Recent data: About half of young adults in state registered to vote

After a study found Texas high schools neglecting their legal duty to help eligible students register to vote, state Rep. Charlie Geren took to Twitter to inform his followers about Te x a s ’ l o u s y youth voter registration rate.

Geren twee te d on Se pt. 18: “Did you know less than half of Texans ages 18-24 are registered to vote?” We wondered about that. Asked about Geren’s ba sis for the claim, Payton Spreen in Geren’s offiffice said the Fort Worth Republican relied on a Texas Tribune news story. That story says many high schools have apparently failed to help students register, “and election turnout among young voters has remained chronically low — less than half of Texans age 18 through 24 are registered to vote”; the story referenced U.S. Census Bureau research on voter registration and turnout in 2016.

The story highlighted a recent report by the Texas Civil Rights Project and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, advocacy groups that address voter rights with a focus on racial and ethnic minorities. The groups found that, despite a Texas law requiring high school officials to circulate voter registration forms to students, just 198 of 1,428 Texas public high schools, or 14 percent, and no private schools had requested registration applications in 2016 from the Texas secretary of state’s offiffice, which supervises elections.

According to the report, the groups calculated those compliance rates after the 2016 elections and tive,