Welcome New Friends and Thank You to Robert Hubbell and Jessica Craven!

ICYMI: Clips from our Substack Live conversation, and more below

Apr 02, 2025

I had a wonderful time speaking with all of you, and I’m so grateful for your interest and enthusiasm. Below are some highlights from our conversation, along with some helpful links should you want to get more involved.

Young people are registered to vote at rates much lower than older Americans, but it’s a solvable problem. Virtually everyone in high school is eligible to register before they graduate.

High School Voter Registration means student-led, adult-supported drives in schools. Student leadership is key, while teachers provide support:

Your donations go towards training and materials so high school students have everything they need to hold drives and help their peers get ready to vote:

Please consider a donation to support our efforts

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Here’s what it looks like when students take the lead:

What else can you do to help?

4 million high school Seniors will graduate in a few short months. Once they do, it becomes much harder to find them and help them register. 40% of Americans do not go on to college, and 40% don’t get drivers licenses, meaning automatic voter registration and online systems requiring licenses can’t help. That’s why we created Cap, Gown & Ballot, our initiative to make Graduation Season synonymous with Voter Registration Season. Here’s a handy toolkit we made to help you spread the word to high school students, educators and administrators in your area.

Educator Support

We’re especially grateful to high school teachers who, despite being underpaid and overworked, have come to us for free training and materials so they can help their students become civically engaged. We give them step-by-step guidance and toolkits containing relevant laws and timelines. Faculty advisors can ensure efforts stay on track, helping the program become embedded in school culture. With an ongoing tradition of voter registration drives every spring and fall, high school students will have 8 opportunities to register before they step into their futures. Our Manager of Educator Development is a veteran high school civics teacher, and she is available to support educators in getting started.

Student Incentive: $150 Gift Cards

If you know any high school students, you know they are some of the busiest people around, so we want to make it easy to get started. That’s why we give $150 gift cards to student leaders who complete our program. We hold 1-hour virtual training workshops available 1-2x/week; they receive Democracy in a Box with everything they need; we provide plenty of customizable templates to help them spread the word; and our Manager of National Programs is a former teacher and always available to guide their efforts and answer questions. Hands-on, real-life work provides and opening for young people to understand the power of their voices, and connect it to their vision for democracy.

Data and More

If you’re following us on Substack, you can look through our archive to learn about innovative data program analyzing data from the voter file and measuring it against the census. This is how we know only ~35% of 18-year-olds are registered in time for midterms elections (compared to ~75% of voters aged 45+). We measure these figures on a hyper-local level, so that counties and school districts can see whether their young people are engaged, and work to bring voter registration to their high schools to close the gap.