The confirmation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee and the controversial return of former President Donald J. Trump has brought a certain energy to this year’s presidential race. In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 felony charges for his efforts to influence the 2016 election, and two months later President Biden announced his exit from the candidacy.

The exchanges between Harris and Trump since then have been a spectacle of sorts. Their only debate was reminiscent of a boxing match and left some viewers unsure of where exactly the two stood on the issue of education.

This is particularly interesting considering projections suggest that student voters in “battleground” states like Michigan have the potential to significantly impact the outcome in November. Research from Tufts University’s civic research efforts reported eight million potential new voters this election cycle. Nearly half of those newcomers aged 18-19 identify as people of color, making the up-and-coming group an extremely diverse one. There is much speculation about how this will impact the election on decision day.

With November approaching, becoming familiar with who this year’s candidates are and what they stand for will help clarify how their educational policy could impact students.

Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris is the first Black woman and South Asian to become Vice President. She was also the first woman to be elected Attorney General of California. Born in Oakland, she is the daughter of respected biomedical scientist Shyamala Gopalan and accomplished economist Donald Harris, who are Indian and Jamaican immigrants, respectively. She graduated from Howard University and the Hastings College of Law with degrees in economics and political science. Formerly, Harris was a prosecutor and Senator in her home state. Her husband Doug Emhoff is a lawyer, whom she married in 2013. They share two children from his previous marriage. According to her “New Way Forward for the Middle Class,” Harris would like to make college more affordable by increasing federal funding for education and supporting free community college. Although her ambitious student loan cancellation efforts alongside Biden faltered in the Supreme Court, the administration still successfully cancelled billions of debt for public servants and individuals with disabilities. Harris advocated to expand civil rights protections for students based on gender and sexual identity and increased the amount of the Pell Grant to $900, a form of aid for those demonstrating a financial need to complete college.

Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump is a businessman, media personality, and formerly the 45th President of the United States. He was born and raised in Queens, New York City to business mogul Frederick and homemaker Mary Anne Trump. During his childhood, he attended a military boarding academy until college. Trump earned his bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and is an alumni of the school’s renowned Wharton Business program. In his early twenties, Trump worked for his family’s real estate company, which fueled his eventual pursuit of property management and varying business ventures. The popularity of his reality television show “The Apprentice,” made him an American pop culture staple. He is the first U.S. President to be impeached twice by Congress. During his time in office, Trump pitched the idea of eliminating debt relief for public servants and cutting funding to the Pell Grant, a federal need-based scholarship for low-income students. He has also expressed a desire to restrict teaching material in schools related to issues of race, gender and sexual identity. He proposes alternative pathways for education, like the creation of an online national university and investment in trade programs. As President, he signed a bipartisan bill that forgave more than $250 million dollars of debt for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. His Agenda47 plan proposes to dissolve the Department of Education, which includes federal assistance programs that help citizens pay for college.

Tim Walz
Tim Walz is the 41st Governor of Minnesota. He grew up on his family’s farm in rural Nebraska as the son to homemaker, Darlene, and school administrator, James Walz. After serving in the U.S. National Guard, he used his military benefits to pay for his college education. Upon graduating from Chadron State College with a degree in social sciences, he later became a high school teacher, football coach and student organizations advisor. His wife, Gwen, was also a teacher and they married in 1994, moving to Minnesota shortly afterwards. Walz began his political journey as a congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 until his win as Governor in 2018. He was re-elected in 2022. As a former educator, Walz has been a fierce advocate for public schools and making higher education more affordable. He signed off on a $2.3 billion dollar increase to Minnesota’s funding for education, the largest in the state’s history. His “One Minnesota Bill” created the North Star Promise Scholarship, which provides free college tuition to any Minnesota college or university for low-income residents. Walz made national news for approving a bill in 2023 that provides free school lunch for public school students in the state of Minnesota.

JD Vance
James David Vance was elected to office as an Ohio senator in 2022. He was born in the small town of Middletown, Ohio, to working-class parents, Beverly and Donald Bowman, who divorced when he was young. Vance served in the U.S. Marines as a military journalist for four years and graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School, where he met his wife, Usha Chilukuri. They were married in 2014 and have three children. Before politics, Vance was a corporate lawyer and invested in tech companies. He published a book about his life, Hillbilly Elegy, which eventually became a New York Times Best Seller and Netflix-produced film in 2020. Despite being a public critic of Trump during his presidency, Vance accepted his offer to be his running mate in July 2024. Vance has expressed the desire for more regulation over teaching materials to thwart education related to critical race theory and gender and sexual identity. The bills he’s introduced to Congress so far relate to eliminating “foreign interference” in schools and denying federal funding to colleges that employ undocumented immigrants. Vance has been a public critic of affirmative action efforts in schools, and wants to ban diversity, equity and inclusion for any entity receiving federal funding. He introduced a bill that would appoint a lawyer to investigate instances of “racial preference” on college campuses.

All 63 polls conducted by The Hill reflect extremely close margins between support for Trump and Harris amongst general voters. However, the latest research published by CNBC shows that Harris has a significant lead to the tune of 60 percent amongst young voters. Information from the Harvard Youth Poll and GenForward at the University of Chicago suggests that young voters are most passionate about economic issues like affordability of education, climate change, foreign policy and inflation. We can use this criteria to further evaluate our 2024 candidates.

