It’s 6 p.m. on a Tuesday night and Luke Hughes (SFS ’27) is ready to lock in. He has a single earbud in blaring Zach Bryan, a slice of pizza on a paper plate and one finger refreshing a database page for Ohio congressional districts as he updates the latest primary election results for Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), a reporting site that collates election results from every U.S. county for nationwide news outlets.
With people across the United States already beginning to vote in this year’s election, Georgetown University students are ramping up their involvement in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections — whether it’s working with DDHQ — which announced its partnership with Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy earlier this year — organizing voter registration drives on campus or riding daily on the Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle (GUTS) bus to coveted internships with the campaigns or national committees.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris will be facing off against former Republican President Donald Trump for the U.S.’s highest office, with hotly contested issues on the line such as reproductive rights, immigration and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. On the congressional side, both the House of Representatives and Senate are also up for grabs, with forecasters describing the races for overall control of both chambers as tossups.
One month out from Nov. 5, this year’s presidential election date, Hughes and roughly 100 other DDHQ volunteers have worked to report primary results in the hope of repeating the site’s success in the last general election: In 2020, DDHQ was the first outlet to call current President Joe Biden’s victory.
“It was just a group of kids who are passionate about it, and that’s just what you needed for this job,” Hughes said. “It’s a room full of passionate individuals who can work fast and can stay up for a few hours past their bedtime.”
Partisan groups on campus have gotten similar traction, with groups like Georgetown University College Democrats (GUCD) and Georgetown University College Republicans (GUCR) amping up election-related programming.
Braedon Troy (CAS ’27), GUCD board member and director of speakers, said the possibility of being involved in campaign work for the 2024 election was a driving force behind their decision to attend Georgetown.
“This is why we’re here. I came to Georgetown specifically to be a part of this election cycle,” Troy told The Hoya. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m in Washington, D.C., in 2024.’ I was thinking about that when I was a senior in high school.”
Partisan Campaigns
Student groups like GUCD and GUCR provide opportunities for students to get involved in campaigning on and off campus, whether through speaker events, debate watch parties or door knocking.
Asher Maxwell (CAS ’26), GUCD co-chair, said he’s seen increased participation in club-sponsored events and activities since the start of the election season. Maxwell said students have been energized by Harris’s campaign, with three times more students than expected attending the club’s first debate watch party and attendance at their phone banks consistently high.
“We have been overwhelmed by the amount of energy and excitement, the amount of people who are interested in getting involved,” Maxwell told The Hoya.
Both groups have been engaging heavily in voter outreach through phone banking and canvassing.
GUCR has made trips to Alexandria, Va., and Fredericksburg, Va., to campaign for Republican Senate candidate Hung Cao and congressional candidate Derrick Anderson.
GUCR Secretary Michael Korvyakov (MSB, SFS ’27) said these canvasses have brought volunteers new perspectives on engaging in political discourse.
“Door knocking is already not a very glorious activity. Most students want to avoid it,” Korvyakov told The Hoya. “We get a solid group going out there, and everyone who does it, they find it to be kind of transformational in that you’re not used to going up to a door, knocking on it and asking to talk about politics.”
“You get out of your head a little bit when you do it,” Korvyakov added. “And I think they really enjoyed it in the end.”
GUCD has made phone calls and texts to voters in North Carolina and Pennsylvania and canvassed in Virginia and Maryland for Senate candidates Tim Kaine and Angela Alsobrooks. Club members have also independently traveled to rural Chambersburg, Pa., weekly on Saturdays to knock doors for the Harris campaign.
Troy said that their work with GUCD helps them to feel confident they are doing everything in their power to help get Harris elected.
“The biggest thing that I’ve kind of come back to throughout this election cycle is on Nov. 6, the day after the election, I want to make sure that I wake up and feel, no matter what the result is, that I did whatever I could to help Kamala Harris get elected,” Troy said. “And if that means giving up my Saturday and going out and knocking on someone’s door and maybe kind of annoying them while they’re trying to watch college football, that’s what that means.”
GUCR President Ian Cruz (SFS ’25, GRD ’26) said he has found it particularly gratifying to meet people who are following the campaign closely.
“You can really feel that it’s a very contested race, and that feeling that people are paying attention,” Cruz told The Hoya. “I think that’s been one of the greatest things, is just when you knock on somebody’s door and they’re actually paying attention to what’s going on, and that makes your job easier as a canvasser, because they know what the race is. They know what’s at stake,” Cruz added.
Beyond on-campus activities, many students work off the Hilltop for the Harris and Trump campaigns.
Maxwell is involved directly in the race, serving as a communications intern for the Harris campaign.
“Being part of the campaign behind Vice President Harris when she is experiencing all this momentum and enthusiasm is a really fun way to take part in it,” Maxwell said.
Korvyakov, who is an intern for the Republican National Committee (RNC), said that he feels the impact of his work when he sees the political figures he is advocating for visit his office.
“You know you’re not doing crazy work, like you’re not running the RNC right now, but I know that what I’m doing is making the office more efficient, and what if that has some kind of impact on something?” Korvyakov said.
Nonpartisan Work
The 2024 election will be the first presidential election that most current Georgetown undergraduates will vote in — meaning students may be registering to vote in their home states for the first time. GU Votes, a nonpartisan student organization dedicated to reducing barriers for students in the registration process, aims to guide students through the process in advance of Nov. 5.
Sam Lovell (CAS ’25), co-president of GU Votes, said despite the common view that only votes in swing states matter, voting is essential for students to directly make their opinions and voices heard.
“The voice of young people is so important, and even if your vote isn’t likely to be pivotal in an election, it’s still a marker of your voice and the most direct way that you can contribute to expressing a desire for change or not,” Lovell told The Hoya.
