NEVADA VIEWS: Why aren’t Nevada universities doing more to encourage voting?

High-profile Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s up for re-election, recently declared that the most important thing people can do to “help save America” is support Republican Adam Laxalt in his race to become the next U.S. senator from Nevada. It’s quite breathtaking to realize DeSantis thinks supporting a candidate this year besides himself is so imperative.

Likewise, Democrats are also raising millions to re-elect incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who states that “Nevada’s future is on the line.”

With such strong words flying around, you’d think Nevadans who have the most invested in its future — the state’s young people — would have every opportunity to register and vote.

Yet the just-released Best Colleges for Student Voting by Washington Monthly magazine shows the University of Nevada, Reno is the only higher ed institution in the Silver State that made the list. This is disappointing when the candidates, media and other experts say everything is on the line in fewer than 30 days.

The magazine created its list by reviewing which universities submitted 2020 and 2022 action plans to the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. The institutions also had to agree to receive data from the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE), which calculates college-specific registration and voting rates. They also needed to make their 2018 and 2020 NSLVE data available to the public.

Right now, I feel a lull in excitement among students for this year’s midterm elections. But in my 15 years living and teaching in Nevada, I have watched crowds of students cheer when state and federal contenders speak on UNR’s historic quad.

Student voting is so critical to all political parties because recent history shows it is one of the keys to success. A Wall Street Journal analysis of the 2020 presidential race found that “college towns, in particular, appear to have been key to (Joe) Biden’s success in top battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.”

Other battleground states in the midterms have multiple universities that score well in student voting. North Carolina, for instance, has two of the highest-rated universities for student registration (University of North Carolina-Asheville and Appalachian State University). North Carolina is also home to another hotly contested Senate contest this year.

Paul Glastris, editor-in-chief of Washington Monthly, points out that the mission statement of UNLV says it focuses on “improving the lives of our diverse students and transforming our communities through education and engagement.” Glastris believes there can be no more important engagement than getting students to participate in democracy by voting.

To my colleagues at UNLV and other Nevada schools, I know we extend a hand in explaining how we’ve made this honor roll and what we can all do to add more institutions to the list. We need every college student engaged across Nevada; voting is just too important to our state and our students’ future.

Universities need to demonstrate a repeated commitment to increasing student voting and be transparent about the results. It may be too late for Nov. 8, but the next presidential election is around the corner.

Todd Felts is an associate professor in the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno.