ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA – As part of an effort to emphasize civic engagement by its students, Winthrop University has successfully repeated its designation as a “Voter Friendly Campus.” The institution is one of more than 200 U.S. campuses so designated this spring.
The initiative, led by national nonpartisan organizations Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project (CVP) and NASPA – Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, held participating institutions accountable for planning and implementing practices that encouraged their students to register and vote in the 2022 elections.
Winthrop is one of two colleges in South Carolina to earn the designation.
Winthrop previously earned the Voter Friendly Campus designation in 2020, 2018 and 2016. In the 2020 presidential election, 75 percent of the student body voted, up 17.8 percent from the 2016 presidential election and well above the 66 percent national student voting rate.
The university’s strategies in the 2022 election were a mixture of previous and new efforts, according to Katarina Moyon of Winthrop’s John C. West Forum of Politics and Policy.
Some of the university’s efforts were:
* Continuing curriculum requirements that explain the importance of the voting process.
* Sending e-mails to students to remind them to register and then to vote. If students were not registered to vote and live in South Carolina, they were directed to https://info.scvotes.sc.gov/eng/ovr/start.aspx to start the online voter registration process.
* Engaging student voting ambassadors who focused heavily on a social media push to activate students to register and vote. Engagement occurred on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, as well as through several election-related information events on Zoom.
* Registering to vote all of the university's student-athletes on each sports team.
* Using the TurboVote system at https://winthrop.turbovote.org which sent out election reminders, provided a look at ballots and helped participants come up with a plan to vote.
As part of the Voter Friendly application, Winthrop evaluated its campus plan, how the university facilitated voter engagement efforts, and offered a final analysis of its efforts.
The institutions designated as Voter Friendly represent a wide range of two-year, four-year, public, private, rural and urban campuses. The program is ultimately serving millions of students.
For more information, contact Judy Longshaw, news and media services manager, at longshawj@winthrop.edu or at 803/323-2404.
