What to expect from our Research Team Between now and Election Day
Starting with Ohio: Step on the Gas! More than 100,000 18-year-olds remain unregistered. You have two more months to help.
It’s fair to say, Election Season is now in full swing. Registration deadlines in many states are just two months away. Students have already returned to high school in some states, and others will be doing so in just a few weeks.
That means we’re kicking our Future Voter Scorecards into high gear. We’re also encouraging students and teachers to set up voter registration drives in their high schools during High School Voter Registration Week, September 23-27, so every eligible 18-year-old will be able to use their voice at the ballot box on November 5.
Between now and Election Day, we’ll be publishing on a weekly basis, every Tuesday. We’ll be giving regular updates on voter registration rates in states where young people are likely to have the greatest electoral significance. States like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Michigan.
Our updates will focus on voter registration rates of 18-year-olds, the youngest future voters. We’ll be drilling down and measuring and reporting on those rates and changes at the most granular local level we can, whether it be county, city, or school district.
We’ll be showing the enormous disparities and enormous potential for change. It’s all right up front in every report we publish.
Our hope is to spark a bit of healthy competition. Among states. Among cities. Among rival schools. You can’t fix what you can’t measure, but we can measure voter registration rates for the youngest future voters, and when we all work together, we can fix them, too. We like a good race to the top, and there is a long way to go.
How registration rates among 18-year-olds in Ohio cities stack up against those in other major U.S. Cities.
Our past scorecards have been heavy on analysis as we have sought to explain the complexities of the issue. As we pick up the pace, we’ll focus more on a few highlights on top, show you some charts, and encourage you to spread the word and spread the solutions. We’ll have a count-down in weeks, and a count-up in rates.
Look for our posts every Tuesday between now and Election Day.
To start us off, here’s our first scorecard of the series, focusing on Ohio in honor of the special election today and the initiative to stop partisan gerrymandering, which will be on the ballot in November.
Since we last published a scorecard in May, Ohio registration rates for 18-year olds have increased about 2.5pts, from 31.9% to 34.5%. That is roughly a 1pt increase per month. The increase includes new registrations that occurred in the one-week period following the announcement that Joe Biden would withdraw from the presidential election. By comparison, 78% of Ohioans ages 45 and above are registered to vote.
Many students will be returning to the classroom in mid August in Ohio. The Civics Center now has organizers on the ground in Cleveland and Cincinnati. They are working to train hundreds of students and educators so they can run voter registration drives in high schools across their regions before the state’s registration deadline on October 7. High School Voter Registration Week is September 23-27. Students and educators who would like to connect can contact Elyse@thecivicscenter.org for the greater Cincinnati area or Maggie@thecivicscenter.org for Cuyahoga County. Students who will be 18 by November 5 can register to vote now.
See below for detailed data for the largest counties in Ohio, and school districts in Cuyahoga County and Hamilton County.
Until next Tuesday, we hope you’ll take some time to circulate this post widely and check out our earlier blog posts for context and information on other states, and take a moment to encourage friends and family who are high school students or educators to get trained in how to hold a drive.
And remember, facts don’t fix themselves. So if you’d like to support our work in making voter registration part of every high school in America, please consider making a contribution to support our data and organizing work.