How Do You Reach These Kids?
During the 2022 midterm election, hundreds of students lined up at Brody Hall, waiting to register to vote and cast their ballot.
A year later the scene was quite different at Brody for the East Lansing city elections. Only six voters had shown up with only two hours left before the polls closed, according to the precinct chairperson.
In fact, fewer than 2% of registered voters at the five MSU precincts cast a ballot in 2023 – just 46 votes. That compares to nearly 2,200 ballots cast in 2022 at campus precincts.
The 2022 turnout was driven in good measure by a successful statewide ballot issue that guarantees the right to abortion in Michigan. Still, turnout overall in Michigan is much lower in local elections compared to state and federal elections. But the degree of the decline on MSU’s campus is much greater than other precincts in East Lansing and surrounding Meridian township.
There are several reasons – disinterest is one. The result is MSU and its students don’t have the impact they once had on who the decision makers are. These officials may determine local housing policies, what bars and restaurants are approved to open in the city and much more.
Reversing that downward voting trend could change the makeup of the East Lansing City Council and more.
Liam Richichi, a 22-year-old recent MSU grad who’s running for City Council, said he sees a rich vein of campus voters that could put him in office.
“If I can turn out three to four hundred students who wouldn’t typically vote, that’s my win margin right there,” said Richichi, who’s enlisted more than a dozen volunteers from MSU College Democrats to campaign for him.
Richichi isn’t just running on issues relevant to students–he has concerns about the city’s budget and wants to strengthen the relationship between the city and MSU and nearby municipalities.
Still, if elected Richichi hopes to address challenges most pertinent to students, including the lack of affordable rental housing.
“It’s asinine to me how a month after you sign your lease, they’re knocking at your door asking you to re-sign,” he said. “They say ‘Well, you’ve got about two weeks to re-sign, and if not, we’re giving your apartment away.’
“That points to the fact that there is very high demand and increasingly low supply,” Richichi continued.
Mayor Pro Tem Kerry Ebersole Singh serves as the liaison to the University Student Commission, which was created to give students a voice in city government. She said students on that commission have voiced interest in the city addressing issues around transportation and housing, and including students in city initiatives like Albert El Fresco. Albert El Fresco is the blocked off space on Albert Avenue that has games and seating, but is staged during the summer when students are away from campus.
“What I try to drive in my engagement with the student commission and encourage anyone at MSU or LCC that is living in our community is that your local government, you can truly shape,” Singh said. “It’s really a unique potential that students have.”
Students once dominated local elections.
MSU students were a voting force to be reckoned with in the 1970s, when the voting age nationwide was lowered from 21 to 18, thanks to a Constitutional amendment.
“A new era: student-backed men take council seats,” was the headline of a 1971 story in The East Lansing Towne Courier, a now-extinct newspaper. “Clearly the student vote was the factor,” The Towne Courier article states.
Nearly 9,000 new voters registered in East Lansing in the three months preceding the 1971 election, growing the total number of registered voters in the city to 22,659.
That growth happened despite local efforts to suppress student voting, said Mark Grebner, an elections expert and longtime East Lansing resident.
Grebner said the tides started turning on student voter suppression when former U.S. Rep. Bob Carr attempted to register to vote in East Lansing but was turned away. At the time, Carr worked as an assistant attorney general. But with long hair and blue jeans, he didn’t look like an assistant attorney general. He looked like a student.
Carr sued the city and won, forcing East Lansing to roll back suppression tactics used to keep students from voting. Grebner said the first East Lansing election that students could be registered without hassle was 1972.
Student turnout waned in the later 1970s and 1980s because, Grebner said, the overall environment in the U.S. was less political. This depoliticization can be seen around the city, not just on campus. In 1971, 60% of registered voters in East Lansing cast a ballot, according to The Towne Courier. In 2023, there wasn’t a precinct in the entire city that drew more than 37% turnout.
Still, students remained an important voting block into the 1990s.
When Councilmember Mark Meadows was first elected to the East Lansing City Council in 1995, he won largely because of student votes, according to a 1995 edition of The Towne Courier. The newspaper estimated that more than 1,400 students voted in the election, including close to 1,000 on campus.
While campaigning, Meadows said he knocked doors in the neighborhoods until sundown. After that, he campaigned in the dorms until 10 or 10:30 p.m.
Meadows said on Election Day, he and others would travel to dorms to find registered voters who may not vote. He would give a last minute pitch to students to cast a ballot as part of a “pull campaign” that was popular at the time.
Campaigning on campus is a lot less interactive today. Meadows said when he was elected to council in 2023, he had digital ads that students would see and he engaged with some student groups, but there was nowhere near the amount of face-to-face communication of his early campaigns.
This is partially caused by rule changes at MSU. Meadows said there are rules against entering the halls where students live, unless accompanied by a resident. As a result, candidates put less time and fewer resources into engaging with students.
Grebner explained that the current low turnout from MSU precincts in East Lansing elections isn’t solely due to disinterest in local government. In 2018, Michigan voters approved a ballot initiative allowing any-reason absentee voting. In 2023, 73% of Ingham County votes were cast via absentee ballot.
