Who is responsible for ensuring universal voter registration?
On Giving Tuesday, your gift means everything to the health of our democracy and to our ability to make voter registration part of the high school experience for every American.
My inbox, like yours, I’m sure, is filled with one emergency after another. It can be hard to recognize as an emergency the need to fix a problem that has persisted for decades. But how will high school students today, who are graduating in just a few months, with other cohorts in the wings, come to see their role in our democracy if we do not reach them now?
Heather Cox Richardson had a recent post highlighting the work of the political scientist Cas Mudde. He’s written about the problem of assuming (without acting to ensure) that principles of liberal democracy will hold, and he highlights the centrality of not just fighting against authoritarianism, but also fighting “to strengthen liberal democracy.” It’s that fight – with the critical dimension of helping the rising generation appreciate, participate in, and improve democracy – that has animated The Civics Center’s work since its founding in 2018 and continues to do so today.
Most people (myself included, until 2016) haven’t stopped to think about who is responsible for voter registration. They assume it just happens, it’s not that hard, what’s the big deal? Can’t they just click a button? Don’t they do it at the DMV?
What I discovered continues to shock me and everyone I tell: 18-year-olds in America, while legally eligible to vote, are doing so at much lower rates than older Americans, because our country has no reliable system and no institutional accountability for ensuring that everyone eligible is registered to vote. It takes years and decades for 18-year-olds’ registration rates to reach those of older Americans (in midterms, ~30% vs. ~75%), meaning that cycle after cycle, the youngest members of our democracy are not exercising their power, and their concerns remain on the back burner. So I set out to create an equitable, scalable and sustainable on-ramp to democracy for every American.
And where does every American begin to prepare for their adulthood, and learn some of the things they will need to become productive members of their communities? High school. When I discovered that 70% of teens live in states where they can preregister as early as age 16 or 17, and that the other 30% can do so before they graduate high school (another set of facts that almost no one knows) I realized that High School Voter Registration can provide the foundation for that on-ramp.
But building something new to solve a large-scale problem takes time, effort, and, most critically, funding. The Civics Center is offering solutions by training students how to run their own voter registration drives in high school, and training their teachers how to support them. Peer-to-peer voter registration drives are a hands-on activity that provides a real-world opportunity for students to explore their role in our democracy, and their power to affect change in their communities.
Our goal is for the activity to become an on-going high school activity and tradition, like sports or the student newspaper, so that every American high school student has a meaningful opportunity to register to vote before they graduate. The Civics Center is also publishing our research, so that we can understand the dimensions of the problem and create the best solutions.
Here’s what’s at stake. Four million high school seniors will graduate this spring. They graduate whether it’s a big election year or not. For most juniors and seniors in high school today, 2026 will be their first major election. If they don’t register in high school, chances are they will not vote in 2026. In the 2022 midterms, only 30.6% of 18-year-olds were registered.
In 2024, we trained nearly 2,000 students and educators who went on to hold more than 300 high school voter registration drives. Those we have trained can now be a force for ongoing civic engagement and voter registration efforts at their schools and beyond. We’re looking to more than double the number of drives in the 2026 cycle.
Cas Mudde also wrote the “challenge is to stay rational and realistic.” And part of addressing that challenge involves identifying how we can sustain and grow this effort.
The Bottom Line
To be resilient, this work should not rely on any one funding stream. Funding streams need to be diverse.
For now and for the immediate future, individuals who care about education, civic engagement, and democracy (that means you, dear reader) are having the greatest impact.
As awareness grows, there is great potential for school districts, states, foundations, and corporations to all play an increasing role.
The investments made today have lasting impact. The work creates infrastructure to sustain itself. Each student registered represents not just a single vote in a single election, but a potential life-long voter, as part of a community of life-long voters. Once awareness of HSVR exists, it does not have to be re-built again and again. We see costs decreasing over time and impact increasing, as awareness grows, and HSVR becomes institutionalized in schools.
Please consider donating to The Civics Center in support of our ongoing data and organizing work:
An advisor asked me recently: who should pay for high school voter registration?
My answers below get to the heart of why this work is so challenging and under-funded, even while the need is so great.
Teenagers
Teenagers are the ones who benefit the most directly from high school voter registration, so maybe they should pay for it. But here’s a challenge: they don’t control money, especially with 16.3% of those under 18 living in poverty. And they have not even been taught why it’s important to register to vote, so it’s unlikely they will suddenly decide to pay for it. And who would pay for the awareness raising exercise to help any of them see why they might want to do so? Suffrageists designed and sold pins to finance their efforts. I guess teens could have a bake sale.
