The Best Kept Secret
Almost no one knows about the opportunity that preregistration represents
It was three days after Election Day, and I was at a conference of lawyers in San Francisco.
I started off with my favorite pop quiz. In California, at what age are young people old enough to register to vote? Pick 1, 2, or 3:
They can preregister at 16
They can preregister at 17
They can register if they will be 18 by the next election.
Only one person got the answer right. This was a group of California lawyers.
Ok folks, the correct answer is: young people can preregister to vote starting at age 16 in California.
The law has been in effect for eight years. Along with California, eighteen other states and DC have the same rule. Still, almost no one knows about it. After an election where youth turnout is said to have been low, it’s a little depressing.
Today, fewer than 15% of California’s 16- and 17-year-olds are preregistered. In addition to lack of awareness, the state and most school districts simply haven’t implemented the preregistration law or other laws designed to encourage high school students to register to vote. And Gov. Newsom has twice vetoed measures that would have helped.
While we don’t yet know the state or national registration rates for young voters in 2024, based on US Census data, in 2020, fewer than half of 18-year-olds (just 47.5%) were registered. In 2022, only 30.6% of 18-year-olds were registered. It’s likely we’ll be heading down to that range again in 2026 absent more resources. On the other hand, we know that with resources, we can raise awareness and train students and educators to weave voter registration into the fabric of high school life.
Yesterday, John Della Volpe from Harvard posted a piece about how young people are forging their own political identities and that candidates have not necessarily tapped into their concerns. The invisibility of young people in the political dialogue in this country is part of a vicious cycle that preregistration can help to break.
Preregistration in high school is a way of putting up your hand and saying I’m here, and I’m ready. It sends a signal that young people are watching and that they are going to vote as soon as they turn 18. It tells politicians to pay attention and not leave young people’s concerns to the side. Those who are preregistered show up in voter files as soon as they turn 18, where they can be visible to pollsters, as well as candidates, to inform public opinion about what matters.
When young people aren’t registered at high rates, they reduce their own ability to influence policy. When schools don’t help their students register, then schools are holding their own students back. And if we as concerned citizens don’t require that our schools help young people to register, then we ourselves would be holding them back.
Especially in lower-profile races, where candidates and campaigns do not have time and budgets to find the unregistered, the most promising way to make young people more visible to those seeking office is to help them preregister so they will be in the voter files as soon as they turn 18, and they can join the conversation.
It’s not like there is no money available if understanding and responding to the concerns of young voters were a priority. Candidates and campaigns spend hundreds of millions or even billions. What we see across the country, though, is intermittent, inconsistent and often wholly absent funding for efforts to reach young voters. That includes support for the establishment of lasting, reliable, and efficient programs focused on helping high school students register to vote and helping them to understand why it matters.
At a programmatic level, this means students running voter registration drives in their high schools with faculty and administrative support in Fall and Spring every year, whether it’s a big election year or not. It means infusing leadership development and the values of democracy, equity, and respect into the effort. Cap, Gown and Ballot is The Civics Center’s campaign to get all high school seniors registered before they graduate, and to make voter registration part of every high school in America. Even with Election Day having passed, young people turn 18 every day, and 4 million will be graduating this Spring. Getting them registered depends on the planning we can do now and the funding we have to do it.
At a policy level, without an immediate shot at federal reform, it means pushing for more states to enact laws allowing preregistration at 16 and broader efforts by states and school districts to implement existing laws. And this requires planning and funding as well.
And at a level of personal engagement and awareness, it means dedication to learning about the opportunities for high school students to register to vote before they graduate and helping to spread the word. That can start with anyone reading this, giving themselves a pop quiz and passing this along to friends and family to let them know what’s possible. It can mean helping to fund the kind of awareness building campaign that anything important deserves.
While preregistration laws and opportunities for high school voter registration may be more or less unknown today, let’s not keep it that way.
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