FORBES: MTV Is Working To Close The Community College Voting Gap

BY MEG LITTLE REILLY, CONTRIBUTOR — OCTOBER 16, 2024

There are roughly ten million people enrolled in community colleges across the U.S. today, which accounts for 38 percent of the undergraduate population, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. In the swing state of Pennsylvania alone, there are 15 community colleges and 80 campuses.

Despite their prominence, community college students have been largely ignored by national get-out-the-vote campaigns, which tend to focus on students at four-year schools. Perhaps as a result of this neglect, the national voting rate of community college students was nearly ten percentage points lower than that of four-year college students in 2020, according to the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement at Tufts University.

It doesn’t need to be this way, according to Brianna Cayo Cotter, Senior Vice President of Social Impact at SHOWTIME/MTV Entertainment Studios.

“Community colleges want to be doing this work,” she says. “Just providing a little extra attention and resources to mobilize their student bodies is going to be effective in closing that gap.”

To that end, MTV, Levi’s and Lyft are leading a coalition of organizations in a national effort to turn out 500,000 new community college voters in the coming years and establish lasting habits of civic engagement on their campuses.

This is the same MTV that pioneered youth voting campaigns when it introduced Rock the Vote to Generation X more than thirty years ago. Founded in 1990 by Virgin Records America Co-Chairman Jeff Ayeroff, Rock the Vote spoke directly to young people by partnering with MTV to broadcast edgy public service announcements featuring celebrities like Madonna, who famously wrapped her nearly-naked body in an American flag in the name of civic engagement. At the time, no widespread effort had ever been made to engage first-time voters with pop culture through their preferred medium.

Cotter says this more targeted approach is an adaptation to the changing needs of the civic landscape. Unlike in the 1990s, there are now dozens of organizations that are effectively engaging young voters. Still, gaps in civic engagement persist. To meaningfully increase voter turnout, Cotter says MTV decided to craft a plan that was “surgical and smart” by zeroing in on the first-time voters who still lag in numbers. As soon as they saw the gap between two- and four-year college students, they knew it was going to be their priority.

The initiative, titled Community College Vote ‘24, is spearheaded by Showtime/MTV Studios with support from The Executive Leadership Council and in partnership with ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, HeadCount, League of Women Voters, More Than A Vote, Poder Latinx, Poderistas, Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, VoteRiders and When We All Vote.

Read the full article in Forbes.