For the second year, Alameda Unified School District (AUSD) high school students teamed up with the Alameda chapter of the League of Women Voters (LWV) to register and pre-register their peers to vote in the upcoming elections. The initiative is designed to educate students on the importance of voting and increase student involvement in the democratic process.

 “Voting is in our DNA and we have a responsibility to share our mission with the next generation,” says Linda Bytof, a retired judge, political scientist, and chair of the Youth Outreach Committee of LWV of Alameda, told us last year. “We do this by encouraging young voters to get involved, teach them how to get involved, then stand back and watch them put their passion into action. “

Educating students on the power of voting

In the United States, youth can register to vote when they turn 18. In California, students ages 16 and 17 also have the right to pre-register to vote, which allows them to be automatically registered when they turn 18. California’s Education Code designates the last two full weeks in April and September as “High School Voter Education Weeks,” a time when schools are encouraged to provide education on the importance of voting and opportunities to register.

Research shows that voter turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds has consistently been the lowest of all age groups, and the disparities grow even wider when looking at African-Americans, Latinos, and those with no college experience. In response to that, the League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization that works to protect and expand voting rights, has launched a national “High School Registration Project” aimed at getting more young people to vote.   

LWV trains students to lead conversations with their peers about the importance of voting and other issues, as well as how to get them registered.  Voter registration events take place at all four of Alameda Unified’s high schools; last year, the events registered or pre-registered more than 600 students.

 "Crucial constitutional right"

“I chose to lead the voter registration at my school, because I believe that voting is one of the most instrumental ways that one can do to change the realities of the present,” says Genevieve Yuen, a junior at Alameda High School and an organizer of the AHS voter registration drive. “As a member of the League of Women Voters Board and commissioner of the Social Justice Committee at my school, I am very passionate about leading young people my age to become more civically active, because we will be the ones afflicted by others' decisions if we choose to stay stagnant and silent. I am dedicated to using my position to emphasize the significance to students of exercising their crucial constitutional right.”

Adds Georgia Van Every, the organizer for the event at Encinal High School, “I found myself leading this event because of my knowledge of our school’s past endeavors with the voting registration, but even more so I had a growing interest in the idea of registration. Growing up my mother ran a lot of women’s Solidarity Sunday events where women would meet up to do online phone calls regarding the 2016 elections. I also vividly remember walking with my parents to some sort of voting poll set up held on the old campus of Encinal where I watched my parents fill out a form and found myself thinking of the power that they had to be able to vote!

Empowering students through the Student Advisory Committee

The LWV of Alameda’s Student Advisory Committee (SAC) provides students from all Alameda high schools the opportunity to identify issues they care about and develop projects to address them. Under the guidance of LWV mentors, these students take active roles in shaping their communities. Recent projects have included hosting a panel on affordable housing organized last June.

“Youth are historically ignored by politicians because they don’t vote,” says Bytof, “Political science researchers call young people and other underrepresented groups ‘politically invisible’ because “politicians and politically engaged volunteers rarely come into contact with this group, potentially leading to policy issues of particular importance to them receiving less attention.” 

Students (and adults!) can learn more about joining the LWV of Alameda on their website.