Pre-registration

During the spring of 2020, I participated in the Boys and Girls Club STAR Leadership Program. It is a great program that taught me about civic participation, Sarasota local politics, and voting. We met every weekend for about three months. One weekend that was particularly impactful was the pre-register voting day. That day, all of us filled out a form to pre-register to vote. Up until that day, I had never heard about pre-registration. School never taught me it. Neither did my parents. I thought it was a pity that I hadn’t heard about it before because it was a process that made it easier to vote at 18.

Challenge for young voters

Statistics generally show that young voters lag behind other age groups in terms of voter turnout. In the 2016 general election, 45% of citizens aged 18 to 24 were not registered to vote, and 57% of eligible voters in that age group did not vote. People like to argue that this phenomenon is due to apathy and indifference among young voters, but that is far from the truth. Instead, it is due to legal obstacles, voter confusion, and lack of engagement. For one thing, schools and parents rarely engage minors with voting. Schools are not required to hold voter registration programs to teach kids about the importance of voting or the requirements to register. Most people only begin to engage with voting when they turn 18. 18 is a hectic age for people because it is when most of them are going off to college in a new place. Adapting to college life is challenging and it is easy for people to push voting to the back of their minds when they are focused with new classes, new roommates, and new living situations. My sister is a freshman at Florida State University and there are no voter programs that inform her of voter requirements or voting locations. People can’t expect young people to become frequent voters when they have barely been taught anything about voting.

Pre-registration

I think pre-registration is one way to help increase the low turnout rate among young people. Pre-registration is a process that allows individuals younger than 18 to register to vote in advance, so that when they turn 18, they are automatically eligible to cast a ballot. The age limit varies across states. In Florida it is 16, but other states only allow 17-year-olds to pre-register. The lack of uniformity can be confusing for citizens which is why organizations, like Fair Vote, advocate for a national voter registration age.

This would make it easier to run voter registration and education programs in schools. Current registration programs are targeted toward seniors and are usually most effective during presidential election years.

A national registration voter age of 16 is reasonable since it is when most people apply for a driver’s license. The DMV allows 16-year-olds to register to vote, so you can obtain your driver's license while also registering to vote, making things much more efficient. Numerous states already allow 16-year-olds to register during parts of the election cycle.

Pre-registration is meant to increase voter turnout since it engages young people in the electoral process early on. Voting behavior is the result of habit. If you started voting early on, you are more likely to continue voting as an adult. That’s why pre-registration is so important. Plus, there does not need to be a large overhaul of existing voting rules or new software, equipment, or personnel. Most states already put advance-registered voters into the voter registration database with a status of “pending.” When a “pending” voter becomes 18, their status is changed to “active.” Therefore, there is a low cost to voter pre-registration.

Resources

FairVote. (n.d.). Voter pre-registration. FairVote. https://www.fairvote.org/voter_pre_registration

Greenman, E., Hamaji, K., & Duffy, M. (2019). Expanding voter registration in high schools. The Center for Popular Democracy. https://populardemocracy.org/sites/default/files/High%20School%20Registration%20Toolkit%20Final%20-%20Web.pdf

NCSL. (2021). Preregistration for young voters. NCSL. https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/preregistration-for-young-voters.aspx