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We exist to educate, empower, and engage voters across America in order to keep democracy alive.  As a nonpartisan nonprofit, we provide access to information helping voters and potential voters make purposeful decisions on our collective future.

We are building the next generation of voters through our voter education and advocacy programs. We serve K-12, colleges and HBCUs, communities, and more!

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HOW WE WORK

Kids Voting USA is a nonpartisan, grassroots-driven voter education program committed to creating lifelong voting habits in children, increasing family communication about engaged citizenship, and encouraging greater adult voter turnout.

Kids Voting USA relies on its over twenty-five year history (since 1988), continual feedback from educators, and experience of their Affiliates when developing the model to implement programming. 

The programming model operates with five key components:

• Strong curricula for grade levels K-12, that offer easily implemented, interactive lessons at no cost to the schools.
• Choice of mock election processes to meet the individualized needs of the schools: paper ballots, electronic voting software, and/or a combination of both.
• Activities to involve families in teaching their children their own voting values.
• Educator support through local Affiliates to provide assistance with ballot creation, volunteers for activities, and resources needed for teaching civic lessons and creating voting habits.
• Continuing research on impact and effectiveness.

Kids Voting USA believes it is of primary importance to utilize local Affiliates for Educator support. The local Affiliates offer the schools the assistance needed so the already over-burdened Educator is not handed one more responsibility with no support offered. 

If there is not a local Affiliate in your area, Educators can contact Kids Voting USA directly for access to the curricula, the software voting tool, and to explore the possibility of finding the needed local support to serve as an Affiliate. 

Kids Voting USA, as of 2015, is operated under the administration of the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services & Education (aka Arizona Bar Foundation).  We invite you to review the history page  of this website to learn of the dedicated people, across the nation, who have stepped up to assure that Kids Voting USA continues to strive toward the mission of creating lifelong voting habits in children, increasing family communication about citizenship, and encouraging greater adult voter turnout.

As a national nonpartisan, grassroots-driven voter education program, Kids Voting USA relies on local Affiliates to keep the program meeting local needs and honoring our country’s founding philosophy of “We the People” as key to our democracy and this program.

Many of our Affiliates further localize their support through Sub-Affiliate groups. Other states have chosen to meet the needs of their state by having multiple main Affiliates.  You will find details of the current states offering KV USA programs below.  Our Affiliates by State:

CONNECTICUT

MASSACHUSETTS

MISSISSIPPI

NEW HAMPSHIRE

NORTH CAROLINA

NORTH DAKOTA

PENNSYLVANIA

RHODE ISLAND

SOUTH CAROLINA

SOUTH DAKOTA

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24 Ways to Grow Voters In 2024

CIRCLE recently released a new estimate that 23% of young people voted in the 2022 midterm elections . That was among the highest youth turnout rates in a midterm election in the past three decades, but the fact that only about 1 in 4 young people cast a ballot last November remains an indictment of how our communities and institutions are—and are not—preparing young people for democratic participation.

Our research frequently highlights ways to increase youth voting and address stubborn inequities in participation: from electoral laws that make it easier to register , to engaging youth based on the issues they care about . But achieving drastic improvements and eliminating, not just addressing, inequities requires major shifts in how we approach the task of ensuring all youth are informed, motivated, and ready to vote.

Our CIRCLE Growing Voters report and framework , published in 2022, features dozens of recommendations for how various stakeholders can jumpstart those structural changes. One key imperative is starting early and working year-round, not in a cyclical way that often ignores youth until a few months before an election.

We’ve distilled 24 key recommendations from the report that individuals, communities, and institutions can begin working on now —starting with one recommendation to help you assess how you can have an impact.

For starters...

• Fill out our Mapping Your Community Ecosystem tool to understand the needs and opportunities in your community to deepen and diversify outreach to young people, and to get started on an action plan based on how you can contribute.

