Georgia survey says: high school students need help registering to vote

With two Georgia runoff races for U.S. Senate just seven weeks away, and with the voter registration deadline just three weeks away, we reached out to college students around Georgia to learn how much they know about the laws governing voter registration and the runoff in their state.  

Close to 500 students responded to the following two questions: 

(1) Can young people vote in Georgia’s Jan. 5, 2021 U.S. Senate runoff if they will be 18 by that date, even if they were not old enough to register during the general election that just concluded?  

(2) At what age can young people in Georgia register or preregister to vote?

For question 1, the correct answer is:  Young people who will be 18 by Jan. 5, 2021 can register now and vote in the U.S. Senate runoff election even if they weren’t 18 by November 3.  

A large majority of respondents (87%) answered correctly. Of course, this means that the other 13% of respondents hadn’t yet heard that the 23,000 young people turning 18 by January 5 can register now and vote in the upcoming election. Our survey was aimed at college and university students, and we expect that the percentage of high school students who are eligible to vote in January but haven’t yet heard the news is even higher.  Those students need to register by December 7 in order to vote in January.

For question 2, the correct answer is:  Young people in Georgia can preregister to vote beginning at age 17 ½. Those who preregister are automatically registered to vote as soon as they turn 18.  

Only 52% of the students who responded got this answer right.  Forty percent answered that young people can register to vote at any time as long as they will turn 18 by the next general election.  The remainder (8%) responded that students could preregister beginning at age 17. 

High schools in Georgia have a legal obligation to help their students register to vote.  That has got to start with at least teaching all students the age at which they are eligible to preregister, and in Georgia, that age is 17 ½.  

Fifteen other states, including Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina, allow young people to preregister beginning at age 16.  Four states allow preregistration beginning at age 17. Sixteen states allow young people to preregister to vote if they will be 18 by the date of the next general election (which in eight states means every year and in the other eight states means every other year).  With preregistration not permitted in Georgia until age 17 ½, that qualifies Georgia as one of fourteen states with the most restrictive age-based voter registration laws. Laws that encourage preregistration are linked to increased youth turnout. 

With only three weeks left to go for 23,000 young people who are turning 18 between the general election and the runoff on January 5, 2021, we could really use your help to contact every high school senior you know (or friend or family member of a senior) to help spread the word.  You can forward this blog post with a note of your own or use our Instagram or Twitterposts or this recent article from Newsweek to help spread the word.  

There is also still time to sign up for our nonpartisan postcarding campaign to contact students in Georgia and encourage them to register to vote.