Your Vote Matters—Start Using It!

Graphic by Max Weinstein

College students are not known for keeping their opinions to themselves. Walk around Syracuse University for ten minutes, and you’ll typically hear students talking about tuition, rent, immigration, the economy, student loans or whatever political story is trending on social media. We care. The strange part is what happens when Election Day comes around: these same people disappear.

In the 2024 presidential election, 53% of eligible college students voted according to a 2025 study by Tufts University and the U.S. Census Bureau, meaning nearly half of college students sat it out. That is also well below the 65% turnout among the overall voting-age population. 

That should bother us. Voting is one of the few direct ways people have to influence who represents them and what happens in their communities. If we spend four years arguing about what the country should look like and then don’t participate when we actually get a say, something has gone wrong.

So, why aren’t young people voting? The easy answer is that young people are lazy or don’t care. It’s also not a very good answer.

After the 2024 election, researchers at Tufts’ Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) asked young nonvoters why they stayed home. The biggest reason was that potential voters didn’t like any of the candidates. That was followed by people who said voting wasn’t important to them; others said they were too busy or had other commitments, while a smaller group said they didn’t have enough information about the candidates or the voting process. 

This is, unfortunately, not unique to college students. In 2024, the census reported that only 65.3% of the citizen voting-age population voted.

The bottom line is no candidate is ever perfect—we all have flaws, but the process is too important to sit it out. It takes time, but it is worth getting educated on the issues and candidates. Support people that are aligned with your views. Not voting won’t make anything go away. It just means you gave up your say in who gets to make those decisions.

To SU’s credit, some of the infrastructure is already here. Bird Library has offered voter-registration forms and a secure drop-off box, and the university provides resources that can help students check registration information and navigate the voting process.

However, we need to go further by making voting impossible to ignore—just like bills that need to be paid. Voter registration information can be provided everywhere during orientation. Students need to know exactly where to check their registration, how to request an absentee ballot and where to find their polling location. Registration and absentee ballot deadlines can’t be missed. The consequences of non-action impact all of us.