Start Early and Start Young

• It is never too early to start building civic responsibility: Talk in children’s and teen programs about voting as one of the tools people use to improve our communities.  
• Social connections and a sense of belonging are foundational to civic engagement, and the years between national elections are the perfect time to get started! Create or support free spaces by and for teens where young people can connect with issues and with older community members through arts, media creation, and discourse—especially in ways that relatively equalize power relationships.  
• More than 8 million young people have turned or will turn 18 between last year’s midterms and the 2024 election. Seek out some newly eligible youth and help them register them to vote .  
• If your state offers pre-registration, confirm the age restrictions in your state and start helping 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register. Look for existing organizations in your community whose work registering teens and high schoolers you can plug into or check out national organizations and programs, like The Civics Center and High School Voter Registration Week , which have resources for hosting registration drives and launching new initiatives.  
• Figure out which state statutes that help grow voters are in place in your state and find out how they are being enacted in your local school and community. (These are policies like voter education programs in schools and programs that allow teens to serve as poll workers.) Use this information to create and support opportunities for engagement for young people under 18 , such as facilitating registration and GOTV in high schools.  
• As you learn more about civic education at your local schools, examine resources made available for educators and administrators by the Teaching for Democracy Alliance . Introduce the Preparing Future Voters Pledge to educators in your community and advocate for their participation.

Education Leaders: Prepare Future Voters

If you’re a school or district leader, sign the Preparing Future Voters Pledge to join a cohort of school leaders who will receive access to monthly programming from June through December 2023, including workshops, panel discussions, and curated elections and voting instructional resources.

• Ask children in your life about issues they care about, encourage them to develop their own stances and opinions, and help them hone and wield their political voice . Support youth as they learn to connect their concerns with the decisions made by local, state, and national leaders, so they understand how voting can make a difference in their communities.

Build Youth Voice and Power

• Learn about and reflect on adultism : the tendency to assume that older people and those in power know more than youth and have the best solutions. Becoming aware of this bias that adults/older people might bring to an interaction with a younger person is an important step toward our society’s capacity to develop voters. Creating systems and practices to regularly integrate diverse young people’s voices and expertise in decision-making can help combat adultism.  
• Encourage a young person to run for office . Point them to some of the many organizations and resources that offer training, support, and information for new candidates.  
• Follow news stories about issues that matter to young people in your community and seek out publications that prioritize speaking to young people as sources .  
• Support young people in exploring what civic engagement looks like “between cycles.” Invite teens and youth to join you in civic activities and help them to understand how their interests can connect to issues and opportunities for action in their communities.  
• Build systems for youth voice in your institutional planning and decision-making, such as youth advisory councils or designated roles for youth in your organization .  
• If you’re thinking about launching, volunteering for, or supporting a political campaign in 2024, plan and discuss how you are going to listen to young people  and incorporate their voices into your team and work.

Work Local and Form Partnerships

• Identify off-cycle elections this year at the state, county, and local election that you can use as an opportunity for outreach to young peopl e.

Elections in 2023

States with statewide elections in 2023 include: CO, KS, KY, LA, ME, MS, NJ, OK, OH, PA, VA, WA, WI. And localities within almost every state have elections for school board or municipal government which can be a great way for young people to connect to their local communities.

• Learn the voting laws in your state, especially those key to youth like same-day registration, automatic voter registration, and/or the ability to vote before age 18 in primaries or local elections. If they're not on the books, lobby your elected officials for them. If they are, help ensure they're being implemented and promoted effectively and equitably . Election officials can often use support doing so!  
• Track changes in voting policy that may impact young voters so you are prepared to shift information and strategies to best support young people. Organizations and outlets like  Brennan Center and Democracy Docket track the latest political and legal efforts to change voting laws.  
• Identify and connect with organizations within your community that you can partner with for 2024 education and outreach efforts . Some potential partners: your local chapter of the League of Women Voters , local youth-led organizations like those in the Alliance for Youth Organizing , or other institutions you identified while mapping Your community ecosystem.  
• Look beyond digital tools and social media to think about how to engage young people in your local community. Where do youth in your community spend time and get information offline? Are local news outlets accessible to young people, and do they report on issues in a way that supports young people’s engagement with them ? Understanding the institutions and media sources that young people are connected to can help reach them with opportunities for election learning and engagement more effectively.  
• Create, support, or amplify opportunities for young people to support the work of election offices, such as youth poll worker programs, youth-led outreach teams, and internships that allow young people to learn how elections work. Partnering with local nonprofits and schools is an effective way to facilitate the connection between young people and election offices; here’s a toolkit to help election officials get started.

