrics. The honor roll followed in 2019.

UAlbany is among 144 public institutions, 36 community and five historically Black colleges and universities listed on this year’s honor roll.

“The Center for Leadership and Service, working in collaboration with the UAlbany Votes Committee, continues to keep voter registration, education and civic engagement as a priority for the University,” said Martha Asselin, director of UAlbany’s Center for Leadership and Service. “Being included in this Washington Monthly report is an honor.”

According to the report, voting among young people has seen record-breaking numbers in recent years. More than half of 18- to 24-year-olds cast ballots in 2020, a threshold that had not been reached since 18-year-olds were first allowed to vote in 1971. That followed a record-breaking youth turnout in 2018, up 16 percent from four years earlier.

Those trends hold true at UAlbany, which has seen its student voter engagement reach record-highs in recent years through the leadership of the UAlbany Votes Team, a collaboration among various offices, student leaders and organizations on campus, including the Center for Leadership and Service.

The University was named a “Voter Friendly Campus” in 2019 by the national non-partisan organizations Campus Vote Project and NASPA- Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, after more than 3,000 students registered via TurboVote leading up to the 2018 midterm elections. UAlbany was one of the only five SUNY schools to receive the designation.

In 2020, University was designated a “Silver Campus” by the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge for achieving a 60-69 percent student voting rate leading up to the Presidential Election.