Hawk The Vote was started in 2018 by undergraduate student Jocelyn Roof in conjunction with the University of Iowa Student Government. As the initiative became more time-intensive and the need for voter education became more clear, Hawk The Vote was adopted as an official initiative under the Office of Leadership, Service, and Civic Engagement (OLSCE) in 2019.

By 2021, Hawk the Vote had grown enough to gain its own autonomy as a sponsored student organization – or an SSO. Since then, an annually selected executive board of four undergraduate students has worked to run Hawk the Vote under the supervision of the OLSCE. Moving into our 2024 cycle, we are looking forward to facilitating our second-ever presidential election year and investing even further in voter registration and voter turnout initiatives. 

Since its founding, the University of Iowa and the surrounding community have seen record youth voter turnout and unprecedented increases in voter registration total.