Our Organizing Department consists of campus teams that work at 9 universities across North Carolina to mobilize students to vote and advocate for youth issues.
Voter Mobilization
In the weeks leading up to the 2022 election, our student organizers canvassed their communities for over 330 hours, having conversations about politics with over 4,000 students. As a part of these conversations, we directly registered over 350 voters.
All of our participants are students, including 30 paid staff and 56 volunteers. Our organizing training helps students build advocacy and communication skills while reinforcing the importance of civic engagement and voting. Additionally, 42% of our paid staff have non-political majors, meaning that we are engaging students who were not already actively involved in politics.
Democracy Day
We advocate for our universities to add a no-class Democracy Day to their academic calendars during NC early voting. This day would increase student voting by giving students time to vote and serving as a symbol of the importance of democracy. Our research shows that universities with a day off during voting see 12% higher student voting (which means thousands more students voting).
As part of our advocacy, we host Democracy Day programming to build on the impact of a no-class Democracy Day. At Duke, we hosted our inaugural Democracy Day program in 2022. We engaged the entire Duke community in this effort, from local politicians to music groups, and as a result saw a large spike in voting on Democracy Day, with over 350 more students voting.
