One of the biggest obstacles to improving youth voter registration is the lack of data. Most statistics about youth voting lump everyone together from ages 18-24 or, even worse, ages 18-29. Most reports about increases or decreases in youth voting focus on the country as a whole, or individual states or counties, but not school districts. Many reports focus on turnout without analyzing whether young people are registered to vote in the first place.
Without information that compares individual school districts’ registration rates for the youngest potential voters, we can’t figure out what works best at the school district level to get students ready to participate in our democracy. We can’t focus our attention on the areas that need the most help. Unfortunately, no one publishes such information.
Until now.
The Civics Center is introducing Future Voter Scorecards, which measure the percentage of registered voters among new 18-year-olds by school district.
We are starting in Orange County, California, where approximately 35,000 young people will have turned 18 between last November’s election day and September 14 of this year, the final date to vote in California’s gubernatorial recall election. This scorecard focuses on youth who turned 18 within the six months following the 2020 general election.
Our results as of May 2021 show that Orange County school districts need to work much harder if they want to comply with state law requiring them to educate students about voter registration and voting and to encourage young people to be full participants in our democracy. In every district, the registration rate for these new 18-year-olds is under 45%. In contrast, 82% of the citizen voting age population and 73% of the total voting age population in Orange County are registered to vote….