Maia Lefferman ’25, a senior at Brandeis University, recalls her first time voting four years ago; it was a “life changing” moment. 

Voting in her first election changed her life not just because she participated in “the most powerful thing” available to a citizen of the United States, but because the moment became one of unexpected grace granted to her by democracy. 

She remembers arriving at the polling place in her precinct and receiving devastating news: she was not registered to vote. “I started freaking out,” she remembered. 

Lefferman had spent months campaigning for that very election. She thought that she was registered. At that moment, she believed that she had failed herself by not taking the time to double check her own registration status. 

Without an answer as to why her registration had not gone through, Lefferman panicked, realizing “Oh my god,” she was not able to vote. 

But, Lefferman remembers, everything changed when “the person at the polling place [said] ‘you can register here.’” Her home state of California allows for same-day voting registration and Lefferman remembers that she “started crying” at the news of this saving grace.  

Now living in Massachusetts while she attends Brandeis University, Lefferman is the student leader of VoteDeis. As a student group, VoteDeis has existed and evolved in recent years as a network of young people who are passionate about voter registration. It is motivated by students’ personal commitment to voting and represents a larger commitment to help other students vote as well.

Just this year, the VoteDeis Campus Coalition Steering Committee was founded in cooperation between the Brandeis Dean of Students Office and the Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation at Brandeis, a national nonpartisan initiative based at Brandeis and housed in the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. The VoteDeis coalition now includes a collective of “students, staff and faculty supporting voter registration and voting.”

David Weinstein, the Assistant Director of ENACT, says that from the start, VoteDeis has been a collaborative effort between students, faculty and staff. While ENACT has expanded nationally as an educational initiative on a departmental level at institutions across the U.S., VoteDeis is a student-driven grassroots organization unique to Brandeis. VoteDeis finds its purpose in fighting for accessibility in voting. 

Weinstein observes that the goal of VoteDeis is “for every eligible student and community member at large to register to vote — it’s that simple.” 

Lefferman got involved with the group during her freshman year at Brandeis because she identified that confusion had become ingrained in the voting process and was preventing her, as well as other students, from voting while at college. 

“I think I saw the [VoteDeis] table at the volunteer fair,” she recalls. “I went and started talking to the person [at the table,] and he didn’t know any of the answers to my questions. And I was like, okay, so I need to get involved.”

Lefferman knows that she only narrowly overcame the confusing voting process thanks to California’s allowance for same-day voter registration. Acknowledging that not every state has this safety net, she aims to help fellow students cut through the complexity.

She shares that it is “heartbreaking” to inform fellow students that they have missed the registration deadline in Massachusetts, as well as registration deadlines in other states across the country. Unlike California, Massachusetts employs a voting registration deadline 10 days prior to Election Day, making Oct. 26 the deadline to register for this past Presidential Election. 

In the current 193rd legislative cycle in Massachusetts, “An Act Establishing Same Day Registration of Voters,” or Bill H.688, failed, dying in committee. It met the same fate as six similar bills before it. Unsuccessful attempts to allow eligible citizens to register to vote on election day in Massachusetts have been made in legislative cycles dating back to 2013.  

Speaking in conversation on Monday, Nov. 4, Lefferman noted that during the week prior, she had “10 or 15 people” from various states reach out to ask her if it was too late to register. Unfortunately, it was too late by this point. VoteDeis is often able to advise students from out of state to register in Massachusetts if they miss the deadline in their home state, but this was not an option after Oct. 26. 

In the U.S., 23 states, as well as Washington D.C., allow for same-day registration, while the other 27 states, as well as Puerto Rico, enforce deadlines prior to election day. The deadline by which to register to vote is just one of the stark discrepancies pertaining to voting laws across the country. Additionally, absentee voting can exacerbate confusion as it requires a separate registration process in many states.   

44 states plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico are represented by the undergraduate student body at Brandeis according to the Office of the Brandeis University Registrar. 

With such a wide range of states represented, and therefore an equally wide range of rules and guidelines that students must keep up with, a lack of voter education is the greatest obstacle to voting. Not to mention, on college campuses, “students are very, very busy,” states Lefferman. This past Presidential Election and its deadlines came and went, leaving many students behind.

