NY and CA registration rates show minimal improvement over time, and lag those of MA
With preregistration available for 16- and 17-year-olds in all three states, the NY and CA results are disappointing
This is the fourth of our 2024 Election Season weekly series of Future Voter Scorecards.
We’ll be publishing every Tuesday, drilling down to the local level to show where and how young people can make a difference when they register and vote.
We’ll be covering the percentage of 18-year-olds who are registered and the percentage of 16- and 17- year-olds who are pre-registered (where that is relevant and available), and tracking changes over time. Today, we are focusing on Massachusetts, New York, and California, three states that offer preregistration starting at age 16 and that have implemented the law with differing degrees of success.
Facts don’t fix themselves. It’s up to our readers to spread the word; make sure that all the young people are registered and that they get trained to help their school communities do the same.
New York
In the 2.5 months since our last report on New York in May, the state has made limited progress in enabling the youngest members of the electorate to register to vote. 18-year-old registration rates rose only 2.3 percentage points from 40.4% to 42.7%. Pre-registration rates actually decreased slightly from 20.5% to 20.1%.
In any context we would have expected to see more improvement from New York, and this is especially true given that the period since the last report covered the registration deadline for the June primary and the shake up in the Democratic presidential ticket.
We have just two months left before the New York registration deadline to connect with the ~136,000 18-year-olds who remain unregistered. Time to step-up New York.
See below for detailed scorecards on pre-registration rates and 18-year-old registration rates by NY county.
California
Like New York, 18-year-old registration rates and 16- and 17-year-old pre-registration rates in California have remained generally unchanged (and very low) over the period we’ve tracked them.
We last published pre-registration rates for California counties in October 2023 and January of 2024. Over that period, pre-registration rates for 16- and 17-year-olds has remained constant at 12.9%, with a slight dip to 12.7% in January. With just two months until the general election in November, it’s disappointing that youth registration has remained essentially unchanged in this period.
Thankfully, the story is slightly better in Orange County and Los Angeles County. In Orange County, 18-year-old registration rates in school districts ranged from 27% to 41% in 2021 and have grown to range from 36% to 49%. In LA County school districts, the lowest rate of 18-year old registration grew from 20% to 28%. The highest rates have remained above 80%.
One particularly notable school district in LA County is Claremont, which went from the lowest performing district in LA County at 20.5% to one of the highest, at 55.1%. The Civics Center invested in training students and educators in that district during spring semester 2024, which resulted in roughly 700 new registrants!
See below for detailed scorecards on California pre-registration rates by county and 18-year-old registration rates by school district for Los Angeles County and Orange County.
Massachusetts
We are excited to share our first-ever analysis of pre-registration rates in Massachusetts, which serves as a comparison point to rates in New York and California. As of the end of May 2024, 38.6% of 16- and 17- year olds were pre-registered to vote in the state.
Three trends are apparent in the Massachusetts data:
MA’s statewide preregistration rate is much higher than that of either NY or CA. There are many potential factors at play here, including the strength of Massachusetts’ school system, a highly educated population, and Secure AVR – a system neither NY or CA has implemented. Our report on the negative impacts of CA’s failure to implement Secure AVR is here.
MA’s statewide pre-registration rate is much lower than that of Colorado, which has a similar “secure” AVR system, where citizen residents are automatically registered to vote during interactions with the DMV, medicaid, etc., and must, if they wish to opt out via mail.
The pre-registration rate in Boston (Suffolk County) lags that of the state overall by over 10 percentage points and lags pre-registration rates in the top third of towns in the greater Boston area by 20-50 percentage points. This is consistent with trends across the country, where pre-registration rates in urban areas lag those of suburban and rural areas. We believe our nation’s failure to implement robust and equitable high school voter registration systems is a key reason for the disparities that disenfranchise urban (non-driving) youth.
The charts below compare pre-registration rates in selected states and cities.
See below for detailed scorecards for Massachusetts counties and cities/towns in the Greater Boston area.
Trends across NY, CA, and MA warrant further study in order to understand drivers of successes and eliminate disparities. We hope we’ll spark some healthy competition among these states that all pride themselves on promoting voting.