With several competitive races that occurred this election cycle, the number of Cornell students who registered to vote is expected to stay consistent with past years, according to Cornell Votes President Erik Lapidus ’27.
Cornell Votes is a student-run nonpartisan organization that aims to increase voter registration, voter turnout and civic engagement on campus through hosting tabling events and registration drives to boost the number of registered student voters.
This year, Cornell Votes attended or hosted over two dozen voter registration events, including a 14-hour tabling event at Mann Library on National Voter Registration Day, according to Lapidus.
This year, Cornell Votes directly assisted 93 students in registering to vote and 122 students in requesting absentee ballots which increased from 72, according to Lapidus. Additionally, Tompkins County had two early voting polling sites along with 34 specific polling locations open on election day.
“I would say turnout and excitement were definitely lower than last year, but much higher compared to 2023,” Lapidus wrote in an email statement to The Sun. “In the 2025 election, I expect many more Cornellians to vote by mail, given the high salience of races in New York City, New Jersey, California, and Virginia.”
Lapidus told The Sun that the number of eligible Cornell students that register to vote tends to hover around 75 percent and that he expected this year’s data, which has yet to be released, to be slightly less, given that some states did not have elections this year. He also noted that he believed the voting rate to be slightly less than the 23.3 percent rate in 2022.
Cornell Votes Department Chair David Duan ’28 told The Sun that the group has also been utilizing National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement data to identify areas to increase voter turnout.
“Engineering and computer science majors had the lowest registration rates, which led us to increase tabling in Duffield Hall,” Duan wrote in an email statement to The Sun. “Similarly, Asian American students had lower registration rates, motivating us to collaborate more closely with cultural organizations.”
This fall, Cornell Votes launched Cornell’s first Cultural Organization Competition, a competition among cultural and identity-based clubs to help boost the registration of voters. Duan told The Sun that next semester, the initiative will be expanded to include athletics teams and Greek life chapters.
“From a coalition perspective, our goal has been to make civic engagement a consistent part of campus life, not just an election-year effort,” wrote in an email statement to The Sun. “This semester’s club-based outreach helped normalize conversations about voting in non-political spaces.”
Looking ahead this year, Cornell Votes aims to build a stronger Ivy League network to boost civic engagement, Duan told The Sun in an email statement. The group has been working with Columbia Votes, Yale Votes, Penn Leads the Vote and Brown Votes. Additionally, the organization is supporting an initiative to recognize Election Day as a non-insutructional day — especially with the 2026 election cycle shaping up to be a crucial midterm year.
“The Coalition plans to support this effort through advocacy and student outreach next semester,” Duan wrote in an email statement to The Sun.
Zeinab Faraj is a member of the class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is the features editor on the 143rd Editorial Board and was the assistant sports editor of the 143rd Editorial Board. You can reach her at zfaraj@cornellsun.com.
