It’s long been a narrative in election cycles: Young people don’t vote. As many as 69.2 million millennials are citizens of voting age as of April 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. Trends from the last three general elections, however, predict that not even half of these eligible voters will cast a vote on election day.

The Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement and Wash U Votes—the team that chose which students groups would receive debate programming funds—went into this election season looking to defy this trend at Washington University. A team of students was trained to register people to vote, and funding was made available to student groups and faculty looking to encourage political involvement.

According to Cassie Klosterman, Gephardt’s voter engagement fellow, these efforts were largely successful, with a total of 3,608 people registered through Wash U Votes’ technology as of Oct. 12— the Missouri voter registration deadline. While the number is in line with Wash U Votes’ goal, Klosterman said she suspects that the actual voter registration number will be higher.

“So we’re lucky—Wash. U. students vote and they are registered to vote so we already started with a really high overall voter registration rate, but our goal was to have at least 25 percent of new registrations come from TurboVote and to increase our overall voter registration rate to 80 percent,” Klosterman said.

Klosterman said that they won’t know how much of the campus is registered until after the debate because not everyone who registered did so through the Gephardt Institute or Wash U Votes. However, she added, over 25 percent of the student body is registered through TurboVote, the online service being used to register students.

Senior Lucy Chin began her involvement with voter registration efforts by attending summer brainstorming meetings. She, along with Stephanie Kurtzman, director of the Gephardt Institute, spoke with local Fox News anchors on Oct. 9, the day of the second presidential debate regarding Wash U Votes’ efforts and successes in engaging the student body. She also attended several tabling events set up by Wash U Votes and was able to see firsthand how students feel about this election cycle.

Both Klosterman and Chin said they believe that the Gephardt Institute’s student-based focus and Wash U Votes’ model of engaging students were instrumental to the success of the campaign. By allocating funding to individual groups, students were able to develop politically-based programming suited to their individual interests.

“I think one of the things that they did early on was just capture a lot of student feedback and student information about how to do this really well,” Chin said. “Inviting students to brainstorm and then using that insight to make your programs is really the best way to get things done and make it exciting for students.”

Even though the Missouri voter registration deadline has passed, Gephardt’s work is not finished: Programming has been planned leading up to the election on Nov. 8. Gephardt will remain the first point of contact on election day, working with the St. Louis County Board of Elections to take care of logistics as well as foster excitement on campus. Even those not voting in the Athletic Complex on Nov. 8 will be able to get in on the fun.

“We’re going to have an absentee ballot party in late October, which will allow students who choose to vote absentee to come, get their ‘I Voted’ stickers, perhaps take some photos, saying ‘Hey mom, I voted’ and really experience some of the excitement on election day,” Klosterman said.

Gephardt’s focus on political engagement is significant in light of this election cycle, as millennials struggle to find their relationship to the issues despite the direct impact that elections have on young people and on their futures. Beyond this, logistical concerns have made it increasingly difficult for college students to vote.

“The idea that issues don’t matter to millennials is somewhat shortsighted because these things are all about our future,” Klosterman said. “A number of issues directly impact millennials, sometimes in ways that we don’t directly think about.”