Less than 5,000 Mississippi State University students cast ballots in this year’s Homecoming and Student Association Senate fall elections — a decline from 2024 and part of a broader struggle across Mississippi campuses to boost participation in student elections.
4,827 students voted in this year’s elections, down from 5,062 the previous year. At the University of Mississippi, however, turnout rose to 6,466 total votes — more than 1,000 higher than last year’s total, according to UM’s Associated Student Body.
Lengths of campaign seasons
This year’s fall elections were held under new rules that limited active campaigning to four class days, compared to last year’s policy of allowing a full week.
Active campaigning involves candidates interacting with their voters one-on-one. This mostly occurs through tabling on the YMCA Plaza. Passive campaigning refers to less formal methods, such as posting on social media or giving speeches to student organizations. The purpose of minimizing active campaigns was to relieve stress from the candidates and their campaign teams.
The new election rules also banned the use of QR codes that directly linked to voting software on election day. However, QR codes that linked to a candidate’s website or social media page were fair game.
Hays Romano, the Student Association’s elections commissioner, was a leading figure in ensuring the campaign and voting process went smoothly this year. Romano said his goal was to ensure elections were held in accordance with the Student Association Constitution, including the recent rule changes.
To ensure things ran smoothly, Romano worked with the MSU IT department to prevent errors during the online voting process. Romano also actively communicated with each candidate across the various categories to ensure they understood the rules and procedures of campaigning.
This year’s Homecoming Queen, BellaRuth Steward, expressed her support for the new campaign guidelines. While the limited time put some stress on her campaign team, she said, they found that the extra time to prepare helped out a lot.
“By the time active campaigning officially started,” Steward said, “we were truly able to focus on connecting with people and enjoying those few days of meeting so many amazing students.”
In comparison, the University of Mississippi allowed its candidates to run active campaigns two weeks before elections.
Ole Miss Homecoming Queen Adya Praveen stated that while the campaigning process was stressful at times, it was within her priorities to keep things “real and fun.” Praveen had to opportunity to actively campaign both on and off campus, allowing her to connect with the Oxford community.
Technical difficulties and accessibility
Homecoming elections for Mississippi State University were held online via the Cowbell Connect website. Students could vote for general positions, such as Homecoming King and Queen, and also vote for Senators by class or organization. For example, a Freshman and a Sophomore could both vote for Homecoming King and Queen, but only the Freshman could vote for Freshman Senator. This ensured that representatives could be voted on only by the group they were meant to represent.
To tell which student could vote for which position, Cowbell Connect had to be linked to each student’s MSU Banner. Romano claimed it took an entire weekend and extensive collaboration to ensure this connection ran properly. If it did not, then there could have been major errors with students voting for positions that were not meant to represent them.
This problem is precisely what occurred last month during the University of Mississippi’s Homecoming election.
UM’s student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, explained that the issue occurred due to problems on the myOleMiss website. According to the article, when the online voting system first opened, students could vote for Homecoming maids outside their class. This eventually led the university to hold a full revote after the issue was fixed.
Student engagement
Despite this issue, UM still had a higher voter turnout this year than MSU.
According to Madison Waldrop, the attorney general for the Associated Student Body at UM, this year’s Homecoming elections saw a turnout of 6,466 total votes. This was a significant increase of over 1,000 votes compared to last year’s UM Homecoming elections.
When asked what might have caused this uptick, Waldrop said that the Center for Student Activities held a raffle for local items, with voters able to enter to win. They also handed out free donuts and “I Voted” stickers to anyone who voted.