Broaden Outreach and Provide Support

• Not all young people can afford to volunteer their time on civic engagement efforts. Secure funding to pay young people for their time in 2023 and 2024 so that a wider diversity of young people can participate in electoral work.  
• Reach beyond college campuses to youth-serving organizations, GED programs, youth employment programs, and other organizations that reach young people who aren’t enrolled in high school or college. With so much youth outreach happening on campuses, these groups of youth may not feel they are welcome and valuable unless you intentionally include and invite them.  
• Consider what barriers different groups of young people encounter when finding and participating in opportunities for civic learning and engagement. Do youth have or need transportation to meetings? Are work and family commitments getting in the way? Are there language barriers or distrust in some institutions? Reflect on how might your work be unknowingly perpetuating inequities in participation and strategize with partners on how to limit and overcome these barriers .
• Join our  email list to make sure you see all our upcoming research, resources, and opportunities to connect with other individuals and organizations.

CIRCLE Growing Voters

Released in 2022, the CIRCLE Growing Voters report introduces a new framework to transform how communities and institutions prepare youth for democracy. It includes major recommendations for organizations across sectors to do this work more equitably and effectively.

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About NextGen America

NextGen America is the largest national organization for engaging young people in voter education, registration and mobilization. We invite 18-to-35 year olds — the largest and most diverse generation in American history — into our democracy to ensure our government works for us and to find new solutions to the dire challenges facing our society and the world. Since 2013, NextGen America has registered more than 1.4 million young voters and educated millions more.

NextGen America is organized as a 501c4 nonprofit organization. The NextGen Education Fund is its affiliated 501c3 charitable organization. NextGen Voters the organization’s nonpartisan voter registration and education program.

About NextGen’s 2022 Program

NextGen America is embarking on a $32 million voter-outreach program aimed at reaching 9.2 million voters between the ages of 18 and 35 in eight key states in 2022. The program calls for on-the-ground field organizing in Texas, Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania as well as a distributed digital organizing program in Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin.

NextGen will establish community-level teams of professional organizers and community volunteers, who will conduct in-person voter outreach alongside a proven text-, phone-, and online-organizing program drawing on an existing national base of more than 25,000 supporters. In addition to registration, NextGen runs voter education and mobilization programs through mail, social media and influencer marketing, digital and traditional advertising and more.

NextGen aims to register more than 288,000 young people to vote during the 2022 election cycle, including 150,000 in Texas alone.

About NextGen’s 2020 Program

NextGen America contributed to the highest youth-voter turnout in U.S. history in 2020, reaching more than 10.5 million people across nearly a dozen states and motivating nearly 4.7 million to cast ballots in the November election. Across the country, NextGen reached one in every nine voters under 35 who cast a ballot in 2020. And that outreach made a demonstrable difference: of the young people registered by NextGen in 2020, 73 percent turned out to vote, compared to 60 percent of young people overall.

NextGen adjusted seamlessly to the organizing conditions of a Covid-19 pandemic, ending in-person voter-contact and building a distributed organizing team on the fly that eventually encompassed more than 25,000 volunteers. NextGen sent more than 25 million text messages, made nearly 10 million phone calls, and piloted an innovative social-media influencer program that reached more than 80 million young people.

