BENTON HARBOR, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — Students and faculty at an area college were nationally recognized for their efforts to increase voter participation on campus.
Benton Harbor’s Lake Michigan College was awarded a silver seal award for it’s participation in the “ALL IN” Democracy Campus Challenge at an awards ceremony in Washington D.C. in November.
The award is given out to colleges and universities that reach more than 30% of students voting in elections, which Lake Michigan College exceeded during the 2018 midterms.
More than 560 campuses, enrolling more than 6.2 million students, have joined the non-partisan challenge to increase participation among young people.
The effort was led at Lake Michigan College by political science professor Tiffany Bohm, who started the “LMC Votes” initiative after receiving positive feedback from students who wanted to learn more about civic participation.
Bohm led the college’s first ever voter registration drive and get out the vote campaign, which landed the school a “voter friendly campus” designation for the academic year of 2019-2020.
“Prior to the big push and institutionalized program that we did last year, there wasn’t any sort of major drive,” Bohm said. “When we made it an institutionalized focus and really brought attention to it, our numbers for voter registration trippled.”
Bohm says the age cohort ranging from 19-29 is the largest voting bloc in the current broader electorate. While traditionally lower than older voters, young people’s participation increased in 2018 across demographics.
According to the Census Bureau, voter turnout went from 20 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2018, the largest percentage point increase for any age group.
Lake Michigan College’s voter participation rate doubled from 17% in 2014 to 35% in 2018.
