Goats and free drinks: How unis are getting students to register to vote

Unis are really, really desperate to make sure that their students are actually voting, resorting to bribery in an attempt to make sure students are engaging with democracy.

According to a new set of rankings by Vote For Your Future, the Universities of Hull, Sheffield and Worcester are all officially topping the leagues and trying the very hardest to get you to vote.

Both the University of Bristol and Plymouth Marjon University Student Unions offer students a free drink on polling day, whilst the University of Bath SU gives a free donut to any student who registers to vote, in their "Donut forget to register" campaign.

UCL SU's "Goat to vote" activity also gives students the opportunity to pet a goat if they register to vote, which is pretty iconic tbh.

They've also set the desktop background of every uni computer to a reminder of the registration deadline.

Canterbury Christ Church University have created a Powerpoint slide for all staff to add to their lectures, whilst De Montfort University have created this infographic video.

Alongside the "doctor's waiting room, but funky" music, the video features a star turn from this weird iPad.

At other unis, students are pushed to register when they enrol. Sussex doesn't allow students to enrol without completing a voter registration form, and Hull make students sit through a compulsory "e-learning" module about registering. It "teaches students about the importance of voting and when/how students can vote, before culminating in the Jisc voter registration platform."

In conjunction with Times Higher Education, the study measured things like registration, communications, overall turnout, monitoring and student engagement, and Hull, Sheffield and Worcester all gained a solid five out of five marks. Runners up included the University of Sussex and the University of Bath, with a very respectable 4.85 and 4.7 apiece .

Not all unis are quite reaching up to the grand heights of a powerpoint slide however, as the study revealed that 13 per cent of unis are not doing enough to ensure that students are voting in the election.

It doesn't stop at registering either. Huddersfield SU runs a "walking bus", taking students to their polling station, and in 2017 Christ Church SU even put on minibuses to ferry students to fulfil their democratic duty.

For the full results of where your uni stands, take a look at the table below. And please, for the love of god, register to vote.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Labour are pledging to scrap tuition fees as Tories keep them the same

• Pick a meal deal and we’ll tell you who to vote for in the General Election

• A club in Brighton is doing a Remembrance Day themed night on Monday