Introducing Students to Our Democracy

Executive Summary A significant gap in voter registration rates between Gen-Z and older Americans drives low turnout rates among our youngest voters. Low voter registration rates among 18- and 19-year-olds are particularly acute in major metropolitan areas, and in Georgia voter registration rates are down over 40% from this time in 2018. But research shows our youngest voters can play a significant role in the midterm elections, if they are registered.

State laws in Georgia and North Carolina require public schools to make voter registration applications available to eligible students, but spotty compliance with these laws, especially in select Georgia school districts, correlates with low voter registration rates. For example, » Atlanta Public Schools only partially comply with Georgia law, and we estimate that only 17% of 18-year-olds who live in the Atlanta Public Schools district are registered to vote. » In the Gwinnett County Schools district, which demonstrates greater compliance with state law, the voter registration rate among 18-year-olds is 38%.

Generally high levels of compliance with North Carolina law yields much higher voter registration rates among 18-year-olds in North Carolina. For example, » More than 67% of 18-year-olds who reside in the Chatham and Wake County school districts are registered to vote.

Factors such as multiple opportunities to register to vote during the school year, good communication with the student body about these opportunities, district leadership in voter registration efforts, and district policies supporting high school voter registration efforts appear key to increasing youth voter registration rates.

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I. Introduction The Problem The refrain “young people don’t vote” is not true. Young people do vote, at very high rates, when they are registered to vote. But voter registration rates among 18- to 24-year-olds remain far below the rates of older Americans. That is not the fault of young people. That is the fault of an American education system that does not teach students when they are eligible to register and how to do it.

Across the country, citizens can register to vote before the age of 18, and 35 states give young citizens at least one year in which to register before the first election in which they are eligible to vote. That means virtually every eligible high school senior can register to vote before graduation day.

Yet almost no infrastructure exists to support and promote voter registration in high schools. Some state laws and policies require high schools to make voter registration forms available to high school students. Some, like California, even require schools to teach students how to register to vote. But many school administrators do not know the applicable state laws and policies, much less comply with them.

The Objective Fair Elections Center and The Civics Center conducted a case study of two states—Georgia and North Carolina—both of which have laws that require public high schools make voter registration applications available to their students. Our goal was to determine the level of compliance with state laws among representative school districts and to determine whether there is a correlation between the districts’ level of compliance and the registration rates among 18-year-olds living in the districts.

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II. Methodology Why Georgia and North Carolina?

Georgia and North Carolina have similar laws requiring public high schools to make voter registration applications available to students who are eligible to register to vote. Georgia law requires “[e]ach principal or assistant principal of every public or private high school” to “inform their students . . . of the availability of . . . voter registration [applications] and shall provide reasonable and convenient procedures to enable such persons who are qualified applicants to register.” Ga. Code Ann. § 21-2215(g); see also id. § 20-2-310(b). Similarly, North Carolina law requires “[e]very public high school [to] make available to its students and others who are eligible to register to vote the application forms [to register to vote], and shall keep a sufficient supply of the forms so that they are always available.” N.C. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 163-82.23.

Georgia law goes farther than North Carolina law, however, by requiring high school administrations to give “[e]ach eligible student . . . an opportunity . . . to register to vote at his or her school during the month of April of each year.” Ga. Code Ann. § 20-2-310(b). North Carolina law encourages, but does not require, high school social studies classes to include instruction on voter registration and local boards of education to “adopt policies to promote student voter registration.” N.C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §§ 115C-81.45(d)(1b), 115C-47(59).

In addition, a student’s ability to register to vote in time for the first election in which they are eligible to vote is especially important in states like Georgia and North Carolina, both of which have highly competitive elections. Georgia and North Carolina score high on this year’s Youth Electoral Significance Index (“YESI”) maintained by the nonpartisan Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (“CIRCLE”) at Tufts University. The YESI measures the potential of young voters to influence election results. In 2022, Georgia’s election for U.S. Senate ranks first in the YESI among all Senate races, and its gubernatorial election ranks 5th among races for governor nationwide. North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race ranks 7th on the index.1

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Georgia and North Carolina Youth Voter Registration At a Glance The main distinction between Georgia and North Carolina youth voter registration laws is the age at which students in each state can register.

We hypothesize that a contributing factor to the significant drop in registration rates among young Georgians since 2018 reported below is a lack of consistent opportunities to register to vote in Georgia high schools, as detailed more fully in this report.

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Selected School Districts For the most part, Georgia and North Carolina organize school districts by county. There are some exceptions in Georgia, especially in the metro Atlanta area. We selected districts to provide a representative sample of urban, rural, and suburban school districts, as well as varied racial demographics. The tables below provide the three largest racial/ethnic groups as reported by the school districts.2

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Public Records Requests to the Selected School Districts In March 2022 we sent requests to the selected school districts asking for all “public records” (as defined by state law) related to high school student voter registration efforts for the school years beginning with 2019-2020 through the present.