Lefferman says that as a point of contact for VoteDeis, she “gets lots of texts from friends who really want to vote and just don’t know how.”

She further explains that “people want to vote, [and] they want to register. They just don’t have the resources. They don’t know how easy it is. They don’t know that it’s a thing they can do from college.” 

Maddie Leventhal ’26, a junior at Brandeis and a fellow member of VoteDeis, offers up her home state of Minnesota as an example of the time sensitive confusion that students can run into. In Minnesota, she says, “when you register … it has to be processed for a certain amount of days … and then you can actually request an [absentee] ballot — it doesn’t come automatically.” 

She understands that “the biggest barrier is people just not knowing how to do it and thinking it’s more complicated than it is, or it [actually] being more complicated and not knowing where to go or having anyone to ask.” 

The difference between registering to vote and requesting an absentee ballot can be a significant misconception for some people. It is a logistical obstacle to voting that discourages many students. 

Leventhal knows people who are registered to vote, but who just failed to understand that there is an entirely separate process required to vote by mail. “They just assume that their ballots are going to come, and they don’t,” she says.

This assumption would not be incorrect in the state of Washington. All Washingtonians who are registered to vote receive a physical ballot sent to their home addresses, regardless of whether or not they request an absentee ballot or are planning to vote in person. 

On the flip side, requesting absentee ballots can be “especially tough” for students in states such as Texas. Molly Zimmerman ’25, a senior at Brandeis from Texas, says that she “was really stressed about [voting.]”

Zimmerman describes the arduous process of voting by mail in Texas, explaining that in order to vote, she must “print everything out herself.” And she means everything —  Texas law requires that out-of-state voters print a physical application to receive a ballot by mail and then send their completed application to the Early Voting Clerk. Then, if their applications are accepted, voters can either print out their ballot or count on their ballot to be sent by mail. To throw in a time crunch, votes cast for this year’s Presidential Election were only counted if they were received by an Early Voting Clerk in Texas by Oct. 25. 

The voting process also induces unique pains for students from Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina and Oklahoma. These states require ballots to be notarized and, in a rule particular to Minnesota, an absentee ballot must either be notarized or signed by another registered voter of that state. 

According to the Office of the Brandeis University Registrar, the Brandeis undergraduate student body includes 22 students from Minnesota, two from Mississippi, 10 from Missouri, 30 from North Carolina and five from Oklahoma. Not only is notarization a process that is often completely unheard of for students, it can cost money. 

Postage, which is required, but not prepaid, on return ballots by nineteen states and Washington D.C., will also be an additional unplanned cost for some students. 

Weinstein laughs about the need for a stamp. He marvels at that requirement on behalf of students, saying that he does not “know what current undergraduate students still send letters … These days not many people just have stamps.”

Besides VoteDeis, Brandeis is also home to a chapter of Hillel International’s MitzVote organization, of which senior Madeline Bagdade ’25 is a proud member. She finds it a natural fit after working with the League of Women Voters in high school. Similar to VoteDeis, MitzVote focuses on voter registration and fostering civic engagement, but attends to a uniquely niche scope of students across the country as an affiliate group of Hillel, the Foundation for Jewish Student Campus Life. 

Bagdade explains that at Brandeis, as a University founded on Jewish principles that still hosts a large population of Jewish students, MitzVote is able to “specifically target Jewish students on campus.” She says that for Jewish students, MitzVote is “a way to really connect to social action,” and an idea in Judaism referred to as “‘tikkun olam,” which translates to “repairing the world.”

Guiding students through the process of not only registering to vote but also figuring out how to receive and complete absentee ballots throughout the fall, VoteDeis and MitzVote both held tabling events on campus about once a week in the lead-up to Election Day.    

A student-favorite event hosted by VoteDeis centered around a baby goat named Weston, complete with handcrafted signs for students to pose with declaring: “This goat wants you to vote.” Weinstein estimated that VoteDeis helped register just “5 or 6” students at the “Vote Goat” event. However, he argues that spreading awareness is just as important as tangible action.

