Understanding the trend

Seven categories of related but sufficiently distinct cases emerged from our review of the data. The categories are as follows:

Day On Democracy (red): We look for three indicators to classify a case as a Day On Democracy: institutional support for programming; explicit intent for a day of civic and community engagement in place of classes on Election Day; and commitment to the first two indicators for every November General Election, not only federal elections.

Successful Student-led Cancellation Efforts (bright green): Student advocates brought about consideration and eventual adoption of class cancellation on Election Day.

Administrator or Faculty-established Cancellation Efforts (blue): Administrators or faculty drove discussion and adoption of class cancellation on Election Day.

In Observance of State Holiday or Law (dark blue): Absent any evidence of the contrary, class cancellation on Election Day at these institutions is likely due to Election Day’s status as a state holiday where the institution is located.

Ongoing (green): These efforts recently appeared in the media and are ongoing. Our team regularly monitors in-progress cases for developments.

One-time Pandemic Cancellation (pink): Some colleges and universities canceled Election Day classes in November 2020 but didn’t cancel before then and haven’t done so since. These institutions gave two main reasons for this approach: the need for an additional break in a compressed fall semester due to pandemic-induced calendar changes and to facilitate voting and poll working opportunities in a challenging voting environment.

Unsuccessful Attempts (purple): Every attempt is valuable for the debate it generates around voting rights, barriers to participation, and community engagement. However, some class cancellation efforts are more organized than others and the level of resistance advocates encounter varies from campus to campus. We label efforts that fell short of their main objective as unsuccessful attempts.