If you know a young person who hasn’t gotten around to registering to vote, there’s still time — and in California, there’s a good chance they can do it right up until Election Day.
That’s a message worth spreading across the Inland Empire and beyond, where thousands of young adults remain off the voter rolls even as campaigns pour unprecedented sums into reaching the voters they already have.
As the CEO of a nonpartisan group that works to get young Californians registered, I spend a lot of time looking at polling data. Lately, my inbox has been flooded with surveys measuring how likely voters feel about various ballot measures, the Los Angeles mayor’s race, and the contest to become California’s next governor.
But there’s a category of voter who almost never shows up in these polls: the eligible Californian who simply hasn’t registered. I’m not referring to people who can’t vote or have chosen to sit out elections. I mean the roughly 1 million young Californians who are legally eligible to vote but have never been registered — often because no one took the time to help them through the process.
Because these young adults aren’t in the voter file, pollsters label them “unlikely” to vote. But that label says more about a lack of outreach than a lack of interest. Campaigns frequently overlook young voters entirely, assuming they won’t show up, which only reinforces the pattern.
It’s a frustrating loop — and one with real consequences, since large numbers of eligible young voters are left out of the democratic process simply because no one asked them to participate.
Fortunately, California is among roughly 20 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow same-day voter registration. That means eligible residents can walk into a polling place on Election Day, register on the spot and cast a ballot that counts exactly the same as anyone else’s.
The scale of the problem is striking. According to state voter data and U.S. Census figures, nearly 300,000 California 18-year-olds — 56% of that age group — are eligible to vote but not yet registered. The state’s Secretary of State recently reported that more than 4 million eligible adults statewide remain unregistered. Among Californians roughly 18 to 25 years old, 1.4 million of the state’s 4.2 million eligible young residents have not registered, even though the state allows teens to pre-register starting at age 16.
Thanks to same-day and early registration, though, many of these young Californians still have the opportunity to make their voices heard this election cycle.
It raises an obvious question: why do the youngest eligible voters consistently get left behind? It’s certainly not for lack of financial resources devoted to this election. Ballotpedia reported last week that nearly $800 million has already been spent on California ballot measures alone — not even counting candidate campaigns. Imagine the impact if even a small portion of that spending were redirected toward helping young, first-time voters understand what’s on the ballot and get registered.
The data shows there’s real opportunity here. Our organization reviewed voter files in four states — including California — that allow same-day registration. In every case, there was a dramatic surge in 18-year-olds registering specifically on Election Day, far outpacing any other day of the year.
And perhaps unsurprisingly, people who register close to Election Day tend to actually show up and vote. Our research found that newly registered young voters turn out at notably high rates — a sign that when they register at the last minute, it’s because they genuinely want to participate, not because they were forced into it.
So the next time a new poll comes out, instead of focusing only on which candidate or measure is ahead, it’s worth asking a different question: who’s missing from these numbers, and what can be done to include them?
I’d also pose a question to the pollsters themselves: how can you be so certain that unregistered young Californians are unlikely to vote, when you never ask them in the first place?
Original source: CalMatters