To secure responses we spoke with numerous administrators and public records officers and in some instances negotiated the scope of the requests. Every district in North Carolina provided timely responses at no cost. Districts in Georgia presented considerable administrative hurdles and costs. Almost half of the districts we contacted in Georgia sent fee estimates to comply with our requests, with the highest being $2,530 in DeKalb County. Ultimately, we were unable to obtain records from a few districts that requested prohibitively expensive fees, and a narrowed request from Fulton County Schools is still pending. Even without formal responses, however, we obtained some insight into these districts’ voter registration efforts through either partial responses or conversations with administrators.

In issuing this report, we again ask the districts that have not fully complied with our requests to provide the information we are seeking without charge or at a reasonable cost. Each district should in any event have a plan to implement and monitor full and equitable voter registration opportunities for students, consistent with state law. Providing public records would then be a very simple matter.

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Voter Files for Georgia and North Carolina We received publicly available voter files for Georgia and North Carolina dated July 6, 2022 and July 10, 2022, respectively. Both files include only birth years as opposed to birth dates. Thus, for this study we included registered voters who were born in 2004 and will therefore be 18 by the end of 2022. The registration rates calculated for this study estimated endof-year data based on registration rates achieved by early July 2022.

The voter files for Georgia and North Carolina include fields for school district, school board district, and/or county, which we used to assign registered voters to a school district. Because the voter files do not identify the school a voter attends or attended, our methodology attributes all persons born in 2004 and living in a school district to that district without regard to whether the registered voter attends a public school in the district or another school, such as a religious or other independent school, home-school, or a school in another district.

We estimated the total population of persons born in 2004 in each district using population data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey.

We then found the estimated voter registration rate by comparing the registered population to the total population. For each state we created a “scorecard” that lists each of the school districts included in our case study and its approximate registration rate among youth born in 2004.4 Improved data sources relating to population and voter registration of the youngest voters in local areas would contribute significantly to the ability to reliably track and improve rates over time.

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III. There is a Strong Correlation Between Compliance with High School Voter Registration Laws and Voter Registration Rates Among 18-Year-Olds

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A. Compliance with State High School Voter Registration Laws We rated districts based on their level of compliance with state high school voter registration laws as follows: Compliant Plus: Districts included in this category demonstrated a commitment to going above and beyond state law requirements. For example, districts in this category: • Conduct more than one voter registration drive during a school year • Communicate voter registration opportunities to the student body through multiple channels • Have multiple school administrators and/or staff members involved in planning and overseeing voter registration drives • Have a policy related to student voter registration Compliant: Districts included in this category demonstrated an awareness of their state’s law and put in place concrete steps to achieve compliance.

For example, districts in this category: • Conduct at least one voter registration drive during a school year • Communicate voter registration opportunities to the student body • Have at least one faculty or administration member at the school or district level overseeing voter registration efforts Partially Compliant: Districts included in this category provided records of some voter registration activity as required by state law. However, such activities were minimal and often limited to select high schools, rather than uniform across the district. For example, districts in this category: • Have sporadic voter registration activities • Did not produce documents indicating how the district or its school(s) communicate with students about voter registration opportunities Lack of documented compliance: Districts in this category either provided no responsive documents or information or such limited information that it was impossible to discern the district’s level of compliance.

Because both Georgia and North Carolina laws are directed to individual schools and school administrators rather than school districts, we generally extrapolated compliance at the district level to schools within that district, except where the documents provided by a district indicate low levels of implementation district-wide.

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B. Correlation Between State Law Compliance and Registration Rates Among 18-Year-Olds Living in the District

Compliance with Georgia law clearly correlates with a higher registration rate among 18-year-olds in the district. Among the selected districts, all of those with the highest voter registration rates are either compliant with or go beyond compliance with state law. Interestingly, the top three ranked districts by registration rate are also very small with only one or two high schools in each district. This suggests communicating and promoting opportunities to register to vote among smaller student bodies is easier than with a large student body. But Gwinnett County Public Schools shows that it can be done, even while serving a student body of over 180,000.

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All of the districts we contacted in North Carolina generally provide more robust voter registration opportunities than those in Georgia (despite Georgia having a slightly more rigorous state law), and their efforts show in their voter registration rates. As noted, CIRCLE also reports voter registration rates among 18- and 19-year-olds are up 15% in North Carolina over 2018 rates, and they are down by 47% in Georgia.

That disparity shows up in our data as well.

Despite Robeson County’s general compliance with North Carolina law, its registration rate lags far behind other selected districts. While we commend the district’s efforts, there appears to be a disconnect between district policy and its implementation. For example, the district reported only 10 students registered to vote in spring 2022 events at a high school with a total enrollment of approximately 1,800 students.

