Michigan Voting Project Leads Election Engagement Efforts on Campus and Beyond
Read the full article on the University of Michigan Law website here.
Sharon Morioka - November 4, 2024
In a critical swing state during a tightly contested presidential election, Michigan Law students are doing their part to ensure that Michigan voters are guaranteed the opportunity to cast their ballots.
Through activities that started during orientation and will continue through Election Day, more than 65 students are working with the Michigan Voting Project (MVP), a nonpartisan law student organization advised by Professor Ellen Katz.
“The whole MVP team has been working tirelessly on a range of projects designed both to boost student participation and help promote a fair and secure election,” said Katz. “MVP is an amazing group, and Michigan Law is very fortunate to be the base for all the important work its members do.”
To encourage students to participate in the process, the Law School has canceled classes for Election Day, which has resulted in active student engagement.
“A big takeaway has been how many of our classmates want to get involved,” said 2L Nicholas Martire, co-president with 2L Amanda Daily of MVP. “We’re all busy, and most people won’t practice election law in their career. But we’ve had people come up to us say, ‘I want to dedicate some of my time to getting involved and helping make sure our democratic process runs smoothly.’”
MVP has registered more than 700 students
Since the beginning of the academic year, law students have registered more than 700 University of Michigan students through MVP or MVP-adjacent efforts.
“We actually kicked off orientation in August with an effort to register the 1Ls. We registered about one-third of the class during that week alone,” said Daily.
MVP also staffed tables multiple times a week in Hutchins Hall to sign up voters, with a total of 225 law students registered by the time the process ended on October 21.
“And it’s not just law students,” added Daily. “It includes the efforts in the undergrad schools.”
Michigan Law Professor Roseanna Sommers helped organize law students and other volunteers to speak to undergraduate and graduate students across the University in their classrooms. Not able to attend every classroom on campus, MVP developed a list of those that would reach a variety of students—from History 374: Politics and Culture of the “Sixties” to Math 215: Multivariable and Vector Calculus—and had nine 1L representatives volunteer with Sommers. In the end, the group visited more than 120 classes, spoke to more than 9,000 students, and registered 560 of them on the spot.
They not only registered eligible students but informed them of their choices for voting. Thanks to ballot initiatives in 2018 and 2022 led by Promote the Vote, a nonpartisan coalition of organizations, and its president, Khalilah Spencer, ’01, the state of Michigan has greatly expanded its voting rights.
“The Michigan Voting Project wanted to help educate students at U-M about all their options and remind them that they do not have to wait until Election Day to vote,” said Sommers. “Although Michigan residents—including students—have the option of registering and voting on Election Day, we want to emphasize the benefits of getting both taken care of early.”
Michigan Law students mobilizing for Election Day
Michigan Law students have five volunteer opportunities on Election Day.
At least 21 law students will work at the polls, processing voters for the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s Office at sites around the city.
Other students have signed up as nonpartisan canvass monitors. They will observe a board of county canvassers meeting to ensure that the canvassing process proceeds smoothly and the results are certified fairly.
Still others will work with the Election Protection Hotline, a national hotline that is present in Michigan and tasks volunteers with fielding voter questions and resolving issues during early voting and on Election Day.
“This is something that you can do only if you are a law student or legal professional, so there is a limited pool of people in this country who can take on that opportunity,” said Daily. “It’s a big time commitment. You have to do multiple trainings before Election Day so you’re prepared to answer voter questions.”
MVP has partnered with Promote the Vote to provide approximately 26 volunteers for the hotline as well as nonpartisan poll monitors and election challengers at the polls on Election Day. Monitor and challenger positions also require training and are intended to safeguard the voting process.
“If you’re a challenger, you’re empowered to call out if anyone is making the process go awry,” said Martire. “It’s especially important to have nonpartisan, civically engaged law students who really understand the rules go in and help monitor polling places around the state.”
Finally, MVP has partnered with the nonprofit organization Michigan United to provide approximately 18 election protection challengers at the absentee vote counting board housed at Huntington Place in downtown Detroit. Students received their credentials and training through Michigan United and signed up for shifts throughout Election Day. If something does go awry, the student can sign an affidavit providing their account of what happened.
“In 2020, there were some bad actors who were trying to promote fraudulent claims in Detroit,” says Martire. Indeed, there was tension among Republican and Democratic challengers while workers counted absentee ballots, with some even chanting “stop the count.”
The reality that Michigan is a swing state naturally produces more intense scrutiny of the process. The presence of nonpartisan law students supporting poll workers can help the process run more smoothly.
Said Martire, “We don’t have an agenda other than promoting democracy.”
Making an impact in a historic election
This year’s group of students is continuing a tradition that began when MVP took shape during the 2018–2019 academic year. It was then that a group of students who were interested in voting rights decided to organize, with faculty support from Katz, an expert in voting rights. The aim was to provide volunteer opportunities, lunch talks, and other activities.
“I think an important part of increasing confidence in elections and in the election process is having these conversations,” said Katie Chan, ’20, an original member of the group. “It’s important to know some of the individuals who have been poll watching, who have been election workers, who have volunteered with some of these organizations that are getting involved in the lawsuits. It really helps humanize the issue in a way that I think will help with future confidence in democracy as a whole.”
As the election cycle winds down, Daily and Martire reflect on the many hours spent engaging law students in the election process. While time consuming—their work started in May, when they were 1Ls—the process has been meaningful to them, especially in such a historic election year.
“One of the reasons I came to law school is because I’m really passionate about voting rights,” said Martire. “Voting is the foundation of pretty much every other right.”
Both saw MVP, in addition to their voting rights class this semester, as a means to advocate for this fundamental right even though they aren’t yet lawyers.
“Law students might say, ‘Oh, we’re not credentialed lawyers; the experts will handle this,’” said Daily. “But we don’t have to wait till we have our JD. What we’ve learned through MVP is that we can have a substantial impact as students. We are empowered and can get involved in a substantial way that will have an impact on making sure the elections are fair and free now.”
Banner photograph: To encourage early voting, MVP organized a Walk to the Polls event on October 31, leading students to the U-M Museum of Art—a satellite location of the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s Office.
