The Indiana University Student Government (IUSG) has taken many efforts over the years to increase student civic engagement during election season. Before the presidential election this year, the Executive Board of the IUSG implemented the Road to 100 initiative in the hopes of reaching 100% eligible voter registration among the student body. The program recruited several student organizations to participate in a contest where they were awarded points based on the number of people they registered to vote, raising concerns about potential violations of state election law (Photo Credit: IU Student Government).
According to IUSG documents, student organizations could “get points for every person who registers to vote using… [their] organization’s unique registration link,” with each individual registrant earning the student organization one point.
However, “a person who knowingly does any of the following commits a Level 6 felony… pays or offers to pay an individual any property based on the number of absentee ballot applications or voter registration applications obtained by the individual,” according to Indiana Code 3-14-2-1.
The Indiana Commons reached out to the Indiana University Student Government Executive Board about the initiative but did not receive a reply. However, shortly afterwards their website was scrubbed of references to the $2000 prize granted to the student organization with the most points. An archive of the site from before the changes can be found here. The reference was later added back.
Student organizations could also earn points for each hour one of their members staffed an IUSG voter registration table, for each member in attendance at a voter registration event hosted by the organization and for each member in attendance at IUSG-hosted political events.
The more points awarded to participating student organizations, the greater chance they had to win the grand prize of $2000, which was awarded to Women in Business at Indiana University. Women in Government took second place, while the College Democrats took third. According to IUSG documents, the $2000 came out of the IUSG Treasury Department’s discretionary fund at IUSG President Cooper Tinsley’s request.
The College Democrats and Student Demand Action, a gun control advocacy student organization, appeared to be the only partisan student organizations that took part in the initiative.
The steering committee for the event was the IUSG Political Engagement Council, which describes itself as nonpartisan and was created by Tinsley this August.
52 U.S.C. 10207(c) also bans providing incentives for individuals to register to vote or accepting incentives, which can be as minor as receiving a piece of candy in exchange for registering. The Indiana Commons received screenshots of student organizations conducting voter registration drives and offering candy at their tabling events.
The Indiana Commons reached out to the IU Student Government to ask if they were aware of these potential violations, and whether they had provided any guidance to student organizations to ensure they did not violate the law by offering incentives in exchange for students registering to vote, but has not received a response as of publication.
Several files related to the Road to 100 initiative are provided below.