In the months leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election, St. Joe’s students have partnered with various voter engagement organizations to ensure their peers across campus are registered and ready to vote.

Caitlin Curran ’27 is a campus fellow for Project 26 Pennsylvania, a group centered around providing students with the resources they need to be able to vote. Student advocates of Project 26 Pennsylvania like Curran have been on campus with paper registration forms, asking students what their registration status is and answering questions regarding the presidential election. 

Curran said she noticed the younger generation has been especially passionate about the upcoming election. 

“College students, this election, know that their vote is important, and have definitely shown out for that,” Curran said.

Baylee Fingerhut ’26, a Sister Carol Coston Fellow at NETWORK Advocates for Catholic Social Justice, has also been involved with student voter registration, working in the organization’s leadership development program called the Young Advocates Leadership Lab cohort. Fingerhut said she has noticed that obstacles arise from the registration processes in Pennsylvania, especially for students who have voted in different states prior.

“Voter suppression is, unfortunately, a thing many states have in place, so I made sure to start early with registration efforts to leave room for bureaucratic setbacks,” Fingerhut said.

Another barrier is frustration from younger voters. James Kemp ’27, also a campus fellow for Project 26 Pennsylvania, said there have been challenges in getting students on campus excited about the upcoming election.  

“I think a lot of young voters have been discouraged by, likely, the choice of candidates, and many feel like their vote isn’t going to do anything,” Kemp said. “So it is hard to get people really excited and enthusiastic.”

Historically, younger generations vote the least in presidential elections. The Census Current Population Survey found that 28.4% of voters ages 18-24 cast a ballot in 2022. However, that percentage is higher than that of the previous generations when they were ages 18-24, showing that while youth voter turnout is still low, it has been growing over the past 50 years. 

Connor Peterson ’25, a student partner of NextGen America, the largest youth voting organization in the nation, said with registration being closed, the objective now is to make sure students exercise their right to vote on Election Day. 

“The hope is to not only get them registered but to actually get students out to vote,” Peterson said.

Curran echoed this goal, and she has done door-to-door visits and phone banking — calling eligible voters and asking them if they are thinking about voting — on her own time to remind people to cast their votes. “The stakes are high,” she said, and the younger generation has the ability to take control of their futures by exercising their right to vote.

“We have this great democracy, and in order for us to keep it up, it’s important to get a wide net of voices heard around the country,” Curran said. “Now that we are finally old enough to vote, it’s our duty to be a part of that and take advantage of this opportunity that we’ve been given to use our voice to make a change in our country.”