Get young people to vote

The United States has the lowest rate of youth voter turnout in the world. In both U.S. presidential and midterm elections, older voters turn out at twice the rate of young people.

This pattern hasn’t changed in recent elections. In 2018, headlines lauded historically high levels of youth turnout; yet, even in this good year for youth turnout, a full 7 in 10 young people sat out the election. Early evidence shows that things won’t look much different in 2020, despite the fact that young people will wield a substantial amount of influence over the primaries and general election.

Why don’t more young people vote? And what can we do to help solve this problem?

In our new book, “Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes into Civic Action,” we tackle these questions.

Many people argue that younger Americans fail to vote because they are apathetic about politics. Pundits commonly describe millennials as too cynical, too disinterested, and too self-absorbed to cast a ballot.

But this claim simply isn’t true. Today’s young people are very interested in politics.

Since 2000, 76% of young people say they are interested in politics and 74% say they care who gets elected. And here’s the kicker: Before elections, a full 81% of young people say they intend to vote.

A lack of political motivation is not the problem.

So what is? Though many young people want to vote, they are much more likely than their elder counterparts to be derailed by the obstacles that get in their way.

Young people are especially sensitive to how difficult and complicated it is to register and to vote. In our book, we show that many young people lack confidence in their ability to navigate the voting process for the first time.

As such, to help young people follow through and cast a ballot, we need to do two things.

First, electoral reforms that make voting easier go a long way towards increasing youth turnout. Our research shows that reforms like same-day registration — which allows people to register when they come to cast a ballot even if they have missed the voter registration deadline — and preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds — which allows young people to enroll before they have left the home for college or work opportunities — substantially increase youth turnout.

We show that when these reforms are implemented, it helps close the gap between older and younger voters by a third.

Second, we need to transform civics education in the United States. At present, many schools follow what we call a “bubble-sheet civics” approach — one that focuses on rote memorization of boring and dry facts and figures about politics, government, and history. This approach simply doesn’t work.

Effective civics curriculum requires more. Schools need to do better at discussing contemporary political issues (without indoctrinating kids on one side or another of hot-button issues), getting students involved in civic and political action, helping them register, and teaching them the fundamental skills needed to follow through and vote. Our research shows that schools that adopt these types of best practices are much more likely to have their students actively participate in politics.

To make young voters, we need to do much more than we’re already doing. Youth voter turnout is at crisis levels in our country. Young people face many vitally important issues — from climate change to income inequality to gun violence — that will require them to be actively involved in politics. Whether or not they are equipped to do so, however, depends vitally on whether policymakers make voting easier and improve the quality of civics education in the United States.

Holbein is an assistant professor of public policy, politics and education at the University of Virginia. Hillygus is a professor of political science at Duke University.