Boston Votes Collaboration
Boston Votes: Brandeis joins area campuses to support voter registration and participation
Boston Votes is a nonpartisan coalition of campuses in the Boston area in collaboration with ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, a national, nonpartisan initiative of Civic Nation, which strives for a more inclusive democracy with this particular challenge being aimed at raising student voter participation and engagement. The efforts of the VoteDeis Campus Coalition, organized by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life and by the Office of the Dean of Students, helped Brandeis University earn a Gold Seal from this challenge, recognizing that 70 percent of eligible Brandeis University students voted in the 2020 presidential election.
The VoteDeis Coalition is organized by the Dean of Students Office and ENACT: The Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation (a program of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life). From the Ethics Center, it is organized by David Weinstein, Assistant Director of ENACT and Communications, and Leigh Swigart, Director of Programs in International Justice and Society.
Boston Votes includes Brandeis University, Boston University, Harvard University and Tufts University among others and is one of several other state-based campus coalitions that exist as well under this same umbrella. Maia Lefferman ’25 serves as a Student Representative of Brandeis University’s VoteDeis Coalition in her involvement with the Boston Votes Coalition working as one of the leaders of the coalition steering committee and as the Brandeis representative on the committee. She excels at promoting voter engagement as well as advocating for Brandeis University’s role and contributions to the effort.
Boston Votes has held summits gathering faculty, staff, and students across the coalition to encourage further outreach and student engagement.
![Zosia Busé ’20 at the first BostonVotes conference in 2019, at Harvard's Institute of Politics, presenting with a BostonVotes panel on campus voter engagement.](images/zosia-boston-votes-panel-higher-res-1.jpg)
In the coming academic year, Boston Votes expects to return to in-person summits and will continue its efforts in engaging student participation in our democracy and upcoming elections.
“There are so many critical issues in America and all of them come down to voting. Voting will always be arguably the most crucial way to engage with democracy,” says Lefferman.
The VoteDeis and Boston Votes Coalitions contribute an important role in empowering college students since as Lefferman notes “College students play a major role in the voter engagement process being close in age to non-voters, yet still voters themselves. If we recognize that power and use it to increase voter turnout we can have a major impact on the political process.”
“I’m proud to represent Brandeis in this important effort to unite voters who feel a similar urgency about voting.”
Stay posted about the latest voting engagement events coming soon!