Young Voter Facts

• An estimated 50 percent of young people, aged 18-29, voted in the 2020 presidential election, an 11-point increase from 2016 and likely one of the highest rates of youth electoral participation since the voting age was lowered to 18. [1]
• The youngest two generations of Americans (Millennials and Gen Z) represented nearly one out of every three voters in 2020, while the Baby Boomers and older generations declined to 44 percent of the electorate — underscoring the rapid generational change underway in America. [2]
• NextGen invested in 11 battleground states in 2020, including Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
• NextGen registered 122,185 young voters and collected 441,630 pledges to vote in 2020. Of the young people registered by NextGen, 73 percent turned out to vote — compared to 60 percent of young registrants overall.
• With 487 staffers on the ground and more than 25,000 volunteers, NextGen made 9.5 million phone calls, sent 27.6 million texts and sent 6.5 million pieces of mail, with an emphasis on African American and Latino youth.
• NextGen ultimately reached more than 10.5 million young voters in 2020 — contacting one in every seven eligible young voters and mobilizing one in every nine who actually cast a ballot. Nearly 4.7 million people contacted by NextGen voted, leading to the largest youth voter turnout in history.
• In 2022 and beyond, NextGen is preparing to engage the rising generations of Americans in their communities and on their terms. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the white population in the United States declined for the first time in history between 2010 and 2020 [3] , underscoring the massive demographic shift being led by Americans under 35.
• Texas is the second most populous state in America, the third-youngest and the fourth-most diverse. Texans of color accounted for 95 percent of the state’s population growth between 2010 and 2020. Non-Hispanic white Texans now make up just under 40 percent of the state’s population — down from 45 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, the share of Hispanic Texans has grown to 39.3 percent. [4]

[1] https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/half-youth-voted-2020-11-point-increase-2016

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/

[3] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/population-changes-nations-diversity.html

[4] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/12/texas-2020-census/

How States and Schools Are Working to Grow Young Voters

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Greensboro, N.C.

Student-body President Kahlil Robertson joined more than 50 of his classmates from Walter Hines Page High School as they poured off a big yellow bus on the Friday before Super Tuesday and formed a line for early voting here at the Bur-Mil Club polling station.

Candidates had been regularly coming to speak at Kahlil’s church for months, and he considered himself relatively well informed on his top issues—gun control, the affordability of health care, and higher education—but he was still nervous filling in his paper ballot.

After all, he’d never done it before.

Kahlil was among more than 170 Page High students—and more than 850 students from 28 schools districtwide—to vote for the first time as part of new civics education field trips in Guilford County Schools. The field trips, which included class discussion and instruction on the voting process, raised students’ participation in the Super Tuesday primary and student interest in the 2020 presidential primary elections here, but they also sparked concerns in the larger community that the district’s efforts to help students vote could instead influence their choices in partisan ways.

For Kahlil, the field trip helped.

“It really boosted my confidence knowing that my classmates were with me, too,” he said. “It really helps students become more aware of what they’re about to get themselves into, in the real world.”

Guilford County’s program offers one model for schools and districts under increasing pressure to help students better launch into adult civic responsibilities, after decades in which traditional civics education has done little to make voting a habit later on in life and inspire other civic behaviors.

In the last decade, 23 states have changed their rules for voting preregistration for those younger than 18, school education and registration supports for young voters, or both, according to state websites and a new audit by Tufts University’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE . In the past three years alone, nine states—Delaware, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, and Washington—tweaked registration rules to allow earlier preregistration for first-time voters. And last year, Georgia became the first state to require school boards to draft policies to excuse students who missed school to register or vote.

Those efforts are intended to help close the voting gap between younger and older voters, which reached more than 30 percentage points in the last presidential election, but a dizzying variety of voting and education rules among states can make it difficult for education leaders to know how best to support their students.

“I met them at the door when they came back this morning, and they were showing me their [“I voted”] stickers almost like a badge of honor. It was exciting to see their smiles,” said Page Principal Erik Naglee. “I think long term, creating students that are going to be lifelong voters is the biggest thing for me.”

