Voting & Political Engagement

Related Resources

2026 Voting Deadlines, Dates, and Information

Stay tuned! We will be updating this section with information about the 2026 primary elections soon!
Find more information at

If you have any questions or need help with anything related to voting, please visit the or contact us at ccec@ramapo.edu or stop by SC 213!聽

Civic Holidays

The Civic and Community Engagement Center hosts events and programs to celebrate the following civic holidays! Please follow our Instagram page and Archway to learn about our upcoming events.

National Voter Registration Day
Constitution Day
National Voter Education Week
Vote Early Day
Election Day

Partners and Recognition

Andrew Goodman Foundation

Ramapo College has partnered with the Andrew Goodman Foundation since 2015.聽

was founded in 1966 by Robert & Carolyn Goodman to honor the life of their son, Andy Goodman. Their vision is that young people will become active, engaged citizens who ensure a just democracy and sustainable future.

All IN Campus Democracy Challenge

Ramapo College has been recognized by All IN since 2016. We have been recently recognized for our excellence in Student Voter Engagement.

envisions a more engaged and inclusive democracy. Through institutional engagement, direct student engagement, and fostering a national higher education network, ALL IN strives for an electorate that mirrors our country鈥檚 makeup and in which college students are democratically engaged on an ongoing basis, during and between elections, and not just at the polls. We believe that a strong, vibrant, and more representative American democracy will result from the greater inclusion of informed college student voters.聽Check out our campus profile!

The Voter Friendly Campus Designation Program

In March 2025, Ramapo College earned the Voter Friendly Campus Designation!

The Voter Friendly Campus designation program was started through a partnership between Fair Elections Center鈥檚 Campus Vote Project and NASPA鈥檚 NASPA LEAD Initiative in 2016. This partnership was formed as a tool to support higher education institutions fulfilling the requirements of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which necessitates that institutions distribute voter registration forms to their students. Due to the lack of instructions and guidance regarding this requirement, the Voter Friendly Campus designation process was developed to further the work of the Students Learn Students Vote coalition in creating more measurable and manageable guidelines for institutions to follow to create a more voter-friendly campus.

ALL IN Gold Campus Seal 2020 Election

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Civic Holidays

Constitution Day

Constitution Day is the federal observance that recognizes the adoption of the United States Constitution and those who have become U.S. citizens. It is normally observed on September 17, the day in 1787 that delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the document in Philadelphia.

National Voter Registration Day (NVRD)聽

National Voter Registration Day is a nonpartisan civic holiday celebrating our democracy. First observed in 2012, it has quickly gained momentum ever since. Nearly 4.7 million voters across the country have registered to vote on the holiday to date.

Celebrated every September, National Voter Registration Day involves volunteers and organizations from all over the country hitting the streets in a single day of coordinated field, technology, and media efforts. National Voter Registration Day seeks to create broad awareness of voter registration opportunities to reach tens of thousands of voters who may not register otherwise.

National Voter Education Week (NVEW)聽

NVED spotlights voter education to help all voters, especially new voters, with the tools they need to vote with confidence.

Vote Early Day

Vote Early Day is a nonpartisan movement of media companies, businesses, nonprofits, election administrators, and creatives working to ensure all eligible citizens have the tools to vote early.

Redistricting

Redistricting is the way we change the districts that determine who represents us.

Every member of the U.S. House of Representatives, most of our state legislators, and many of our local legislators in towns and counties are elected from districts. These districts divide states and the people who live there into geographical territories. Districts are occasionally the same size as the whole jurisdiction: members of a local school board, for example, may each be elected from an area with the same boundaries as the overall school district the board governs. Most of the time, though, district lines subdivide territory, so that there are several districts within one city or state and representatives for each separate district. When that happens, we need some way to decide where the lines will be drawn.

A Brief History of Redistricting

In the colonial era, many districts were defined by the borders of towns or counties or groups of towns and counties. The legislature was formed by assigning a certain number of representatives to each of these districts. So, for example, New York State鈥檚聽assigned nine representatives to New York 鈥渃ity and county,鈥� ten to Albany 鈥渃ity and county,鈥� four to Queens County, two to Kings County, and so on. And the infamous Massachusetts gerrymander of 1812 was really just a聽聽of Massachusetts towns and counties.

As the country鈥檚 population grew, it did not grow equally, and some towns and counties grew much larger than others. Some jurisdictions kept pace with changing population, shifting the number of representatives assigned to each district, or reconfiguring district lines; others did not. Sometimes, districts stayed the same despite population shifts because of an underlying philosophy: several state Senate systems were modeled after the federal Senate, with representation for counties as such rather than the population therein. Sometimes, districts stayed the same because of political advantage or neglect: from 1901 through 1961, the Tennessee legislature simply ignored a state constitutional requirement to redraw district lines. In either case, the result was that some districts grew much larger than others. By the 1960s, for example, Los Angeles County (the largest district in California) had 422 times as many people as California鈥檚 smallest district. And because each district in California鈥檚 state senate elected one Senator, each person in the smallest district enjoyed 422 times the Senate representation of each Los Angeles resident.

In a series of cases starting in the mid-1960s, the Supreme Court decided that this sort of population disparity violated the U.S. Constitution. It required a roughly equal population for each legislative district. This meant that district boundaries would have to be periodically readjusted, to account for new population information. So now, after the Census is conducted at the start of a new decade, district boundaries have to be redrawn.

This is the process we know as redistricting.

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