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youth voting
Our Voices and Our Votes Matter
On this National Voter Registration Month, let’s honor the generations who fought, marched, and even died for the right to vote by doing our part.
Sep 28, 2025
In 2002, the National Association of Secretaries of State designated every September National Voter Registration Month. This is more than a month on the calendar; it’s a call to action to remind us of one of the most powerful truths in a democracy: Change doesn’t happen unless we show up.
It’s a reminder that our voices matter, our votes matter, and that the freedoms we often take for granted can only be protected if we exercise them at the ballot box.
In recent years, one freedom has been under relentless attack: reproductive freedom. Across the country, state legislatures have rolled back rights that generations before us fought to secure. People are being forced to travel hundreds of miles for medical care, to carry pregnancies against their will, and to endure unnecessary suffering because of political decisions made by elected officials. These policies don’t reflect the will of the majority. Poll after poll shows that most Americans believe in protecting abortion access and reproductive healthcare. But here’s the catch: Beliefs don’t change laws. Votes do.
That’s why National Voter Registration Month matters so deeply. It’s about more than filling out a form. It’s about building power to defend all of our freedoms: reproductive rights, voting rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, climate justice, disability rights, racial equity, and economic fairness. Every freedom we value is on the line, and the ballot box is where we fight for them.
Young people, your future is being decided whether you participate or not. Claim your power.
This message is especially urgent for young people. Generation Z and Millennials already make up the largest voting bloc in the country. Young voters have the numbers to decide elections and to set the course for the future. Yet too often, young voices are missing at the polls because they aren’t registered and don’t realize how simple the process can be.
Here’s the good news: In many states, high school students as young as 16 or 17 can preregister to vote. That means when they turn 18, they’re automatically added to the rolls and ready to participate in their first election. By the time they reach voting age, they’re not scrambling to meet deadlines; they’re already prepared to cast their first ballot and shape their future.
If you’re a young person reading this, or if you know one, don’t wait until the night before a big election to figure out the process. Go online today, check your state’s rules, and register, or preregister now. Encourage your classmates to do the same. Host a registration drive at your school. Post on social media. Because here’s the truth: Decisions about your future are being made right now by people in power. If you’re not registered, you don’t get a say.
National Voter Registration Month is also a reminder to all of us, no matter our age, that democracy is not a spectator sport. Registration deadlines vary by state, and millions of people lose their chance to vote every cycle simply because they missed a deadline or their information wasn’t updated after moving. Taking five minutes to check your registration could be the most important action you take this year.
The stakes have never been higher. The Supreme Court has already overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping away a nearly 50-year precedent. State legislatures are racing to see how far they can go in restricting abortion access. Some are even targeting birth control and IVF. None of this happened by accident. It happened because elections have consequences.
But there’s another side to that story: Protecting and expanding freedoms also comes down to elections. In states where voters showed up to pass ballot measures protecting abortion access, reproductive freedom is still secure. In districts where young people voted in record numbers, leaders committed to justice and equity were elected. The message is clear: When we vote, we win.
So, on this National Voter Registration Month, let’s honor the generations who fought, marched, and even died for the right to vote by doing our part. Let’s commit to registering ourselves, helping our neighbors get registered, and making sure every eligible high school student knows they can take action now.
Our freedoms are not guaranteed. They are defended or lost at the ballot box. If you care about reproductive freedom, if you care about climate justice, if you care about racial equality, LGBTQIA+ rights, or economic security, then voting is not optional; it is essential.
Young people, your future is being decided whether you participate or not. Claim your power. Register. Preregister. Show up. And know this: your voice, your vote, your freedom, our collective future, depends on it.
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Let Our Youth Vote!
Making it easier for young people to vote is a great way to increase participation, making our democracy live up to its ideals.
Aug 26, 2025
With democracy under attack in the US, a worldwide movement to lower the voting age is growing. This July, the United Kingdom announced it would lower the voting age from 18 to 16 in general elections. When the bill passes, the UK will join Brazil, Austria, Cuba, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Ecuador as nations which already allow 16-year-olds to vote. In others, including Greece and Indonesia, the voting age is 17.
While there is no clear partisan advantage in lowering the voting age, collective benefits abound—including a more engaged democracy judged by civic engagement and political attitudes.
Voting habits are established early, and support in the classroom can make a big difference. But, when the voting age is 18, fewer voters are in school during their first election. Depending on the election cycle, many will not have the opportunity to vote in a national election until they are 21. Thus, many first-time voters lack vital resources and thus face higher barriers to entry. The case is true in the United States. Nearly a third of unregistered voters between 18-29 say they were simply too busy to go through the registration process.
As political scientist Joshua Tucker explains, “If you vote when you’re young in the first three elections, [for which you are eligible] that’s likely to predict you continue voting.” If you don’t, “you’re less likely to vote for the rest of your life,” and “even one failure lowers the chance of voting later.” So, the stakes are high and opportunity during the early years can have lifelong impacts.
Here 16- and 17-year-olds drive, pay taxes, work unrestricted hours; yet they cannot exercise the fundamental, democratic right to vote.