Identifying Challenges

Among voter age groups, 18- to 24-year-olds continue to have the lowest voting rates, and their low engagement has historically been chalked up to a lack of interest in civic engagement or laziness.

Laura Brill, the founder and director of the Civics Center, a nonprofit that helps schools with civics education and youth-voting activities, argued that rather than being uninterested, most high school students are never invited to directly engage in the voting process, and many civics or social studies courses don’t include practical instruction.

“Something we see is more than 60 percent of people said they were never asked to register to vote,” Brill said. “It’s pretty eye-opening.”

Many people learn to vote and become politically active in college, according to Evette Alexander, the director of learning and impact strategy for the Knight Foundation. That lack of attention may help to explain why a new nationwide study by the foundation found voting rates tend to go up as voters acquire more education; only 14 percent of those with only a high school degree voted; that rate doubled for those with even a little college, and rose to 35 percent for college graduates.

Young nonvoters are not necessarily chronic nonvoters, Alexander found, but some students who aren’t introduced to voting in high school never get a grounding in how it works.

The Knight Foundation found both 18- to 24-year-olds and nonvoters of all ages said they found it more difficult to sort bias from facts in news and felt less certain that they had enough information to make a voting decision. In fact, young people were less likely that nonvoters of all ages to say they had not registered to vote because they didn’t care. But they were nearly twice as likely to say they hadn’t registered because it was too complicated.

Rather than apathy or a lack of media literacy, research suggests, the biggest barriers to young people voting are simple logistics: They don’t know how to navigate the registration and voting process, and they lack confidence in their media literacy around campaigns.

All those were problems for Mya Daniel of James B. Dudley High School, who also voted with her classmates Feb. 28. She had no transportation and could not have made it for early voting without help, she said, but the field trip also gave her more experience and confidence with the process.

Mya said her parents never took her with them when they voted and considered it inappropriate to discuss their own voting decisions with her.

“I would watch shows where they replicated how people voted, but honestly, I was confused about how the whole process worked,” she said. “I expected it to be much harder, really complicated, and I don’t know why.”

Mya said she felt empowered by voting and the research she did ahead of it, looking for national candidates’ stances on two of the issues she cared most about, support for agriculture and preventing police brutality.

“I like being able to have control over what goes on in the community because there’s a lot of messed-up stuff going on and I like being able to pick someone who I think would change the community,” Mya said.

State preregistration for first-time voters is one of the most effective ways to increase youth turnout, but “schools must play a key role in this,” said John Holbein, an assistant professor of public policy and education at the University of Virginia and a co-author of the new book Making Young Voters: Converting Civic Attitudes Into Civic Action .

Holbein and his colleagues have found voting-age teenagers are more likely to need help registering to vote. For example, Thessalia Merivaki, an assistant professor in American politics at Mississippi State University, found that election officials in Florida were more likely to reject young people’s voter-registration forms for technical mistakes, particularly as registration deadlines loomed for elections.

“We’ve found that preregistration is the most effective when schools do get involved with giving young people the opportunity to engage in that [voting] process, presenting in class about the importance of voting and registering to vote, demonstrating a practical process of filling out voter-registration forms, ... and then encouraging them to learn about contemporary political issues,” Holbein said. “And it really works.”

Schools’ Roles in Engaging Young Voters

State laws vary in the roles carved out for schools in getting students ready to vote. Most states, for example, allow underage students to volunteer at the polls.

In Greensboro, Superintendent Sharon Contreras said the state requires each high school to keep voter-registration materials on hand, have voter coordinators on campus, and seek to register students to vote. The field trips started this year, partly in response to a new civic-literacy law that specifically requires voter instruction. The excursions are voluntary; any student who would be 18 by the general election can opt in.

Justin Scarbro, an Advanced Placement government teacher at Page High, said the new civics education program has made him rethink his own practice. Of 130 students in five classes, he found, students knew virtually nothing about voting before he started preparing for the field trips.

