Your college student vote

In 1988 I moved from Illinois to Minnesota to start college. I registered there, and I voted for the first time in that year’s presidential election. It was simple. Now, with many states putting in ever more cumbersome roadblocks to voting, it has become less simple for college students to vote. I came up against this when my son started college in Ohio and ran into those roadblocks.

I wanted to help him navigate the rules so he could maximize his influence as a participant in our democracy. I know a lot of parents like me who want the same, so I decided to make this website.

There are guides here for Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin because votes in these places can have major impact.

There are various ways to register and to vote, and it can be overwhelming to look at all the information at once. I have tried to break down and present the most useful information for the scenario a typical college student will face. (For simplicity’s sake, I do not cover scenarios for those with military IDs, tribal IDs, naturalization papers, or homelessness, but most states have accommodations for these.)

The main hurdle is voter ID laws. The typical college student will have a driver’s license from their home state, but may be at college in a different state, and therefore not have the state ID required to vote. There are still ways they can vote in the state where they go to college.

The advice I give is meant to maximize the chance of your vote being counted. Some of the requirements I mention are extra careful. Meaning, they may not get you turned away from the polling place if you don’t meet them, but they have the potential to give someone who was actively searching for a way to reject your ballot a reason.

This site is not just for parents of college students, or college students themselves. The information here will be useful for anyone who is living in a state with voter ID laws that make it hard for you to vote if your ID is not from that state.

All voting advice here assumes that you are a citizen, you have a social security number, and that you will be 18 years or older on Election Day. It also generally assumes you have a driver’s license or state ID from somewhere (although, if not, there are always ways to acquire one. I just don’t cover all of that here).