GU Votes tables throughout the year, registering students online or providing them envelopes, printed forms or notarization services, which some states require voters to have in order to register to vote absentee. However, their biggest tabling effort annually is during the week of National Voter Registration Day, Sept. 17. More than 50 volunteers flooded Lauinger Library, the Leavey Center and first-year dorms to register students to vote in the organization’s Storm the Dorms event Sept. 17.
In 2022, 87% of Hoyas were registered to vote, according to Lovell. He says GU Votes aims to raise that number this year.
“That’s really an opportunity for us to make an impact and ensure that students like that don’t fall through the cracks and get to exercise their right to vote as they navigate campus,” Lovell said. “There’s lots of changes that happen for first-years, and I think it’s easy for voting to fall behind.”
Michael Bailey, a professor of government who focuses on political data and statistics, said GU Votes’ efforts are important, but student activists should also focus on expanding voter drives for young people outside private universities.
“Student involvement in campaigns in Georgetown, sometimes they’re focused on their fellow Georgetown students, and that’s not where the problem is,” Bailey told The Hoya. “The problem is the community college students or kids who don’t go to college or big state schools — there’s just a lot of different experiences in the places where the falloff in turnout is the most dramatic.”
Sarah Sisto (CAS ’25), who volunteered for Storm the Dorms, said that the prospect of voting for the first time has energized students to register.
Full disclosure: Sarah Sisto previously served as The Hoya’s Senior Social Editor in the Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters.
“Lots of people are just excited to vote,” Sisto told The Hoya. “I think, too, for many of us, it’s our first presidential election. I know for me it is, so I think there’s just a level of excitement in the air.”
Sisto is also working with DDHQ as a reporter on the general election night to track six districts throughout the night as results come in.
“I’m really excited to kind of impact the election in that way,” Sisto said. “Obviously, it’s not affecting the vote in any way. It’s more like being a part of the electoral process.”
Hughes said that taking part in the behind-the-scenes work gave him a new appreciation for the county election clerks counting the votes and the people across the country reporting results.
“It’s fun. It’s non-political, it’s nonpartisan,” Hughes said. “I’m just reporting the election results. It’s cool to get behind the scenes to see who does that: 19-year-old college students.”
Lovell said that campus organizations like GU Votes provide opportunities for students with different political beliefs to come together over their shared passion for politics.
“I just think that in such a polarized society, and even in some ways a polarized campus, that institutions and clubs and organizations like ours are really some of the rare moments where people can come together to one of our events, where they can volunteer at a table with us, regardless of whether they’re Democrat or Republican or something else, and know that they’re making a difference and contribute to a cause that I hope we all share,” Lovell said.
Reaching Across The Aisle
Besides his work with DDHQ, Hughes is a student strategy team (SST) leader for the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service (GU Politics), which is housed within the McCourt School of Public Policy and studies regional and national politics.
Each year, GU Politics chooses politicians, journalists and activists as fellows who lead discussion groups and educate students based on their firsthand experience in Washington, D.C.
Hughes, who works on the team for former Trump advisor Ashley Gunn and last year worked with Machalagh Carr, who served as chief of staff to former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, said that both experiences have taught him about the importance of open-mindedness in politics.
“It was something that was tough for me when I was first put on Machalagh’s SST. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s conservative. What am I gonna do?’ And then I’m like, ‘You’re gonna have a great time. You’re gonna learn a lot, ask a lot of questions and learn the gist of it.’”
“I’ve just learned not to villainize,” Hughes added.
Hughes said that this message of bipartisanship is important to remember across Georgetown and D.C.
“D.C. doesn’t have to be so partisan and Republican versus Democrat,” Hughes said. “And I think that’s the goal of all the fellows who are here this semester with GU Politics, and that’s always the goal.”
Troy said that since most students are voting at home rather than in D.C., and because D.C. political races are not tightly contested, tension between parties on campus has been less noticeable than at other universities.
“We’re in Washington, D.C., most people are going to be voting absentee back in their home state and that is so very different for everyone,” Troy said. “If we were at the University of Michigan, I think things might be a little more toxic, because you’re seeing all the ads, you’re seeing all the campaigning signs directly.”
Sisto said that as an inherently bipartisan city, District residents and university students are very engaged in the election but also respectful of differing opinions.
“The District itself does not really have any impact on the election, with one electoral vote and no Congressmembers,” Sisto said. “We don’t get the big rallies happening and things like that, but this is the home base for everything, and depending on the administration, things change in the city. People move in, move out, and I think that you can’t help but feel that energy in the city.”
Shirley Omari-Kwarteng (CAS ’25), who worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this summer, said Georgetown’s political discourse seems much calmer than that represented in the media.
“I truly think that at least on Georgetown’s campus, it’s not as bad as we’re seeing on the news,” Omari-Kwarteng told The Hoya.
“I think people have their opinions. The way they’re aligned isn’t detrimentally affecting how students interact with each other on campus, to my knowledge.”
As the election approaches, students’ political involvement is becoming still more intense: GUCD is organizing a phone bank for Alsobrooks and a weekend-long canvassing trip to Allentown, Pa., while the Georgetown Bipartisan Coalition — a student organization made up of Democrats, Republicans and Independents that aims to promote civil dialogue — will be hosting a debate between GUCD and GUCR members.
Lovell said, given the tension and violence that has occurred throughout campaign season, nonpartisan collaboration like Georgetown students have demonstrated is all the more essential.
“I think it’s important to emphasize our shared ground, that we resolve our differences at the ballot box, that this is the principal way that we can see the humanity in one another, rise to the challenge, beat our differences and come together,” Lovell said.