“Even until, like, two days ago, there was confusion that you could go vote in the primary at 17. Just knowing when you can register—they don’t know that, or, you know, how easy registering is,” he said. “They don’t know a lot of things that seem like simple knowledge, but for whatever reason, the access to it has just not been provided on a grand scale. And that’s my fault because I’ve been teaching government for 10 years, so I’m as guilty as anybody for not being better at my job.”

The process also spurred conversations about other voting barriers students face. After helping one student look up his polling place, Scarbro noticed it was miles farther from the student’s house than Scarbro had to travel to his own polling place.

“The distance to his polling place seemed abnormally long,” Scarbro said. “I wondered if that were the case for more kids who came from low-income situations. I thought about that and I was, like, if it weren’t for this [trip], he would have to get creative about how he got to the polls.”

Avoiding Community Conflict

But incorporating voting opportunities into schools can create a minefield.

Greensboro’s program has sparked heated dissent from community members, including Linda Wellborn, the school board’s vice chairwoman, who argued that the field trips would “cause chaos in the learning environment.”

In a long post that launched a 300-comment flame war on Facebook, Wellborn voiced concern that the field trips included any voting-eligible student, not just those in social studies or civics classes, and that the excursions would be a “waste of time and loss of learning” if students forgot the documents they needed to register. She also worried that students could be pressured to vote for particular candidates at the polls, saying: “This has been haphazardly put together in a hurry, and I have to ask what is the aim of this effort—is it really civics, or is there some other purpose?”

Dozens of other commenters argued over similar concerns, often with more colorful language.

Jonathan Permar, the district’s social studies lead and the voting coordinator for the project, said the civics field trips have been in the works for months and followed the same approval and parent-permission processes as all the district’s field trips. The program included all eligible students because some may have already taken civics, he said, so “you can’t make it a course-specific trip; otherwise, you risk disenfranchising a large number of students in the district.” The district worked with principals to incorporate the program into other senior-level courses, such as English, as well as social studies.

“Having eligible U.S. citizens who happen to be high school students vote, it’s neither unethical nor is it illegal,” said Superintendent Contreras.

“One thing that saddens me, to be quite frank, is that, on one hand, we’re very negative about our young people, about our high school students, about college students, the students that fall in that 18- to 21-age range—that they’re apathetic, they don’t participate—but when we eliminate the very barriers that have been identified that keep them from voting, suddenly there’s this pushback,” she said.

“Our board has a mission that says we are preparing students for citizenship. You don’t prepare them for citizenship just by having them sit and learn about the Whigs and the Tories and history from 200 years ago,” Contreras added. “You encourage them to actively participate, and that’s what we’re doing. That’s what a democracy is.”

Guilford County is not alone in facing the tension that can bubble up in response to school voter-registration efforts.

Since 1985, Texas has required all of its more than 2,800 high schools to provide voter-registration cards to eligible students twice a year, but as of last year, only 34 percent of 232 counties with public high schools that enroll at least 20 seniors had done so, according to the Texas Civil Rights Project, which monitors compliance with the law. That’s a 20 percentage-point increase from 2017, but Stephanie Gomez, the high school campaign coordinator for the group, said she thinks the number of districts helping students register could have been higher.

Texas districts, like those in many other states, face confusing rules about who is responsible and how schools can support and prepare students. The confusion in Texas stems in part from a nonbinding opinion issued in 2018 by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. It said school districts could not transport students to polls “absent an educational purpose.” The opinion followed concerns that educators would try to influence students’ choices.

“It’s not that principals or school districts are trying to be negligent or that they are actively not trying to uphold this part of the law,” Gomez said. But, she added, “there’s a lot of fear that doing anything more than just handing the student a card for registering is a partisan stance.”

About the Citizen Z Project

U.S. public education is rooted in the belief by early American leaders that the most important knowledge to impart to young people is what it means to be a citizen. If America is experiencing a civic crisis, as many say it is, schools may well be failing at that job.

This article is part of an ongoing effort by Education Week to understand the role of education in preparing the next generation of citizens. See other stories in the Citizen Z series here .

