“Executing” is all about the frontline work of “Asking” Every Student. Executing begins with recruiting and training individuals to facilitate inclusive, nonpartisan conversations through which they can register students to vote. When possible, students should spend at least 3-5 minutes of one-on-one or small-group time focused on discussing and creating democratic engagement plans. 

During that initial contact with students, you can also collect opt-out contact information through which your team can sustain contact and support students to follow through with their plans.

An Ask Every Student strategy integrates these “Execution” tactics into existing processes that reach most students and reach students equitably such as orientation, ID card pick up, affinity based student organizations, athletics, commuter student services, and classes that most students take.

Especially for spaces such as class integration where there may not be a specific day to activate around, you can use these tactics hand in hand with the activations and resources provided by Campus Takeover of Civic Holidays! These holidays include National Voter Registration Day, National Voter Education Week, Vote Early Day, and Election Hero Day.

Figure out the best way that you can use this Toolkit to Ask Every Student on your campus by filling out the First Step Form! After filling out the form, you’ll automatically receive an email response with your answers to help you apply these tools to your context.

Tools on this page:

• Ask Every Student Civic Engagement Packet

• Ask Every Student Template Presentations

• Navigating Digital Voting Guides and Portals

• Vote for Astra’s Campus Canvass and Couch Parties

• Ask Every Student Training Slides

• Ask Every Student Conversation Guide

Ask Every Student Civic Engagement Packet

One of the key insights we’ve gathered is that even if you’re able to reach every student in a large-scale, in-person voter registration effort, the forms will often contain errors that render the applications unusable. This packet streamlines and simplifies the process for checking for errors and following up with students. It can also allow you to easily collect contact information from students to follow up with them over a longer period of time! Check out Vote for Astra’s Campus Canvass Toolkit below for more help around following up with students.

Another big challenge when it comes to voter registration is making sure that your efforts are inclusive of all students and allow paths for democratic participation outside of voting. This packet allows students to opt out of voter registration without needing to explain their reasons, but still engages them in a variety of options to plug into civic engagement opportunities on your campus. 

The packet contains: a cover page that can help you organize and file forms with ease, collect contact information, and allow students to opt in or out of voter registration; insertable files for the National Voter Registration Act form and voter registration forms from all eligible states; and an exit ticket for students to keep, with voting next steps and civic engagement opportunities. 

We encourage you to adapt this resource to your campus context and make any changes needed, including through the design and language. However, please make sure to include this citation somewhere on your adapted resource: 

This is a resource of Ask Every Student, a project of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, the Campus Vote Project, NASPA, and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. Learn more about Ask Every Student at studentvoting.org.

Ask Every Student Template Student Voting 101 Presentation

Our research shows that students respond best when voting information is tailored to their context. This template presentation, designed for either in-person or virtual use, helps you meet students where they are at and address the questions that they are most likely to wonder about, including: At what address should I register to vote? How should I decide which political party to register with? Can I register to vote online if I don’t have an in-state ID?

The presentation also helps you facilitate voter registration, step by step, to reduce errors and make sure students feel confident navigating the registration process.

This presentation is designed to be adapted to your campus context and make any changes needed, including through the design and language. However, please make sure to include this citation somewhere on your adapted resource: 

This is a resource of Ask Every Student, a project of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, the Campus Vote Project, NASPA, and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. Learn more about Ask Every Student at studentvoting.org.

Navigating Digital Voting Guides and Portals

There are many digital avenues that can help you provide key information to students about the voting process. These websites can be grouped into three categories: voting guides, ballot guides, and voting portals. 

This page on our website is designed to help you navigate the plethora of resources out there and make informed decisions on which ones you’d like to promote to your students. 

Vote for Astra’s Campus Canvass

We’re excited to partner with Vote for Astra to promote their Campus Canvass resources in the Ask Every Student Toolkit! Campus Canvass is a great strategy for colleges and universities of all sizes to achieve full voter participation. With multiple contact sessions leading up to an election, volunteers text peers using pre-written scripts to encourage registration and turnout.

Vote for Astra and ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge’s Couch Parties

Vote for Astra and the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge designed Couch Parties to be a straight-forward, plug-and-play concept for campus administrators and student groups to implement. At a Couch Party, volunteers text their friends, family, and classmates to offer assistance and information on voting.

Couch Parties are one-time events. They can be hosted virtually or in person, include campus “celebs,” and use technology to reach large numbers of people.

Ask Every Student Training Slides

This training template can be used to train individuals to have conversations with students about voter registration and democratic engagement. You can embed these slides onto platforms like Blackboard and Canvas or use them simply as a presentation. For that purpose, the training is broken down into four parts that can be viewed as one cohesive presentation or in more digestible chunks. 

For example, this is how to embed it onto a Canvas page. The same process will work with any platform that uses an HTML editor. 

We encourage you to adapt this resource to your campus context and make any changes needed, including through the design and language. However, please make sure to include this citation somewhere on your adapted resource: 

This is a resource of Ask Every Student, a project of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, the Campus Vote Project, NASPA, and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. Learn more about Ask Every Student at studentvoting.org.

This training template was created in collaboration with the 2020-2021 Ask Every Student Codesigner Campus Cohort, with special thanks to Alabama A&M University, East Tennessee State University, James Madison University, North Carolina A&T State University, Rogers State University, and University of Mississippi.

Ask Every Student Conversation Guide

This conversation guide is meant to help campus voting organizers develop scripts, trainings, and touch points for talking to students about democratic engagement, with a focus on voter participation.

You can download the Ask Every Student guide as a PDF for your own reference. If you’d like to edit the text to make it your own, you can access the Google Doc version and make an editable copy. If you use the editable Google Doc, please make sure to include this citation somewhere on your adapted resource: 

This is a resource of Ask Every Student, a project of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, the Campus Vote Project, NASPA, and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition. Learn more about Ask Every Student at studentvoting.org.

This guide was created in collaboration with the 2020-2021 Ask Every Student Codesigner Campus Cohort, with special thanks to Clark Atlanta University, the Maryland Institute College of Art, Johnson C. Smith University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Central Florida, and Cuyahoga Community College.