A student may see “a post [about the tabling event] on social media or something,” Weinstein explains. Hopefully, that student would feel encouraged to reach out for more information. The reach of VoteDeis is intended to include students who are even “just reminded” to vote.

Both VoteDeis and MitzVote are strictly nonpartisan and Weinstein makes sure to emphasize the significance of this status. Students running tabling events are conscious of keeping questions about the actual issues or candidates on the ballot out of their conversations. 

“There’s nothing wrong with people doing [voter registration] work in a partisan context,” Weinstein says. “But it’s just striking to me that there have been students who [are] so committed … to democracy … and to full participation,” regardless of political polarization.

He recognizes that students are “doing this work to really help anybody who’s eligible to vote without any question of how [they] will vote … and without any attempt to influence where they vote.” 

Leffereman acknowledges that “everyone feels the urgency in a different way and for a different candidate.” She admits that “navigating that has been challenging” for her sometimes. 

Bagdade believes that above all the rife political tension, she can remain loyal to the principle of impartiality. She says that it is imperative to be able to tell other students even “if I don’t agree with you … your vote is important and your voice does matter and you should use it.”

Luke Faberman ’26, a member of both VoteDeis and Brandeis Democrats, balances his nonpartisan and partisan commitments. He reminds himself and others that “at the end of the day, America is a democracy [and] … I don’t think we should be actively depriving anyone of the right to vote by not informing them of their rights.” He has found the capacity to do both nonpartisan and partisan work, finding an important separation between his conviction in protecting the greater ideals of American democracy and his opinions as a member of the Democratic Party.

But there is a gray area when it comes to policy. Faberman personally struggles with the ideological basis for laws requiring voters to have a form of government-issued identification with them when they vote. He believes that unless the cost of applying for and getting an appropriate identification document is free, this requirement “is a form of voter suppression.” A vision of more accessible voting that is commonly perceived as partisan and left-leaning. The ability to vote without an ID is only available to citizens in 14 U.S. states.

Leventhal connects this back to the trouble she encountered this year while registering students to vote at Brandeis. She notes that she “ran into people who do not have physical state IDs.” For some states such as New York, it is “actually very hard to register to vote without a state ID,” Leventhal says. This was “surprising” to her, and she explains that without a physical state ID, “you [will] need a passport, but [the registration process] is a little more confusing that way.” She also points out that obtaining the most common form of state ID, a driver’s license, as well as applying for a passport, costs both money and time.

Students have had their work cut out for them when it comes to voting, even with the help of groups such as VoteDeis and MitzVote. The sheer number of states and the daunting complexity of different requirements and deadlines means that even at their tabling events, as Weinstein admits, VoteDeis “can’t just have a stack of forms” applicable for all students. They cannot simply tell people “Use this.” 

When the numbers become overwhelming and stakes ascend into stress, Brandeis students can depend on an individual devoted to demystifying voting: Aimee Slater, who chooses to focus on helping others as a “natural fit” for her in the absence of “a dream [democratic] process.”

Slater, Brandeis University’s Government Information and Politics Librarian, prides herself on having a unique understanding of voter registration and voting —  “it is in my professional wheelhouse,” she explains. 

As a passion project, and in pursuit of the educational purpose she finds as a librarian “to connect people to good information,” she has personally taken on “remov[ing] barriers [to voting] that the state does not.” 

Ahead of the 2016 Presidential Election, Slater “really wanted to demystify the voting process” for students by increasing access to credible and authoritative resources about voting laws.” She could not find an adequate resource online so she decided to do it herself. 

Slater pitched her idea for creating a comprehensive voting guide for students to the Brandeis Library. In 2016, she spent her summer going through the Secretary of State websites for every state in the country to identify all the possible barriers that could exist for students. 

The result of her research was a voting guide made available online to the Brandeis community as well as accessible to the greater public. It includes all the requirements, as well as all the potentially unforeseeable obstacles, that students in every state will need to know in order to vote. Alphabetized and updated every evenly numbered election year, the guide includes links to necessary applications and highlights deadlines that students may not be aware of.