Do you have a great idea for teaching students about civics? Share it with us .

In Greensboro, students brought little awareness of the adult fight over their field trips but they did bring a wide array of their own political leanings and issues of concern to the early-voting polls.

Alejandro Ibrahim of Page High said he regularly discusses news and politics with his parents and leads a 60-student group dedicated to getting more of his classmates to register.

Joey Hennen was “doing his homework” the night before the Page field trip, looking up candidates and their positions, he said. Joey pointed to North Carolina’s recent move to increase the age for buying tobacco from 18 to 21 as one local debate that needed teenagers’ input. But he and classmate Pierce Hudson said they are more likely to gauge national candidates by their stances on abortion and gun restrictions.

Across town, where the students from James B. Dudley High School cast their ballots in a college building of the same name, Nashon Wilhite had one straightforward political concern this cycle: jobs.

“The minimum wage affects a lot of people around our age,” Nashon said.

Looking Ahead

The 18- and 19-year-old voter turnout across 42 states hit “historic high” numbers for the 2018 midterms. More than 28 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 voted that year—more than double the 13 percent who voted in the 2014 midterms. That increase was driven in part by the 23 percent of 18- and 19-year-olds voting in the wave of student activism that followed high-profile school shootings, including the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., according to a separate study by CIRCLE.

In the nine states with Super Tuesday primaries that had reliable preliminary turnout data, CIRCLE found the youngest voters turned out at higher rates than in similar competitive primaries in 2004 or 2012. Six states had a larger share of young people voting than in prior years, but North Carolina’s youth turnout and voting share was flat.

Educators hope to sustain that civic engagement with programs like Guilford County’s, to give students more practical and hands-on instruction on voting and the elections process.

CIRCLE estimated that young voters have a high potential to affect competitive gubernatorial and congressional races in swing states such as Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Wisconsin, among others. Political watchers likewise think teenagers and 20-somethings could tip the balance in the 2020 presidential elections—if they vote.

Dudley students and teachers consider voter education a part of the school’s historic legacy of student engagement; Dudley was the first black high school in the state, and it was central to the first high-school-led sit-in during the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

“Before the civil rights [movement], we [black people] had the right but we didn’t have the opportunity to vote,” Summers said. “Now that we have the opportunity to vote, ... every vote counts, even the kids’ votes. Everybody has their own opinions, but for your opinions to be heard and make a change, you have to come in and vote.”

A version of this article appeared in the March 11, 2020 edition of Education Week as Learning to Become a Lifelong Voter

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Voter Education

Voter education means providing citizens of a democracy with basic information about participating in elections. Voter education is often provided by the state itself, often through a national electoral commission, so it is therefore important that it is politically non-partisan. Government departments that focus on voter education are often highly scrutinized by a third party. In addition, there are various private institutions whose mission it is to strengthen democratic values by increasing voter education. The focus is often on how to vote rather than  who to vote for. An appropriate voter education would provide citizens with knowledge regarding:

• How to register to vote – most democracies require citizens to first register as a prerequisite to voting in elections or referenda
• How to complete ballot papers – filling out ballots incorrectly can mean an individual’s vote is misrepresented in the final count or counted as invalid . Therefore, clearly demonstrating how ballots are to be correctly filled out is essential
• The electoral system – it is important that citizens know how their votes will contribute to the final result in an election. Is the election conducted under a system of proportional representation or first past the post ? Does it involve a more complicated preferential voting system?
• Proportional representation in the election glossary
• First Past the Post explained in the Election Glossary!
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FACT SHEET: Biden Administration Promotes Voter Participation with New Agency   Steps

Agencies Respond to President Biden’s Call for All-of-Government Action on Information on Voting and Opportunities to Register and Vote

As President Biden has said, democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend, strengthen, and renew it to ensure free and fair elections that reflect the will of the American people. Too many Americans face significant obstacles to exercising their sacred, fundamental right to vote. For generations, discriminatory policies have suppressed the votes of Black Americans and other voters of color. Voters of color are more likely than white voters to face long lines at the polls and are disproportionately burdened by overly restrictive voter identification laws and limited opportunities to vote by mail. Native Americans likewise face limited opportunities to vote by mail and frequently lack sufficient polling places and voter registration opportunities near their homes. Lack of access to language assistance is an obstacle for many voters.  People with disabilities face longstanding barriers to exercising their right to vote, especially when it comes to legally required accommodations to vote privately and independently. Members of our military also face unnecessary challenges to exercising their right to vote.

