Introducing Future Voter Scorecards: OC Edition
One of the biggest obstacles to improving youth voter registration is the lack of data. Most statistics about youth voting lump everyone together from ages 18-24 or, even worse, ages 18-29. Most reports about increases or decreases in youth voting focus on the country as a whole, or individual states or counties, but not school districts. Many reports focus on turnout without analyzing whether young people are registered to vote in the first place.
Without information that compares individual school districts’ registration rates for the youngest potential voters, we can’t figure out what works best at the school district level to get students ready to participate in our democracy. We can’t focus our attention on the areas that need the most help. Unfortunately, no one publishes such information.
Until now.
The Civics Center is introducing Future Voter Scorecards, which measure the percentage of registered voters among new 18-year-olds by school district.
We are starting in Orange County, California, where approximately 35,000 young people will have turned 18 between last November’s election day and September 14 of this year, the final date to vote in California’s gubernatorial recall election. This scorecard focuses on youth who turned 18 within the six months following the 2020 general election.
Our results as of May 2021 show that Orange County school districts need to work much harder if they want to comply with state law requiring them to educate students about voter registration and voting and to encourage young people to be full participants in our democracy. In every district, the registration rate for these new 18-year-olds is under 45%. In contrast, 82% of the citizen voting age population and 73% of the total voting age population in Orange County are registered to vote.
Below is a chart that shows each school district in Orange County, the percentage of youth who appear as registered in the voter file and who turned 18 in the six months following the November election in 2020, and the relative rank of the districts based on these percentages.
2021 Future Voter Scorecard Orange County, California
These numbers tell us that school districts across the County need to pay much more attention to the state mandate requiring high schools to help students register to vote. California allows young people to pre-register beginning at age 16. Young people who pre-register are automatically registered to vote when they turn 18. Most schools, however, are doing little or nothing to implement our state’s pre-registration law.
Young people who are not registered to vote do not receive vote-by-mail ballots. This means that, unless 18-year-olds can encourage one another to go to vote centers and conditionally register to vote in the next few days, this cohort will be largely disenfranchised in the gubernatorial recall election, which ends on September 14.
We are in the process of evaluating school districts beyond Orange County, and we are confident that Orange County is not alone in having exceptionally low levels of voter registration for new 18-year-olds. Unless schools and school districts make serious efforts to improve, young people both in California and across the country will continue to be left out of our democracy, including the midterm elections in 2022.
To be sure, some districts are doing significantly better than others. In Orange County, Laguna Beach USD and Tustin USD are standouts. With just over 40% of their new 18-year-olds registered, however, these districts shouldn’t be celebrating. It is significant that among school districts clustered in the middle, percentage variations are small between ranks. As a result, individual efforts by groups of students, faculty, or staff can make a large difference in increasing rank.
Every district can improve. Here are some resources and suggestions for how to do it.
Sign up for a workshop and hold a voter registration drive in your school during High School Voter Registration Week, Sept. 27-Oct. 1. The National Association of Secondary School Principals has placed High School Voter Registration Week on the 2021-2022 NASSP List of Approved Contests, Programs, and Activities for Students.
Make sure your district has trained educators who know how to help students register to vote and who can implement effective programs every year. We provide professional development opportunities to give them what they need to know.
Help students form a Future Voters Club in your school or use our model agendas to make voter registration part of your club’s activities.
Insist that your school district (either the board or superintendent) adopts a voter registration policy to make voter registration part of its school routine.
Students and parents can insist that their district and their school circulate information about voter registration on their websites and in school announcements to students and families. Schools and school districts can post this QR code to link to our portal, which connects to official state voter registration sites. In California, they can obtain additional resources from the Secretary of State’s website.
Educators can take our pledge and join our educator’s network to connect with other educators who care about how schools can improve our democracy, and use our checklist to help your school implement effective programs.
Cities and community groups can adopt resolutions in support of high school voter registration.
To register to vote, visit this page.
To learn more, read our report, Future Voters and Gaps in our Democracy at thecivicscenter.org/research.
Some notes on data sources:
The percentages and rankings are based on the Orange County voter file dated May 20, 2021 and the US Census Bureau's ACS 5-year survey for 15- to 19-year-olds. Accordingly, our results do not take into account new 18-year-olds who registered more recently than May 20, 2021. Using a data file from the second half of May allows us to provide results that roughly correlate to the end of the school year.
We compared the number of registered voters in each school district who turned 18 in the six months following election day 2020 (i.e., those with birthdays spanning November 4, 2002-May 3, 2003) to the estimated number of district residents in the same age group. We estimated district population for this half-year period by taking the above ACS survey results for each district and dividing the number by 10 (the number of half-year periods in the 5-year range).
We used population data, not citizenship data, because this is what the ACS survey offers for school district population estimates. Citizenship data would be more meaningful since only citizens can register and vote, but we do not know of any source for such data by school district for the relevant age group. We note that school districts with high rates of noncitizenship among their youth would tend to have lower rates in our measure than if we were able to create a percentage based on citizens in the relevant age group.
We measured registration rates based on residence within a district, not based on whether the individuals who were registered attended district schools. We would welcome partnerships with school districts interested in evaluating registration rates for their students. In the meantime, data linking school district registration and voter registration is not available, but it is fair to assume, and our independent research supports, that school districts that put more effort toward voter registration have better results.
While our estimates are imperfect, we are constrained by existing data sources for the reasons stated above. As we track the data over time, we expect to see meaningful trends, and except with respect to the issue of citizen rates noted in point (3) above, we do not believe that any one district would be particularly advantaged or disadvantaged as a result of this method. In addition, the rates are so low everywhere, and the opportunities are so great, that we judge any margins of error to be insignificant by comparison. We welcome input from readers on data sources and other resources to improve these scorecards.
Laura W. Brill is the founder and Executive Director of The Civics Center. James F. Wenz, Associate Director of The Civics Center, and Asteris Dougalis, a student at Northwestern University, provided significant research assistance for this effort.