With election day just a week away, candidates are ignoring millions of young Americans who could still cast a decisive ballot but have not yet registered to vote.
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who → ignore → ballot
By contrast, my mailbox has been full of political flyers: the various campaigns gleaned my name from the voter file, recognized that I am a regular voter who hadn’t cast a ballot yet, and assessed through their targeted analysis that it’s worth spending on printing and postage to get their message to me.
Honestly, they are wasting their money on me – I have voted now and would have done so anyway, with or without their glossy mailers.
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I → glean → mailers
What they should be doing is targeting people who are probably way more persuadable than I am, yet are routinely ignored: the millions of Americans who will be old enough to vote for the first time this November.
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who → do → time
In California alone, for example, there are nearly 300,000 eligible 18-year-olds who can legally show up through election day and cast a provisional ballot.
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who → be → ballot
Their votes would count the same as mine.
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votes → count → mine
It’s not just the 18-year-olds.
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It → ’ → ?
We estimate that more than 1 million young Californians ages 18-24 who have not yet registered and are therefore not in the voter file still have a right to vote on election day or during early voting.
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who → estimate → voting
And it’s not just California.
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it → ’ → ?
More than half of US states allow eligible voters to cast provisional ballots either on election day, during some part or all of their early voting period, or both.
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half → allow → period
We estimate that 1.7 million 18-year-olds live in the 22 states (plus Washington DC) that allow voters to register on election day.
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voters → estimate → day
Voter files show that almost half of them have not yet registered, so are probably not receiving mail from campaigns.
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half → show → campaigns
Across the country, only 45% of 18-year-old Americans are registered to vote, compared with 82% of the over-45s.
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% → register → over-45s
It’s not apathy or laziness that stops them – it’s more often that no one bothered to ask them or explained how to do it and why it matters – including the candidates.
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it → ’ → candidates
That’s despite the more than $10bn already spent in this campaign.
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That → ’ → campaign
Imagine if just 0.01% of that were spent building the on-ramp to democracy instead of on throw-away mailers and tune-out ads.
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% → imagine → mailers
Four other states allow provisional voting during all or part of their early voting period for those who aren’t yet registered, but don’t allow it on election day itself: Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina.
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who → allow → day
You might wonder: does election day registration really matter for first timers?
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registration → wonder → timers
We looked at the voter files for a sample of four states with same-day registration on election day and they all see far more 18-year-olds making it into the voter file on that final day versus any other day of the year.
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olds → look → year
And this really should not be a surprise, but turnout correlates positively with allowing voting for eligible voters who haven’t signed up in advance.
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who → correlate → advance
Young people – because they are registered at such low rates and therefore aren’t targeted by candidates – often become aware of elections in the final weeks of campaigns, as more and more money is spent on advertising.
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money → register → advertising
Plus they are highly mobile compared with other age groups, making early registration more challenging for them.
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registration → compare → them
The result is millions of voices left unheard, cycle after cycle.
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result → leave → cycle
We need to rebuild the systems that bring young voters in and that will take time, money and vision.
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that → need → time
But in the next few days leading to 3 November, we can all reach out to the people we know in the same-day states and encourage them to register and vote.
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we → lead → them
It’s not too late for them to have their say and it’s never too early to start the habit of voting.
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it → ’ → voting
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Laura W Brill is the founder and CEO of the Civics Center, a non-partisan non-profit with a mission to make voter registration a core part of high school
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registration → make → school
The Aporia