Nations lowering voting age have experienced an increase youth activism. Argentina, for example, lowered voting age in 2012. Then in 2015, years before the surge of the #MeToo movement, the Ni Una Menos (Not one less) movement in Argentina began. Through mass protests and strikes, it aimed to combat and bring awareness to gender-based violence.
Another youth-led action—the Marea Verde (Green Wave) Movement—pushed to legalize abortion and significantly influenced development and passage of a 2020 national Argentine law that did just that.
Here, too, young Americans have stepped up for a stronger democracy, even helping to spark two of the most influential Supreme Court cases. In 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Johns, a student in a segregated school in Prince Edward County, Virginia, took action. Her school held over twice as many students as was legally permissible, used second-hand supplies, and lacked adequate bathrooms or heating. So, Johns led her peers in a school assembly and ultimately organized a student-body strike. With the support of the NAACP, her courageous efforts turned into one of the five legal cases of Brown v. the Board of Education that declared public school segregation illegal.
About a decade and a half later, five students in Des Moines, Iowa came together to protest the Vietnam War, each wearing an armband to school. For this they were suspended, but they fought back. Their fight eventually made its way to the Supreme Court and what would become Tinker v. Des Moines defining public-school students’ First Amendment rights.
In a more recent example of the power of student activism, a survivor from the Parkland shooting, high school junior Cameron Kasky, organized the March for Our Lives protests in 2018. In a fight for gun control, they would become one of the largest in US history, with a million participants—mostly students—taking the streets to fight for gun control.
These formidable young people offer inspiring evidence that an early understanding of civics, along with the experience of political empowerment, can ripple out to make history. These stories underscore our responsibility to bring these principles and opportunities to all young Americans, not only with better civics education but also by lowering the voting age, and thereby affirming their voices matter.
As data from the most recent election confirm, states with the least restrictive voting had the highest turnout among young voters, while the opposite was true in the more restrictive states. Thankfully, we are making progress: In a third of US states, 17-year-olds can now vote in primaries if they turn 18 before the general election. Even more exciting are the dozen cities where 16-year-olds can now vote, either in school-board elections or all local elections.
The facts are clear. Making it easier for young people to vote is a great way to increase participation, making our democracy live up to its ideals. Here 16- and 17-year-olds drive, pay taxes, work unrestricted hours; yet they cannot exercise the fundamental, democratic right to vote.
Let us step up to join our peer nations and change that now.Keep ReadingShow Less
The Kids Are Alright and They’re Taking Over
Mamdani’s win comes as youth voter registration is climbing across the board. And it’s not because anyone suddenly handed us hope; it’s because we’ve been forced to create it for ourselves.
Jun 28, 2025
As someone who’ll soon join those ranks of “first-time voters,” witnessing 33‑year‑old Democrat Socialist Zohran Mamdani defeat a seasoned political heavyweight like Andrew Cuomo feels revolutionary. Watching what’s happening right now—watching young people turn their disillusionment into infrastructure, their rage into organizing—makes it clear: The next generation is coming in hot.
The numbers say it all. According to the Financial Times, 52% of voters under 45 backed Mamdani. Cuomo only got 18%. A remarkable age gap, it’s a generation breaking up the political status quo. And what’s even more staggering? So many of Mamdani’s voters were casting a ballot for the very first time.
We’ve been told for years that young people don’t vote. That we’re apathetic, distracted, too caught up in our phones to care about policy. But this election shattered that myth. The campaigns were built on grassroots energy. To mobilize voters, especially newbies, Mamdani’s team organized over 46,000 volunteers and knocked on more than 1 million doors. And, the people showed up like their lives depended on it—because in so many ways, they do. Youth voter registration is climbing across the board. And it’s not because anyone suddenly handed us hope; it’s because we’ve been forced to create it for ourselves.
So to my fellow future voters, my peers who are just now stepping into the political arena: This is our moment!
Our generation was raised on crisis. Climate collapse. School shootings. Incredibly normalized economic anxiety. We don’t remember a world before mass surveillance, before “once-in-a-century” storms became routine. So, we’re pushing for better with everything we’ve got.
Mamdani’s campaign won because it was real. He spoke in a language of inclusion that we understand. His unapologetic support of human rights and liberation for all, including the Palestinians, resonated with us. His promises—affordable housing, public transit, community-owned groceries—speak directly to the world we’re inheriting. The one we’re expected to fix.
All of this is happening against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s presidency, which continues to cast a long, toxic shadow. But even his chaos doesn’t scare us as much as apathy does. Because what scares me, more than another four years of extremism, is the possibility that people will sit this one out. That they’ll believe the lie that nothing ever changes. That the game is rigged. But Mamdani’s win proves otherwise. When we organize, we win. When we show up, we matter. And we are showing up as strategists and leaders.
So to my fellow future voters, my peers who are just now stepping into the political arena: This is our moment! We are deliberate. We are strategic. You don’t have to be a politician to change the game. You just have to show up, again and again, until they can’t ignore you anymore.
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