Slater dates her inspiration back to her first time voting in college, saying that in her “own lived experience [growing up] in Washington state, her dad took her to a firehouse to register to vote.” She attended college in Pennsylvania and realized that she “didn’t know how to do it” there. She remembers that her first time casting a ballot as a student was “in some guy’s garage” in her small college town.

Slater knows the complexity and depth of her project: “There are 50 different sets of rules and 50 different sets of deadlines.” It is a lot of labor and information for any one person to take on, compile and compress. 

At Brandeis, Slater has also advocated for budget requests that have provided stamps, envelopes and printing services free of charge for students. She also became a licensed notary to be a resource for students voting in the five states that require ballots to be notarized. She convinced a handful of other members of the Brandeis faculty and staff to become notaries as well.

Slater estimates that this past year she helped 200-300 students register to vote. The aid she offers to students includes calling their elected officials when their ballots get lost in the mail. “Call them and be annoying,” Slater says. “This is important. [The job of an elected official] is to make sure that you are able to [vote] if you have followed their process.”

Slater seeks to “empower students to have … agency [and] control and be able to… challenge jurisdictions when they’ve done everything right and still don’t have a ballot in hand.” 

The most rousing form of civic engagement at Brandeis is not campaigning for a specific candidate. Instead, it is students working together and with the help of supportive faculty and staff to get the collective student body registered to vote. President of the Brandeis Student Union and senior Rani Balakrishna says that “positive peer pressure is really helpful” in this way.

The anticipation many felt for voting this year reached its peak as deadlines passed and Election Day came, leaving in its wake a question: for all the effort, for all the hundreds of students that Slater registered and the campus presence that VoteDeis and MitzVote contributed to, were Brandeis students actually able to vote? And did they?

On Election Day, the collective student sentiment about voting was bittersweet. 

“It was pretty easy!” Sophomore Claudia Cummings’ ’27 smooth experience was echoed by many Brandeis students who remembered pre-registering to vote when they got their driver’s licenses, voting early with their parents or who remembered receiving their absentee ballots in the mail and promptly filling them out while still inside the Brandeis Student Mail Center. Some students thanked their friends for helping them register to vote, some recalled holding Weston the “Vote Goat” for a photo-op and some wore their first ever “I Voted” stickers.

A few students utilized a shuttle service provided by Weinstein and VoteDeis and others took advantage of promotional discounts offered by Uber and Lyft that advertised half-price rides to polling stations. 

Other students expressed worries that their absentee ballots might not have been postmarked on time. And some students that went unreached by VoteDeis, MitzVote or Slater were left without answers as to why their registration had not gone through or why they had never received their absentee ballots. 

Zimmerman is grateful that she had access to a car to drop off her voting application materials and ballot at a United States Postal Service Office instead of entrusting the Brandeis mailroom with making sure her ballot made it to Texas on time. 

A few students who are Massachusetts residents did not realize that they were registered to vote in a precinct in their hometown and therefore unable to cast their ballots in Waltham. Some also cited concerns about how much time voting would take out of their schedule, many saying they “just didn’t have enough time.” 

Benjamin Lee ’26, a resident of Massachusetts, bluntly brought all the buzz of election day back down to the onerous hum of student life on a college campus: “I have a test today,” he said. His polling place is 35 minutes away and he did not have the time to drive himself there amidst his st dying. Lee is registered to vote but forgot that he could do so early. 

Lefferman and Bagdade wish that University classes and exercises had been canceled on Election Day. Affecting more than just college kids, the lack of a federal holiday on Nov. 5 creates a tough situation for people who do not believe they can sacrifice school or work to go vote.  

Speaking on Oct. 28 prior to election day, Weinstein said that his sense of VoteDeis’ impact this year was a positive one. He was optimistic about voting momentum on campus. Speaking after election day on Nov. 8, Faberman offered up a straightforward, “We tried our best.” 

Bagdade provided a “jaded” personal assessment of the situation: people can be “numb” to voting and civically burnt out. She believes that sometimes it is hard to realize when “we’re preaching to the choir.” 