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IV. Key Takeaways Results in both Georgia and North Carolina show unequivocally that compliance with state laws requiring schools to provide voter registration applications to eligible students is positively correlated with 18-year-old registration rates. And higher youth voter registration rates can make a tremendous difference in youth voter turnout rates in these states.

Census data shows that, in the 2018 midterm elections, roughly two-thirds of voters 18 to 24 who were registered turned out to vote. Additionally, research shows that the earlier a person votes for the first time the more likely they are to become lifelong voters.

Particularly notable from our research is the fact that 4 out of 5 North Carolina districts have higher 18-year-old voter registration rates than all but one district we contacted in Georgia. We might attribute this gap to North Carolina’s pre-registration law, which allows students as young as 16 to pre-register to vote, as pre-registration laws have shown to increase youth voter registration rates. We might also attribute the tremendous difference between the rates in North Carolina and Georgia to the fact that three out of five of the North Carolina districts we contacted have districtlevel policies that support and promote voter registration efforts in high schools, and all of the North Carolina districts provide significant districtlevel leadership on this issue.

In fact, the registration rates among 18-year-olds in selected districts of North Carolina are on average higher than those The Civics Center has calculated in select districts in any other state. For example, in Milwaukee only 4.5% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote, while in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the rates were 15.2% and 14.5%, respectively. Fewer than 15% of 18-year-old residents in Arizona’s most populous counties, Maricopa County and Pima County, have registered to vote.

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In Florida, which, like North Carolina, allows youth to pre-register to vote beginning at age 16, large counties fare a little better. In MiamiDade County, approximately 25% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote, and in Broward County the rate is roughly 30%. A comparative analysis of the voter registration efforts among select districts of North Carolina and those in these states is beyond the scope of this study, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the select North Carolina districts have more robust voter registration efforts than the districts in the cited counties.

We encourage all school districts in Georgia and North Carolina to comply with state laws governing high school voter registration and give eligible students an opportunity to register to vote at school. These laws were enacted to advance young voters’ civic engagement, and the evidence suggests they work. State education officials should administer systems of voluntary reporting on compliance with these state statutory mandates and use non-coercive means to achieve maximum compliance.

Certainly, school districts across the country are struggling to fill many needs. Fortunately there are many nonpartisan, free resources available to districts, educators, and students to support voter education and voter registration drives in schools. We encourage school districts to support and encourage student-led efforts, which build leadership skills and engage students in our democracy. Students who are not eligible to register because of their age, residency, or citizenship status can help organize and promote drives, and they can pledge to register when eligible or ask eligible friends and family to register.

Young people will not magically learn how to register to vote and turn out in the first election in which they are eligible to vote. We must educate young people about their rights and responsibilities as active citizens and invite them into our democracy. Because most students in most states are old enough to register before their high school graduation, voter registration should be a part of every student’s high school experience.

That requires schools and school districts to acknowledge their role in educating our youngest generation of future voters. Developing the infrastructure for youth voter engagement in high schools is especially vital for students who are not college-bound, as these individuals are already less likely to vote and more likely to be underprivileged and students of color.

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About Fair Elections Center and The Civics Center Fair Elections Center is a national, nonpartisan voting rights and election reform organization based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to use litigation and advocacy to remove barriers to registration and voting, particularly those disenfranchising underrepresented and marginalized communities, and to improve election administration. Learn more about its work at www.FairElectionsCenter.org.

The Civics Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to building the infrastructure and leadership for youth voting power, starting in high school. The Civics Center integrates education, ideas, and calls to action. Through its nationwide program High School Voter Registration Week, The Civics Center trains students to organize voter registration drives in their schools and provides the guidance and physical resources they need to make their drives successful, engaging, and fun. *** The authors would like to thank and acknowledge the following individuals for their invaluable input and assistance on this report: Laura Brill, Asteris Dougalis, Stephanie King, Katie Petersen, Laya Reddy, Rich Robinson, Isabelle Shapiro, Jon Sherman, Grace Thomas, and James Wenz.

1. This information is based on the YESI published August 18, 2022.

2. Except as noted, we list the top three categories as reported by the school districts on their publicly available websites.

3. Data provided by the National Center for Education Statistics.

4. The North Carolina Secretary of State informed us that for youth born in 2004, the voter file includes persons who are already 18 and those who will turn 18 by Election Day in 2022. Thus, we estimated that the persons born in 2004 and included in the voter file represent approximately 5/6 of all youth who will turn 18 by the end of 2022 and calculated the registration rate accordingly. The Georgia Secretary of State labels persons in the voter file who are not yet 18, and we excluded them from our calculations but doubled the rates generated as of July 1, 2022, as they represent only half of the persons in Georgia who will turn 18 this year.

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