The Washington Monthly Magazine placed Kennesaw State on a list of the 80 best colleges for student voting across the nation for KSU’s participation with the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement and participation in the ALL IN Campus Challenge.
KSU has been listed in Washington Monthly’s rankings before and has previously received similar designations, as reported by the Sentinel in March.
KSU’s efforts have earned the university a perfect score on Washington Monthly’s five-point scale, placing among universities such as Duke and Brown.
Washington Monthly bases its findings on a university’s participation in NSLVE and the ALL IN Campus Challenge, and if the university published its NSLVE rankings.
KSU’s Constitution Week continued support of the promotion of voter registration, Dean of Student Affairs Dr. Michael Sanseviro said.
KSU’s NSLVE plan started in 2017 with a partnership with TurboVote, and has continued to grow since its implementation, as well as continued participation in the ALL IN Campus Challenge.
“If the results of this great work improve our rankings that is a nice bonus, but isn’t the focus of the work itself,” Sanseviro said about the title.
Sanseviro said that KSU has also increased the scale of the promotions for student TurboVote engagement as well as promotions for registration and education through Cobb County and the state of Georgia as a part of what contributed to the Washington Monthly title.
Part of the improvements also included KSU receiving a Campus Election Engagement Project fellowship, which has allowed for grants used for increased peer education concerning civic engagement.
The improvements have been mirrored by rising engagement numbers from KSU students. NSLVE has shown KSU students have a 49.3 percent voting rate, which is up 28.2 percent from 2014 and is 10.2 percent higher than the national average for institutions.
An issue that has continued is unverified individuals helping students register to vote, which can cause students to unknowingly disqualify themselves from voting.
Georgia legislation disqualifies any physical registration forms mailed by someone other than that individual or a verified registrar, according to O.C.G.A. 183-1-6-.02. Because of this issue, KSU has people on campus such as Sanseviro, who can legally submit such paper forms for students.
“It’s important for students to let us know when someone is doing this on campus because we want to make sure someone isn’t unknowingly disqualifying students,” Sanseviro said. “Let us know there’s an individual on campus, or call us even if you just want to make sure your registration happens correctly.”
Another issue has been a lack of easy access to polling locations. Students who register to vote from the Marietta campus are well-served by the polling location at the Cobb County Civic Center, but Kennesaw campus students lack a polling location in walking distance.
The Kennesaw campus also lacks a significant amount of citizens in proximity to become a polling location, but Sanseviro has said having an advance polling location on campus has been considered.
“We would need a significant buy-in from the Student Government Association, administration and Cobb County, but it could happen in the foreseeable future,” Sanseviro said. “Then we could serve both students and faculty.”
A less pressing issue has been students being turned away at polling locations. Sanseviro works with Cobb County to ensure students and polling volunteers know that student IDs are a valid form of state ID for polling, as previously reported by the Sentinel.
With the 2020 elections looming, KSU’s role in helping engage students in voting will be especially important.
