Pace University is a private, four-year university with two undergraduate campuses, located in Westchester County, New York, and New York City. Pace has a diverse student body, with students from NYC and the immediate area as well as students from around the country and international students, all of whom we support with civic engagement. At Pace, voter education is housed within the Center for Community Action and Research, which oversees Pace Votes along with other civic engagement and community-based learning initiatives.
In 2022, Pace Votes set a goal to advocate for on-campus polling places on both the NYC campus and the Westchester campus. Around the same time, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed New York State’s 2023 budget into law, which included several measures that would support Pace’s advocacy for an on-campus polling place. The legislation encourages and empowers all college campuses in New York with more than 300 registered voters to have on-campus polling places, and prevents campuses from being divided across multiple voting districts.
The Pace Votes team determined that on-campus voting would eliminate barriers for student voters, given that on the NYC campus Pace’s four residence halls were at times split between three different voting sites.
Pace Votes’ partnership with the Andrew Goodman Foundation was crucial to this effort and helped connect Pace with other campuses in New York doing similar work around campus voting. To gain the necessary internal support for an on-campus polling site, the Pace Votes team worked with Pace’s Public Affairs department and Dean for Students, as well as personnel in charge of facilities and security for key logistical elements of an on-campus polling place. Finally, Pace Votes collaborated with the local Board of Elections in NYC and Westchester around the logistics of the polling site while laying the groundwork to get student poll workers assigned to the site once operational.
The training and funding Pace Votes received from Ask Every Student and the Andrew Goodman Foundation proved crucial for supporting the student leaders who supported this advocacy, and for providing information and resources on how to best train students to educate their peers about how to access on-campus voting. Pace Votes also hosted programs in and around the new on-campus poll site throughout 2024, including for Civic Holidays and in partnership with the SLSV Coalition, which helped to further engage Pace’s Student Center as a space for nonpartisan civic engagement. External relationships with the Board of Elections helped facilitate this as well.
Throughout this process, Pace Votes used the +1 the Polls Toolkit: Bringing a Voting Site to Your Campus, and continued to conduct course presentations adapted from the Ask Every Student materials on classroom visits. Pace student leaders were trained with AES resources as well, including the conversation guide. Resources from AES are particularly helpful for guiding our student leaders through presentations and conversations in non-election years, including the local elections we are currently doing outreach for.
Most of the barriers Pace Votes faced in this effort were internal. Though there wasn’t stringent opposition to efforts to place a polling site on campus, doing so successfully – and navigating the subsequent logistical challenges of finding and using space on an urban campus – required buy-in and awareness from various institutional stakeholders for whom doing so simply wasn’t a priority. The effort required sustained advocacy, communication, collaboration, and open-mindedness among all parties involved.
Thankfully, in 2024, Pace succeeded in securing an on-campus polling site for the first time at both its NYC and Westchester campuses. This win was crucial for expanding access for Pace students who live on campus. In the fall of 2024, Pace began embedding information about on-campus voting into all of its course presentations and co-curricular programs so that students knew registering to vote on campus meant they would be voting on campus.
In 2024, Pace’s NYC campus hosted polling sites for two successful primaries that allowed Pace Votes to further work out the logistics of a polling site and begin spreading the word to students. On Election Day in November 2024, 222 students voted on campus and an additional 200 students stopped by Pace Votes’ table outside the polling site to engage in election day-themed activities, including a mural-making project. The on-campus polling place also provided an opportunity to connect with neighbors accessing Pace’s campus to vote. In total, 950 voters cast their ballot at Pace’s on-campus polling site on Election Day! Best of all, a student and faculty-led research project assessed the voter experience around the November 2024 election and found that having an on-campus polling site fostered a supportive environment for students and increased feelings that voting is convenient!
Fortunately, since its initial success in 2024, Pace Votes has received enthusiastic support from essential stakeholders, such as the NYC Board of Elections and Pace’s Special Events Department, Divisions of Student Affairs, and Division of Public Affairs, in navigating any challenges associated with operating the polling site and obtaining continued permission to have an on-campus polling site beyond the 2024 election.
With the 2025 NYC mayoral election in particular, Pace continued to see excitement around voting within its student body, with students even going out of their way to come back to campus over the summer in June 2025 to vote at the poll site in the mayoral primaries. In November 2025 more Pace students voted on campus than in the Presidential Election, with 1,319 students and neighbors voting on Election Day. For this fall the Pace Votes team was also able to expand its efforts to collaborate with the Board of Elections on assigning Pace students to work as poll workers on campus to further the supportive environment on campus for student voters.
Securing the on-campus poll site past the 2024 presidential election has been an exciting win for Pace Votes.
“I would advise that other campuses pursue the long-term strategies, like on-campus voting, that make sense for their student voters, work well for their campus culture, and are possible within the resources their team has. Sometimes we get excited about work we learn about from other campuses, but then realize that it might not be the best fit for ours, which I think is important to note. We have had success with on-campus voting because the level of advocacy needed is doable for a small team that consists of one full-time staff member on each campus and a few students, and because it addressed a tangible issue our students were having with finding their polling sites. Around on-campus voting, one thing I would advise is to make it fun and educational for all students, not just the ones voting on campus. At each poll site, we’ve done creative projects and outreach, including a mural and distributing a student-created zine, which has brought more students into the process. “ – Erin Mysogland, Assistant Director, Center for Community Action and Research NYC, Pace University