Parents
Parents presumably have an interest in making sure that their teens are registered to vote. But (1) parents also are not aware of the opportunities to preregister in high school, nor do they necessarily have a shared interest with other parents in empowering all teens, which they would need to even begin considering paying; (2) making the parents the funders would likely exacerbate, rather than remedy inequalities. Some organizations offer tuition-based models for their civic engagement programs, but this leaves out those who cannot afford to pay, who are the people who need the help most.
School districts
School districts want their students to succeed and generally have a mandate in their curricular requirements to prepare students for active citizenship. School districts can also benefit from high school voter registration because young people have a stake in supporting their educational mission, and may, for example, if they are registered, vote in favor of policies and programs that benefit education.
The questions here relate again to lack of awareness, but there are also matters of timing and conflicting incentives. (1) It can take a long time and skilled, sophisticated staff to develop relationships that can lead to a successful program with a school district. Who will pay for the staff to create these relationships? (2) Ultimately, school boards have decision-making authority over school district funding. These are elected officials who may prefer to keep the electorate as it is. Those who don’t see it as to their political advantage to help young people register to vote are not likely to support funding for the effort. If school board members see themselves as vulnerable they are unlikely to be a reliable source of funding year in and year out.
States
States have the wherewithal to equitably require and fund high school voter registration. States that are constitutionally committed to principles of equality, education, and promoting the effective functioning of democracy and elections as a core foundation of their existence, also have existing policy commitment from which to build. In addition, the National Voter Registration Act makes clear that states can designate public schools as voter registration agencies. An earlier version of the bill that ultimately did not pass, would have required (not just permitted) public schools to serve as voter registration agencies.
The challenges here are similar to those for school boards. If incumbent Governors or state legislators do not see it as in their interests to have more young people voting, they will not support or fund the effort.
And we know that laws that seek to assign the work to schools, but that don’t at the same time provide the funding needed for relevant training, resources, monitoring, etc. just don’t work.
The federal government
I think we can safely say that the federal government is an unlikely funding source for at least the next four years. Even in the period between 2020 and 2024, efforts to expand voting rights through the enactment of the Freedom to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, and the Youth Voting Rights Act, none of which would have in any event provided funding for HSVR, were not successful.
Foundations
Foundations, including family foundations, that have programs to promote education, civic engagement, and democracy are ideal funders for this work. The biggest challenge here is time, unpredictability, and the fact that foundations all have existing commitments, and it is difficult for them to add in new priorities. Sometimes it can take up to three years of engagement and cultivation or more, before receiving a first grant. Sometimes, foundations change their priorities or end their operations entirely, and over-reliance on a single foundation can mean a lack of resilience in these cases. Family foundations typically have more flexibility, and can act more quickly, but these may be harder to find and also take time for relationships to develop.
Community foundations have an incentive and expertise to step in, and they are by nature well connected to other stakeholders and donors in their communities. The most significant challenge with working with community foundations is that often they want to give only programmatic support, and not general operating funds. But with high school voter registration being at such a seedling stage of development, the funding that is most needed is general operating funds. And again, awareness is a challenge, as most community foundations are not yet aware of high school voter registration when we approach them, and it’s a long learning curve for them to understand its significance and the role they can play.
Corporate policy stakeholders
Corporations may see themselves having a policy stake in youth political participation, and if they do, they are another potential source of funding. An example could be corporations focused on the energy transition and that believe that young people are likely to support policies that mitigate climate change and promote clean, renewable energy.
The challenges here are that the more HSVR becomes associated with a particular political outcome, the harder it becomes to work with school districts that need to remain nonpartisan. This is especially true in highly polarized communities. Over-reliance on funders who have a particular policy outcome also risks the need to secure authentic relationships with teens that puts their needs at the center. Young people have to see their own political empowerment, and not the policy agenda of a particular funder, as central.
Individuals who believe in democracy and education
Individuals (including IRA holders and those with a position to influence giving by DAFs and family foundations), often have the ability to act more quickly than institutional foundations or corporations. We have seen some of our most generous and consistent contributors come from this group, with small dollar donors feeling good about the need to contribute where they can, even at the $5 level, because the work speaks to their ideals, and larger donors seeing the need for long-term investment in work that has the potential to be genuinely transformative.
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