As alumni, we understand Swarthmore students’ tradition of political activism. In presidential election years, that translates into voting; in 2020, a whopping 89% of eligible Swarthmore students registered and 76% voted, more than double the national student rate. But in the 2022 off-year election, while 84% were registered, only 47% cast ballots. Swarthmore needs to do better this year! We are writing to encourage current students to vote as if November is a presidential election. The College has a terrific get-out-the-vote site, and we hope you take advantage of it!
No one will ever know what Swarthmore students did in the 2024 election, because the federal government blocked matching student data with voting records. All we know is that 47% of college students nationwide, and 56% of students in Pennsylvania voted. Early this year, the US Department of Education shut down the collection of any data about student voting behavior. Swarthmore students will have to set their own standard of civic participation. We hope the college will strenuously support students to match or exceed the rates of registration and voting achieved in 2020. There is much at stake for Swarthmore and for its current students.
The signers of this letter represent 70 years of the College’s history. We urge current Swarthmore students to treat the upcoming national election on November 3, 2026, as a special seminar in civics, a vital test for the future of democracy, in which each citizen has a personal stake, i.e. a vote. November 3 is your chance to participate in this election where every vote counts. Make sure your own registration is up to date, and VOTE.
Additional Note: More details on college student voting participation are available online from Tufts University’s National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE), which matched student data from over 1200 colleges and universities in all 50 states from 2013 to 2022 via the National Student Clearinghouse with publicly available voting records to determine whether (not how) students vote. De-identified data then was analyzed and compiled into reports for each institution.
Signed:
- Babette Barbash Weksler, Class of 1958
- David Hamilton, Class of 1958
- David Weksler, Class of 1981
- Jim Sailer, President of the Swarthmore Alumni Association, Class of 1990
