From helping to organize a town hall for Vice President Kamala Harris to programming a Spanish voter ID chatbot and recruiting dozens of new poll workers on campus, University of Maryland students found new ways to engage politically this summer, just months before a critical presidential election.
The 18 undergraduates in the inaugural cohort of the Laufer Democracy Internship Program, funded by Marsha Zlatin Laufer ’64 and Henry Laufer, worked for nonprofit organizations such as Pizza to the Polls, Vote Early Day and the Campus Vote Project. On Wednesday, they shared their experiences with community partners, faculty and staff, and fellow interns at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union.
The complicated web of U.S. voting regulations may intimidate those thinking about casting a ballot for the first time, so, “it’s critical that we engage some of the most talented students at our university and work with the leading coalition in the country to engage with colleges to welcome new voters,” said Sam Novey. He’s the chief strategist for the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement and leads the internship program that was developed in partnership with the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition and the Maryland Fellows Program.
The program is part of the nonpartisan, interdisciplinary Maryland Democracy Initiative (MDI), funded by a Grand Challenges Impact Award and led by Principal Investigator Lena Morreale Scott, director of Civic Education and Engagement Initiative at the College of Education. MDI combines expertise from the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, College of Education, Philip Merrill College of Journalism and School of Public Policy to encourage civic participation and tackle threats to democracy.
During a poster session, Marsha Laufer asked student after student: “What was the spark that got you interested in politics?” The answers were inspiring, she said, especially “at an age when many of their contemporaries have historically been uninterested. … Our democracy is in very good hands.”
Government and politics major Laiba Nisar ’26 said it was “surreal” to be in the same room as Harris this summer when Nisar helped put together a presidential town hall in Philadelphia for APIA Vote.
“I grew up in a very conservative area on the Eastern Shore where I didn’t see many people that looked like me,” Nisar said. “Now, the candidate that’s running is Asian American, and as an Asian American woman myself, I feel like that representation is going to be very impactful.”
For Wren Massey ’27, a women, gender and sexuality studies and Spanish double major, interning with the Native American Rights Fund opened their eyes not only to the disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples, but to other marginalized communities as well, including people with disabilities.
“I really want to be a civil rights lawyer, and originally I wanted to focus on search and seizure and right to privacy,” Massey said. “But now I'm really getting invested in election law because this is an insane field,” with different laws in every state.
One of the goals of the program is to connect the internships with MDI studies, said Novey, such as a potential collaboration between researchers examining the number of people who lack voter IDs and a student who now runs a voter ID helpline through his internship. “There are seeds that students have planted that we are excited to cultivate.”
Several students will continue their internships into the school year, such as public policy majors Javier Holdemar Fuentes ’27, who will become an election research assistant for the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement this fall, and Ryan Carr ’25, who will keep educating students about voter registration and recruiting poll workers through TerpsVote leading up to the election. “This is definitely the year to be involved,” Carr said. “Political shifts have made people more excited to vote.”
The program is a shining example of how Terps are addressing the most pressing challenges facing society today, said Senior Vice President and Provost Jennifer King Rice.
“I feel more confident than ever that our students will be game-changing leaders and advocates for the future of our country,” she said.
This story first appeared in Maryland Today.
Top photo: Sophia Winner '25, a government and politics and economics double major, presents on her summer internship at the Scholars Strategy Network, made possible by the Laufer Democracy Internship Program. Photo by Riley N. Sims Ph.D. '23
