Why Don't Young People Vote?

Answer: They don't know how.

The statistics are enough to make you weep. Only 27% of young people (under 30) voted in the crucial 2022 midterms. Now, that wasn’t a presidential year, and young voters did turn out much better in 2020, when approximately half of them voted.

But half of them didn’t.

Half of all eligible voters under thirty didn’t bother to vote, in a hugely consequential election that would determine a lot of what happens to them in the future. School shootings and gun control. Climate change. Book bans. School loans. Jobs. Why don’t young people get out and vote?

Based on research conducted by the Tufts University Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, lack of information about the voting process is their biggest barrier.

Voting is hard. It’s even harder when you’re young. Registration is based on your address, and kids move around a lot. Moving in with your girlfriend? Splitting up with your obnoxious room-mate? Not many twenty-somethings are going to think, oh, dear, really must notify the Board of Elections about that address change.

Absentee ballots are increasingly complicated to obtain. Election Day catches most college kids far from their polling place, and in many states the deadline for applying for an absentee ballot falls spang in the middle of October mid-terms, when students have a few other things on their coffee-addled, frazzled minds.

Voting is all about deadlines. The lives of young people are full of those: classwork, job applications, trying to figure out health insurance and car payments. Who needs one more deadline to cope with?

According to the Tufts university study, 10% of young (under 30) voters weren’t aware of registration deadlines.

More than 20% said they didn’t have enough information about when or where to register and vote.

And a whopping 37% said they forgot or were too busy on Election Day.

So how can we help remedy this situation?

Contact.

The Tufts study went on to say that in 2022, only half (54%) of youth were contacted by any type of political party or organization about the election.

Young people who were contacted in any way were far more likely (29%) to report that they voted than those who were not contacted.

So that’s our challenge—to think of ways to contact young people, to give them the information they need to vote. Dates, times, places.

Registering to vote—used to be you had to take a pen and fill out a long boring form—but these days, you can register on line. Check out the League of Women Voter’s site at vote411.org. But what young person knows this?

Here’s an example of what I mean: my get-out-the-vote group contacted the local community college and got permission to put up posters. Nothing expensive, these were just one-page flyers, xeroxed on bright, eye-catching paper. The flyers listed deadlines for voter registration, had info on absentee ballots, and gave dates and times for early voting.

We thumb-tacked and taped our way through the library, the cafeteria, and the Student Union. We postered hallways, rest rooms, snack bars, bus stops. Students passing by can easily take a quick picture on their phones, and then they have the information handy. We also made half-page flyers with early voting places, dates, and times that could be left on countertops for students to pick up.

Now this is a small community college, with only about six hundred students. Six hundred—that’s a lot of potential voters. There was a special election for a state House seat in Florida just the other day, which very surprisingly flipped a red seat blue—by a margin of 590 votes. So many of the upcoming races—including the presidential one—are most likely going to be won by a razor-thin margin.

In order to do this kind of thing, by the way, you have to (pretend to) be nonpartisan. Almost no one is going to give you permission to put up signs touting your candidate. But simple, clear, easy-to-read instructions on how to register, where to vote—that’s much easier to get clearance for.

And the theory is that if young people vote, they’ll vote for progressive candidates. I know not all young people are going to vote Democrat, of course—but the trend is that younger equals bluer, older equals redder.

So contact, contact, contact. Social media. Family gatherings. Your book club, work colleagues, neighbors. If there’s a young person in your orbit, make sure that they’re armed with the information they need to vote. Gun control, climate change, book bans, etc. —the cliché is true: it’s their future on the line.