This coming election day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, UC San Diego students will line up at Price Center to cast their ballots to make their voices heard. Six months in advance, The UCSD Guardian asked student voters for their thoughts. In return, they shared skepticism.
“I definitely think that there’s been an overwhelming change in how I perceive an election being operated,” said Aryan Dixit, third-year UCSD student and president of the Students’ Civil Liberties Union. “That’s not to say that I don’t trust the institutions; I just think that I have to be more vigilant in order to make sure that my trust is backed by something more concrete.”
The quickly approaching 2026 midterms have sparked questions nationally about the reliability of elections, recent redistricting efforts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions, and increasing political turmoil. A recent survey of 11,406 eligible American voters found that many voters distrust the U.S. electoral system.
Conducted by UCSD’s Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections between December 2025 and January 2026, the survey found widespread declining trust in national vote counts, growing opposition to redistricting, and worries about ICE’s presence at polling locations.
Thad Kousser, CTTE co-director and professor of political science at UCSD, spoke about the results in an interview with The Guardian.
“It’s concerning, but it’s not hugely surprising,” Kousser said.
To assess how these results manifest at UCSD, The Guardian interviewed five undergraduate students.
Rather than vote counts, as the CTTE survey suggests, student concerns about elections deal mostly with external issues — namely, gerrymandering and immigration enforcement — that could harm voters.
All five students expressed the belief that gerrymandering misrepresents votes.
“We’re to this bad equilibrium where both parties have taken steps, and voters are feeling like that means two wrongs in the electoral rules,” Kousser explained.
Layla Askar, second-year student and co-lead of The Reclamation Project’s San Diego chapter, noted her dissatisfaction with the passage of Proposition 50 in 2024.
“The way that I had interpreted Prop 50 was, ‘Republicans are gerrymandering, so Democrats also need to gerrymander, so vote so that we can gerrymander,’” she said. “I would say I have very little trust in districting.”
Dylan Archer, a fourth-year student and president of College Republicans at UCSD, similarly believes that district lines don’t fairly represent voters.
“There’s definitely reasons for it to be the way that it is and behind the gerrymandering and the pseudo-gerrymandering arms race that we’ve had,” Archer said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s for the people, or fair, or right, or just.”
Students also shared concerns that ICE’s presence at polls will affect how truthfully people will be able to vote.
Dixit worries ICE’s presence may serve as “a task for overall en masse voter intimidation.”
Zakaria Kortam, fourth-year student and vice president of the College Republicans, believes ICE’s presence would exacerbate voters’ fears.
“Having immigration enforcement be present at polling locations is honestly quite dystopian, and it’s nonsensical, and it’s just a form of intimidation, really,” Kortam said. “I think it’ll cause immense distrust in the voting system.”
Natalia Lara, first-year student and co-lead of The Reclamation Project’s San Diego chapter, said that people may be too afraid to ask for voting materials in another language. Lara also raised worries about ICE targeting individuals with accents.
“My dad, specifically, has a bit more of an accent,” Lara said. “That’s always made me fear for him a little more than anyone else in my family, even though both my parents are citizens.”
Askar also expressed concerns about federal officers questioning foreign-born citizens. In 2019, airport security interrogated Askar while her family was traveling because of a passport mix-up. Though Askar was born in the U.S., she experienced how “people who are not born here are just being treated terribly.”
The CTTE survey included percentages of each racial group that expressed concerns about ICE questioning respondents or their families. There’s a stark divide; fear of being questioned by ICE resonated with roughly 30% of Asian American and Pacific Islander respondents, 30% of Hispanic respondents, 20% of Black respondents, and only 8% of white respondents.
ICE’s racialized enforcement of immigration policy is a concern students share with survey respondents.
“I have the privilege, even though it’s really sad that this is a privilege, of being Anglo-European passing or white passing in general,” Lara said. Though Archer, Kortam, and Askar have different racial identities from Lara and each other, all three shared that they felt similarly lucky to not look like ICE’s target demographic.
Dixit has personally experienced ICE questioning, when agents asked him for “various kinds of identification documents.” He agrees that if ICE was present at the polls in November, agents would likely racially target voters.
“[My family and I] may not fit the same archetype of people who are voting in favor of Republican governments or federal government incumbents,” Dixit said.
Despite the political significance of the midterm elections, genuine concerns over politicians, redistricting, and ICE threaten to amplify student feelings of hopelessness. Both the survey and student responses highlight how many feel disillusioned with American politics.
“How the midterms actually go will be important for determining whether trust remains low, whether it rebounds for one party, and for which party that is,” Kousser said.
