Correction: This piece was updated at 12:32 p.m. Wednesday to change incorrect information regarding the email address for students who want to be a member of Huskies Vote. The email is [email protected].

DeKALB – In the midst of another important election year, NIU has an initiative to encourage students to register to vote.

Huskies Vote is a campus-wide initiative with the mission to provide NIU students with all of the information they need to know to participate in voting in elections, according to their website.

NIU joins more than 1,067 other schools and universities across the country to participate in the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge encourages colleges and universities to promote nonpartisan student democratic engagement.

Begun in 2018, Huskies Vote has contributed to improvements in the voting rate and the registration rate of college students. In the 2020 presidential election, 63.8% of NIU students voted, and 80.7% of students registered to vote. The voting rate of students in 2020 increased by 12.7% from 2016.

Michaela Holtz, coordinator of Huskies Vote and executive director for Impact Strategy and Academic Partnerships for the division of Student Affairs, said the Huskies Vote initiative allows for information to be easily given to students regarding voter registration.

“I think that it allowed for many who were passionate about doing this work to align it with a campus-wide initiative,” Holtz said. “We have faculty and staff who are part of the Huskies Vote committee or have been in the past, and they are able to share resources and also be able to provide information and resources to students, faculty and staff about how to have the conversations in the classroom and how to share information about voter registration in a nonpartisan way.”  

Huskies Vote is actively looking for students, faculty and staff to be a member of Huskies Vote.

If students, faculty or staff are interested in being a member of Huskies Vote, they can email [email protected] or fill out a sign-up form at events.

For more information about Huskies Vote, students can visit go.niu.edu/huskies-vote.