The main barrier to high rates of voting by young people is registration. When people between 18-24 are registered, they vote in percentages equal to other age groups.
But: High numbers of 18 year olds remain unregistered. For example, in OH and AZ, less than 50% of 18 year olds are registered. That’s 56,000 in AZ (decided by less than 10,000 votes in 2020) and 87,000 in Ohio (with a critical Senate race this year).
That’s only 13 days away.
The civics Center
This week is High School Voter Registration Week, created in 2019 by The Civics Center, a nonpartisan group whose goal is to have a voter registration drive in every high school in the country.
In a post yesterday, Laura Brill, the founder of The Civics Center, asks and answers the question, What Can I do to Help? She presents data like this graph showing the high percentage of voters 18-24 who vote once they are registered.
She also includes concrete steps you can take to get high school and college students registered to vote.
For high school students, if you turn 18 before the election, you can vote* — but you must register — state registration deadlines are coming up. In addition to Arizona and Ohio, there is an October 7 deadline in Florida and Georgia.
I’ll bet almost all of you are either 18, or are parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, friends, and teachers of 18-year-olds or otherwise know high school students and others who are 18.
Here are Laura’s list of top 5 things you can do to help register high school students.
1. Learn about your power and use it. What I mean by that is: Learn the laws in your state. Learn how to organize in your high school.
2 Register to vote if you are eligible and ask your friends to do the same.
3. Sign up for an organizing training. You can even participate in our $150 gift card program when you go through our organizing training and get your school ready to vote.
4. Look up your state deadline and plan your drive accordingly. Remember, in some states, registration deadlines start as early as Oct. 7, but in other states, you can register even on election day.
5. Follow The Civics Center on social media, either through your own account or a club account at your school, so you can tell everyone you know about high school voter registration.
She also includes concrete steps for college students, including these nonpartisan groups that work on college campuses and focus on democracy. All In Democracy Challenge, Andrew Goodman Foundation, Campus Vote Project, Students Learn, Students Vote, Student PIRGS. Civicinfluencers.org and Turnup.us also do good work.
Let’s take advantage of High School Voter Registration Week and get students registered.
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*About 20% or more of high school seniors in the US will turn 18 before the election.
So, as Judge Chamberlain Haller would say:
Register the Yute Vote