VoteDeis members Lefferman, Leventhal and Faberman, as well as MitzVote member Bagdade, share a common belief. To use some of their own words, the “antiquated,” “confusing” and “inaccessible” processes and requirements for voting registration and voting are forms of voter suppression. Slater agrees.

Slater does not know whether or not “one federated system across all 50 territories,” would be possible, but she does think that it is imperative to “start chiseling away at some of these old processes when we live in a digital age.”

Deadlines are the stickiest part of the process for students. The variety of dates by which to register, request an absentee ballot, and postmark that ballot among other things to be mindful of become the obstacles that stop them in their tracks. 

Weinstein reflects on the work that VoteDeis has done to support voter registration and voting, admitting that it would be much simpler, “for sure,” if there was “a single voter registration deadline for the entire country.

He says that he does not know what the pros or cons of that legislation would be, or what it would look like, but that “it would definitely be simpler if we were telling everybody like, ‘hey, here’s the deadline’ instead of [having] a whole string of deadlines for different states.”

Weinstein made sure to note that he prioritized the nonpartisan stance that VoteDeis and ENACT take and would not outwardly support any policy. However, Lefferman proudly made her stance clear: “I support same day registration,” she said in conversation. 

Slater states that “anytime you put [up] a barrier, whether it’s deliberate or not deliberate, you are making sure [that] a certain number of your populus can’t vote.”

Admittedly, voting is a numbers story — and any analysis of voting in any election will be too. Summaries that will break down the demographics of voter turnout loom as instigators of tired conversations about low voter turnout among young people. 

Complicating the picture, in isolated communities such as college campuses that often serve as echo chambers, the greater scheme of the numbers game is harder to project. Focusing on communities instead of pie charts, the story of voting in the U.S. becomes one driven primarily by the people that it inspires and their relationships with the people that it discourages.

Bagdade recognizes that for all the people who are passionate about voting, there are many people that feel unexcited about, disillusioned by or excluded from civic engagement. She wishes that MitzVote would do more outreach in the greater Waltham community in order for students to connect more with people outside their bubbles, interest groups and present college commitments. 

Lefferman remains committed to the importance of voting as a power that all people should have. Voting “means that I can have a say in the things that will later impact me and the people around me,” she maintains. “It means that I am an involved citizen and that I can create change by electing the people who can create change.” Voting is emotional for her every time, she explains, because she thinks about “all the years [that] people couldn’t vote.”

Rani Balakrishna ’25 decides to take a generational approach as well. She thinks about her parents and the things they must have been thinking about years ago when they were voting as young people. She recognizes that today’s democracy is the one that her parents “inherited [from] their parents … [who] laid [it] out for them and that they voted [in].” She points out that the same cycle of inheritance “will happen to us.” This is hard to think about, Balakrishna admits, “but in 100 years we’re going to be living with the repercussions, with the impact and with the after effects of this election.”  

Fighting the stigma that some votes don’t matter in the abyss of political turmoil, Slater says, “every vote does count — people say it doesn’t, but I’m going to tell you that it does.”

Slater loves “how empowered students are to help their friends,” and identifies a “ripple effect that goes out that we’ll never be able to count.” She hopes that people realize that “at a certain point [numbers don’t] matter.” 

There will always be people who need help navigating the voting process and Slater contends that “empowering [people] to really realize and take … agency over this process and to help each other,” is needed now more than ever. Disqualifying any effort to help students vote, no matter how small, forgets the democratic history and hopeful legacy of America. 

Voting on a college campus can be an uphill battle. This election year inspired some individuals to reach out to their communities in the name of civic duty and dedicate themselves to bringing others into the folds of democracy. But its obstacles leave some potential voters behind no matter how hard people try to help, making some wonder why, as Lefferman and others understand it, voting and its obstacles epitomize a “privilege instead of a right.” 

— The Justice Managing Editor Eliza Bier ’26 is employed by the Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation and did not contribute to or edit this article.

— The Justice Editor Nemma Kalra ’26 is employed by the Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation and did not contribute to or edit this article.

— The Justice Associate Editor Julia Hardy ’26 is on the executive board for Brandeis Democrats and did not contribute to or edit this article.