69传媒

Most states have recruited schools into the effort to raise youth voter turnout: More than half allow or require high schools to provide voter registration forms or do outreach to students.

But a new analysis finds that not all districts comply with these policies鈥攁nd that the districts that don鈥檛 meet their states鈥� requirements have lower levels of young people registered to vote.

The report is a from the Fair Elections Center, a voting rights organization, and The Civics Center, an advocacy group that works on youth voter registration.

The groups examined a sample of districts in Georgia and North Carolina, two states that require schools to provide students with voter registration forms. Georgia also requires schools to give students an opportunity to register to vote at school.

But the report鈥檚 authors found that compliance with these laws varied widely. Some of the district leaders the researchers contacted didn鈥檛 know the requirements even existed, said Vicki Shapiro, the director of special initiatives for The Civics Center, and one of the authors of the report.

School systems that did provide these opportunities to students, though, saw better outcomes: Districts in the sample that fully complied with the law had higher rates of eligible students registered than districts that didn鈥檛 follow these mandates.

Over the past few years, more states have changed their voting laws to allow for earlier preregistration. In , high school students can register to vote before they turn 18鈥攖hough in some states, it鈥檚 required that students be 18 by the next election in order to register. As Education Week has reported, these efforts are intended to grow the number of young voters, closing the generational gap that exists at the polls.

But just because students are able to register to vote doesn鈥檛 mean they know how to begin that process, Shapiro said. Survey data from the Knight Foundation found that 18-24-year-olds were more likely than nonvoters of all ages to say that they hadn鈥檛 registered because it was too complicated.

The past few years have added additional hurdles: An finds that, since 2021, lawmakers have passed measures that restrict access to voting in 21 states. In advance of the midterm elections next month, compared with November 2018.

69传媒 are ideal places to spread awareness of the process and give young voters accurate information, said Mike Burns, national director for Campus Vote Project at the Fair Elections Center.

Social studies classes offer built-in opportunities to educate kids about the voting process, and schools reach a wide swath of youth in a community compared with other registration touchpoints, like motor vehicle departments鈥攏ot all teenagers will get a driver鈥檚 license.

But educators say there鈥檚 a lack of infrastructure to make these registration laws as effective as they could be.

In Texas, for example, the state requires that high school principals provide voter registration cards to eligible students. But there鈥檚 generally not much guidance provided to principals about how to get these programs off the ground, said Chassidy Olainu-Alade, the coordinator for community and civic engagement in the Fort Bend school district.

鈥淭here鈥檚 no system to support it, and that鈥檚 commonplace鈥� for mandates handed down to K-12 schools, she said.

69传媒 need support for successful voter registration initiatives, educators say

To conduct this analysis, the report鈥檚 authors selected a sample of districts that would be representative of each state鈥檚 geographic diversity鈥攊ncluding urban, rural, and suburban school systems鈥攁nd racial diversity. They filed public records requests with the districts for their voter registration plans and cross-referenced those with publicly available voter registration files for the geographic area served by each district.

They found that districts that were in compliance with their state鈥檚 law were more likely to have higher percentages of registered youth voters. In Georgia, for example, most districts in the sample that had a youth voter registration plan had 18-year-olds鈥� registration rates hovering around 40 percent. Districts that had no plan trended about 10 to 20 percentage points lower.

Shapiro analyzed whether other factors, like median household income or spending per pupil, could have accounted for some of these differences. There was a slight correlation with median household income in North Carolina districts, but overall, 鈥渢he biggest indicator [for registration trends] was district leadership on this issue,鈥� Shapiro said.

In many states鈥攊ncluding Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas鈥攖he responsibility to make voter registration forms available rests with individual schools. Districts aren鈥檛 required to have a centralized plan鈥攂ut doing so can make a big difference, said Olainu-Alade.

When she started working on youth voter registration issues in the district in 2016, she looked up high schools in Fort Bend on a map created by the Texas Civil Rights Project, which tracked compliance with the state law. (The project has since been discontinued, but in 2019, it found that only 34 percent of counties met state requirements to provide voter registration cards.)

鈥淚 remember coming across that map and freaking out,鈥� Olainu-Alade said, because only a few of the district鈥檚 11 campuses were in compliance.

Since then, she鈥檚 created a centralized system for recording school-level voter registration plans, started an annual training for principals, and developed a districtwide messaging campaign. But not every Texas school district has a staff position like hers鈥攁nd in many cases, ensuring schools are following the law falls to a district鈥檚 social studies coordinator as an extra duty, Olainu-Alade said.

More awareness and support for schools could likely boost registration rates through these initiatives, said Burns, of the Fair Elections Center. 鈥淭he solution is there in front of us; we鈥檙e just not investing in it.鈥