With absentee voting becoming more popular, many students are voting in their hometowns.
Due to the transient nature of MSU students, many know more about the candidates and issues being decided in their hometown than what is on the ballot in East Lansing, MSUVote committee member and MSU Political Science Professor Sarah Reckhow said.
“A lot of times I think students will still say ‘Yes, I know that the rent is high [in East Lansing],’” Reckhow said. “However, they’re only here for a limited amount of time. I think even if there is a recognition of interest, they don’t necessarily have the long term investment.”
Lower involvement from student organizations and less media coverage of local races also plays a role in the low turnout, Reckhow said.
There have been recent discussions about manufacturing a fix to low student turnout. In 2023, City Council voted to put a charter amendment before voters that would switch council elections from odd-numbered to even-numbered years – to align them with major elections.
The proposal, however, was shut down by the state before it reached voters.
Grebner said he has thought about ways the city could implement a ward system, like is used in Ann Arbor. However, this would be difficult to implement because of the rigid divide that Grand River Avenue creates between the campus and neighborhoods.
“The problem is you draw wards and they all just look weird,” Grebner said. “You end up with a ward that is dominated, say, by Flowerpot [neighborhood]… You might have 10,000 students and 300 non-students, and the 300 non-students have their own member of the City Council because they vote and nobody else would.”
“I think I have a unique position to turn voters out who wouldn’t typically.” Recent MSU grad thinks he can reverse decades-long trend.
Reckhow does see a path to increasing student turnout.
“I think the difference maker can be if you have a student or recent grad running,” she said. “Someone who understands student voters, who makes a deliberate effort to campaign on campus and who is actually, authentically connecting with students.”
Richichi could be that candidate. He announced his candidacy for City Council in early June and has been knocking on doors in the neighborhoods for weeks.
When students return, Richichi said he and his volunteers will campaign on campus.
“That means dorm storming, knocking on doors on campus, reminding people to register to vote, tabling, registering people on busy street corners on the campus and on Grand River,” Richichi said. “Turning out as many folks on campus [as possible] is crucial to my mantra, which is increasing student representation.
“As somebody who is younger, who is recently graduated and just was the most recent president of the MSU Democratic Club, I think I have a unique position to turn voters out who wouldn’t typically,” he continued.
Increasing turnout on campus would represent a seismic shift in local elections, but a successful campaign still needs broader neighborhood support. Grebner said you don’t have to go back that far to find a candidate who ran a strong campaign throughout East Lansing and captured just enough votes on campus to put her candidacy over the top.
In Feb. 2010, now-State Rep. Penelope Tsernoglou was running in a special county commissioner primary election against three other candidates. Tsernoglou won by 22 votes in a race that saw fewer than 1,300 total votes. Grebner said that Tsernoglou managed to capture every one of the 129 votes cast on campus – just enough to eke out a win.
“She knew what you had to do to win that vote,” Grebner said. “You just had to practically move into Brody [Hall], and you had to eat most of your meals there, and you had to develop a personal relationships with everybody you came into [contact with]… and you had to register them to vote, and you had to tell them that the election was coming up in a month-and-a-half and you really needed [their vote] as a personal favor.”
The ripple effect: Students love millages.
Recent trends suggest that high student turnout can change more than council representation.
East Lansing voters rarely reject millages. Usually, voters agree to pay elevated property taxes for services like CATA, the public library, school improvements and more. The city as a whole favors millages, but students really love them.
ELi examined the six Ingham County or East Lansing millages that have been on the ballot since the 2018 election that were decided during even-year general elections, when turnout is high. The millages passed with an average 71% approval from voters. Looking just at the precincts on campus, those millages received an average of 80% of votes in favor.
Unless the state intervenes, East Lansing is poised to ask voters to raise property taxes past the current allowable cap level this November. The proposal is presented as a Parks and Recreation millage that insulates the department from potential cuts, but critics have said it is a way to raise general taxes and sidestep the cap set when voters approved the income tax in 2018.
While voters have favored millages in recent years, there’s evidence this proposal could face more opposition.
The millage has already been scrutinized by officials, with Meadows saying it would be “go[ing] back” on a promise the city made to residents. In neighboring jurisdictions, several millages failed at May elections and polls suggest there is widespread economic anxiety.
Besides millages, charter amendments must be approved by voters. The Charter Review Committee appointed by the city last year will soon present 23 recommended charter changes to City Council, recommendations that may be placed on future ballots, Committee Chair Diane Goddeeris told ELi via email.
You don’t have to go back far to find a charter amendment that was helped by the student vote.
In last year’s general election, voters approved a charter amendment impacting housing regulations. Overall, the charter amendment received more than 54% support. In the precincts off-campus, 52% voted against it. However, 83% of on-campus voters favored the amendment, propelling it to victory.
“It’s this resource, this untapped resource,” Reckhow said. “Both in terms of the resource for the [candidates] power and the young people themselves. They have this power that they’re not using if they don’t vote.”