College Affordability and Student Loan Debt

Kamala Harris
Wiped student loan debt balances for millions of citizens despite Supreme Court decisions that weakened the Biden Administration’s power to do so. Wants to reduce the cost of education with free tuition initiatives at community colleges and public universities for the lower and middle classes.

Tim Walz
Signed a bill as Governor providing free college tuition to low and middle-income citizens in Minnesota. This also included access to higher education for undocumented migrants who meet certain requirements, like attending the state’s public schools for at least three years.

Donald Trump
Feels debt relief programs discriminate against those who actively pay back loans, but waived interest on student loans during COVID-19 pandemic. Wants to cut funding to financial assistance programs like the Pell Grant and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). Offers alternate pathways to education through proposed federal university, trades and skilled occupations.

JD Vance
Like his running mate, Vance is vehemently against student loan debt relief, citing lack of fairness. He once gave a speech titled “Universities are the Enemy” at a conservative political conference and wants to raise taxes for college institutions.

Climate Change

Kamala Harris
Wants to invest in renewable energy and establish protections for natural resources, but says she won’t ban fracking, arguing that the U.S. needs a variety of energy resources to become more independent.

Tim Walz
Signed a bill as Minnesota governor requiring the state to become 100 percent reliant on carbon-free electricity by the year 2040. Two billion dollar bill passed to protect natural resources, citizens and animals from the negative impacts of climate change.

Donald Trump
Believes humans aren’t primary contributors to climate change and reversed more than 100 policies and initiatives put in place for environmental protection during his time as President. Feels electric vehicles are unaffordable for the average American.

JD Vance
The senator has previously invested in electric vehicle charging companies and sustainable farming efforts but has since shown his support for American coal and steel industries. He is a skeptic of the climate crisis and questions its legitimacy.

Foreign Policy

Kamala Harris
Wants to strengthen relationships with foreign allies. Supports a cease-fire and two-state solution for Palestine and Israel. Feels China is a competitor in international trade and maintained fines against the country put in place by the Trump administration. Supported bipartisan border bill to increase funding for additional customs employees, immigration judges, and to expedite the asylum process.

Tim Walz
Encouraged trade between Minnesota companies and Canada and in Europe. Wishes for continual support of international allies and wants to increase access to citizenship for undocumented individuals. Supports a cease-fire and agreed that the U.S. should send aid to Palestine. Previously expressed disdain for the U.S. for the Iraq war and has a history of supporting diplomacy efforts.

Donald Trump
Significantly increased the military budget in 2018 and signed an agreement to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in 2020. Critical of United Nations and the International Criminal Court’s involvement in foreign affairs. Aiming to solidify relations with international allies, and wants to end the war in Ukraine. Desires to make the U.S. more of a competitor in international trade and invest in countering cybersecurity attacks.

JD Vance
Disagrees with choice to aid Ukraine and maintains that foreign allies should handle affairs independently, without U.S. intervention. Supports sentiments that China is a threat to American trade and wants to restore manufacturing jobs eliminated by outsourcing. Wants to end the war in Gaza and demands greater participation from NATO members in assisting with foreign affairs.

Inflation

Kamala Harris
Proposes to protect citizens from price gouging by regulating grocery businesses. Wants to raise the minimum wage and adjust tax rates for corporations to support public spending. Supported Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 that reduces costs for prescription drugs and supports alternative options to production, manufacturing and clean energy.

Tim Walz
The governor has a track record of advocating for policies that ease costs for working class families through tax credits and lowered taxes for recipients of social security benefits. Under his leadership, Minnesota restored jobs lost during the pandemic and used its multibillion dollar budget surplus to support social programs like free school lunch and additional educational resources.

Donald Trump
Wants to lower Federal Reserve interest rates, expand fines for imported goods and mass deport migrant workers, which economists warn could drive up consumer prices for Americans. He has also expressed decreasing food imports to lower grocery prices and support domestic farmers.

JD Vance
Like Trump, Vance would like to revamp interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, which reduces taxes for the middle class, but can also influence the cost of home, auto and credit card loans. He believes domestic sources of energy are vital to lowering costs for Americans, and has placed blame on assistance programs for immigrants as a contributing factor to inflation.

Considering the focus placed on emerging young voters this year, rights for students to participate in the political process weren’t always implied. They came as a result of changes made to the 26th amendment, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971.

Policy reform dating back to the 1970s expanded those protections with the Supreme Court case Symm vs. United States. A voter registration worker in Texas argued that students weren’t legitimate residents and shouldn’t be able to participate in elections where they attend school. A biased survey was used to disqualify students and overwhelmingly impacted African American students at the historically black college, Prairie View A&M University. The favorable judgment set a nationwide precedent for voting rights on college campuses, allowing documentation like school addresses and class schedules to be used as proof of residency for voter registration.

For Michigan students, you can register as late as Election Day with proof of enrollment at your educational institution. Even an active login to your school’s student portal, like Moodle, for example, is an acceptable form of residency.

For more information on how to further prepare for this year’s election, visit http://michigan.gov/sos/elections/voting/student-voting/ as well as vote411.org.