New Data Alert: New York

121,000 18-year-olds in NY (>50%) remain unregistered ahead of the October 26 deadline

Today we’re sharing data from New York – our last update on the state before its October 26th registration deadline. 

This is the fifteenth of our 2024 Election Season series of Future Voter Scorecards. Our goal is to help everyone concerned with youth and democracy understand where things stand, what is going right, and what needs improvement on national, state, and local levels to welcome young people as full participants, starting with registering to vote in high school.

Before starting on the details, let’s cut to the chase. Fewer than half of the 18-year-olds in New York State are registered to vote. That’s about 121,000 unregistered 18-year-olds. The deadline to register is October 26. That’s only 11 days away, and that’s the day voter registration applications must be received by elections officials, not merely mailed.

What hangs in the balance is big. It’s whether young people will have an equal opportunity to weigh in on the control of Congress. New York has no fewer than five congressional races ranked as toss-ups or otherwise competitive. It’s not just me saying this: It’s the NY Times, Cook Political Report, and City & State. The state also has many competitive state legislative races coming up, generally in the same areas. The New York City mayoral race in 2025 is sure to be hotly contested, with young people able to make a difference, if they are registered.

New York’s registration rate for 18-year-olds has increased, to be sure: 8.2 percentage points from May to October. The change pales in comparison, however, to the changes in other states with highly competitive elections, like Michigan (up 18 percentage points from May to October), Pennsylvania (up 22 percentage points the same period), Arizona up 14.5 percentage points from April to September). 

And this slower pace in NY exists despite a legislative requirement, which became effective in July of this year, obligating school boards to have policies mandating meaningful voter registration opportunities for high school students. The slow pace persists despite the duty of school district superintendents to implement such policies. 

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New York: The details

As of October 7, just 48.6% of 18-year-olds were registered to vote in New York. This means that 121,000 18-year-olds have not yet registered, many of them in districts with highly competitive congressional and state races in November.

When we look at the NY counties with the most competitive congressional races, the story is somewhat brighter: While their average registration rate for 18-year-olds, at ~59%, is considerably higher than than the statewide rate, the increase since May is only slightly better than the state as a whole 9.7 percentage for the competitive counties in aggregate vs. 8.2 points for the state as a whole. 

In addition to an overall low rate, New York’s rates among counties have some of the starkest disparities we’ve seen in any state, comparing counties with high rates (over 90% in some cases) to those on the low end, under 30% in Brooklyn (Kings County) and the Bronx, for example.  

Some of the greatest obstacles we see nationally that hold back voter registration for the youngest new voters include lack of civics education in general and lack of awareness regarding how and why to register to vote. Sharp disparities in educational programming can result in disparities in political participation.

That the majority of New York’s 18-year-olds have not registered to vote with mere days until the deadline is perhaps predictable based on the state’s middling pre-registration numbers. We estimate that only 20.4% of 16- and 17- year-olds in New York were preregistered to vote as of October 7. In New York City, that number is only 7%. These low rates are exactly what S1733 was intended to remedy, but to do that, the state and school districts have to get serious about their obligations to help their students register.   

We reached out to Katie Bates, Interim Executive Director of YVote, an NYC-based organization focused on high school civic engagement to get her take on the issues that matter most to teens in the City and what is holding so many back:  

“At YVote, it's about education and motivation. Many young New Yorkers who join our programs aren't aware they can pre-register to vote, so it's critical we ramp up efforts to educate youth on this relatively new opportunity. Beyond that, we need to ensure youth are motivated to register by illustrating the power their vote has on the issues that matter most to them, like climate justice, reproductive rights, and education equity.”

—Katie Bates, Interim Executive Director of YVote

New York’s voter registration deadline is October 26, with no option for same-day registration. Anyone not registered to vote before then will not be eligible to cast a ballot on election day.

New York: I know you can do better. 

What we’re doing at The Civics Center is this: writing and publishing reports like this to raise awareness and call for action; training students and educators in how to hold nonpartisan voter registration drives in their high schools; creating downloadable resources for educators to support their work; promoting the effort on social media and our website; empowering volunteers with resources to contact their local school districts.

For our New York readers, what we’d love you to do is this: (1) write a personal note to your school district superintendent, forwarding this post and asking them to encourage all their eligible students to register and preregister to vote; (2) tell high school students and educators about high school voter registration and preregistration and encourage them to come get trained to hold a drive in their schools and to register to vote; (3) restack this post; and (4) donate to support our efforts. 

Read more about how to help high school voter registration in your community and some terrific real-world examples of volunteers making a difference.

Please consider donating to The Civics Center in support of our ongoing data and organizing work: