ews Volunteers man a booth to help students check their voting registration status in the University Memorial Center on Oct. 1, 2024. (Charlie Meyer/ CU Independent)
On Oct. 1, the University of Colorado Boulder Student Government hosted a vice presidential debate watch party, election forum and voter engagement fair at the University Memorial Center.
Just outside the event room, a table was set up where students could check their voter registration status and, if needed, complete the process. The table remained open throughout the entire event, reinforcing the theme of the day: the importance of participating in democracy.
The first of the night’s three panels, presented by CU Boulder professors Alex Siegel, Sandra Ristovska and Tony Hopp, focused on the role of technology and social media in this year’s presidential election.
The panel focused on topics such as AI, which some are concerned will influence the upcoming election.
Ristovska said she does not believe that AI poses as big of a danger as many would think, arguing that we’ve adapted to new technologies in the past. She explained how, as an act of sabotage, the staffers of Senator McCarthy doctored photos of a Minnesota senator in conversation with the leader of the Communist Party. While perhaps convincing in the 1950s, the public largely doesn’t fall for basic photo altering as it might have 70 years ago. She believes that we will similarly adapt to technologies like deepfakes. However, she does still urge everyone to cross-check information regarding the election.
Hopp, drawing on his background in advertising, addressed how social media impacts candidate messaging. He highlighted how spending on political advertising has skyrocketed in recent years.
“This year, we’re on pace to spend… over $12 billion in political advertising. That number, if you go back just to 2012, it was $3 billion,” Hopp said.
Despite this increase in spending, Hopp does not feel social media has had a large effect on political advertising directly from campaigns themselves. Compared to more traditional advertising methods such as television ads, very little is spent on social media. The real political influence from social media, Hopp says, comes from independent and external accounts with no ties to the actual campaigns.
Closing out the first panel, Siegel explained how social media influences voter engagement. She echoed Ristovska’s argument that elections have always been shaped by emerging technologies.
Siegel noted that a unique property of social media is that it can keep you informed on your friends’ activities, which some say can be leveraged to increase voter turnout.
“In 2010, when Facebook was the dominant social media platform, the platform actually cooperated with researchers to run this giant study on 60 million Facebook users with ‘Get Out to Vote’ messages for the midterm election,” she said. “They found that messages that particularly highlighted that your friends were going to the polls and voting were really effective.”
The second panel was led by professor, author and political theorist Patrick Deneen, Director of CU News Corps Chuck Plunkett and associate professor Michaele Ferguson. This panel focused on the role that political ideology should play in this election.
Deneen spoke first and gave his opinion on the role that ideology has in American electoral politics. He says this role is largely impacted by the United States’ two-party system. As Deneen explains, this requires the parties to build wide coalitions in which very few people are fully ideologically aligned with either one. He listed the Harris campaign as an example of this coalition building, as the vice president brags both about her progressive policy plans, as well as her endorsement from former vice president Dick Cheney, a Republican.
Ferguson took control of the microphone next. She explained how, in one of her classes covering ideology, she encourages her students to explore their beliefs beyond America’s two central parties.
“They may have thought of themselves as Republicans or Democrats, and my challenge to them is to not use party identification for what they believe in and what they value,” she said.
Ferguson also agreed with Deneen that our political system makes it difficult to vote for someone you fully agree with.
Wrapping up the second panel, Plunkett took the opportunity to speak about the role of journalism in elections, specifically the duty it has to remain neutral in reporting. At a time when public trust in mainstream media is low, he said he feels it is important to recognize the lengths news companies go to in order to preserve journalistic integrity. He specifically stressed that the news and opinion sections of newspapers are always kept separate to make sure the reporting remains unbiased.
The third and final panel focused on CU Boulder students and their role in the election. This panel was hosted by assistant teaching professor Cody Walizer, Boulder County clerk-recorder Molly Fitzpatrick and CU Boulder student body president Grace Covney.
Fitzpatrick began by encouraging all attendees to vote and explaining how. In the state of Colorado, registration can be done online. As far as voting specifically for CU Boulder students, she said that the campus will have locations both to drop off mail-in ballots and to vote in person. Students can expect in-person voting to be held in UMC235 or the Glenn Miller Ballroom.
Fitzpatrick also assured attendees that the voting process is fair and honest, with many independent checks to ensure that the outcome of the election isn’t manipulated.
Walizer voiced his opinion that, in these kinds of debates, one should “keep score” and track each candidate’s good and bad moments. He encourages this active style of listening to get a stronger idea of who is performing better and what each candidate’s policies are.
Finishing up the panel and the first half of the event, Covney once again stressed the importance of being involved in elections.
After the panels concluded, the debate began.
Right before the broadcast began, moderators Leah Sprain and Janet Donovan encouraged all students in attendance to think about what they had heard during the panels and to apply that knowledge while watching and analyzing the debate.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Charlie Meyer at charlie.meyer@colorado.edu.