While the President continues to call on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act and pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which includes bold reforms to make it more equitable and accessible for all Americans to exercise their fundamental right to vote, he also knows we can’t wait to act. That is why on March 7, the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the President signed an Executive Order to leverage the resources of the federal government to increase access to voter registration services and information about voting, helping deliver on the promise of Congressman Lewis’ fight against these anti-voter burdens and the fight of so many others seeking to protect the right to vote before and since. Today, more than a dozen agencies across the federal government are announcing steps they are taking to respond to the President’s call for an all-of-government action to promote voting access and to further the ability of all eligible Americans to participate in our democracy.

The Executive Order is only part of the President’s efforts to protect the right to vote and ensure all eligible citizens can freely participate in the electoral process. For months, Vice President Harris has engaged the American people; civil and voting rights advocacy groups; pollworkers; and other voting populations around the country that have been historically marginalized to advance the Administration’s efforts to protect the right to vote. The President has appointed strong civil rights leadership at the Department of Justice. And he has partnered with civil rights organizations, the business community, faith leaders, young Americans, and others to activate an all-hands-on-deck effort to protect this sacred right and uphold democratic values.

The Executive Order called for each agency to submit to Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice a strategic plan outlining the ways that the agency can promote nonpartisan voter registration and voter participation. These strategic plans are just the beginning of each agency’s commitments. In the weeks and months to come, agencies will further build out their capacity to get relevant information out to the public, help eligible voters better understand their opportunities for engagement, and facilitate participation in the electoral process. 

New key early actions to implement the President’s Order include:

• • The Department of Agriculture ’s Rural Housing Service will encourage the provision of nonpartisan voter information through its borrowers and guaranteed lenders, who interface with thousands of residents in the process of changing their voting address every year. In addition, Rural Development agencies — which are spread throughout field offices across the country where rural Americans can apply for housing, facilities, or business assistance — will take steps to promote access to voter registration forms and other pertinent nonpartisan election information among their patrons.
• The Department of Defense will support a comprehensive approach to information and voting awareness for servicemembers and civilian personnel voting at home, in addition to the structure currently assisting members of the military stationed away from home and citizens overseas.  The Department will develop materials in additional languages and send nonpartisan information at regular intervals before federal elections to ensure that eligible servicemembers and their families — particularly first-time voters — have opportunities to register and vote if they wish.
• The Department of Education will prepare a tool kit of resources and strategies for increasing civic engagement at the elementary school, secondary school, and higher education level, helping more than 67 million students — and their families — learn about civic opportunities and responsibilities.  The Department will also remind educational institutions of their existing obligation and encourage institutions to identify further opportunities to assist eligible students with voter registration.
• The General Services Administration will ensure vote.gov is a user-friendly portal for Americans to find the information they need most to register and vote.  Available in over ten languages and in a format accessible for voters with disabilities, vote.gov will make it easier for eligible users to register to vote or confirm their registration status.  Agencies across the federal government will link to vote.gov to encourage Americans to participate in the electoral process. 
• The Department of Health and Human Services ’ Administration for Community Living will launch a new voting access hub to connect older adults and people with disabilities to information, tools and resources to help them understand and exercise their right to vote. The Indian Health Service will offer its patients assistance with voter registration.  The President’s Budget also requests a 25% increase in grants for the Administration for Community Living to distribute to state Protection and Advocacy systems, to provide a range of services that ensure that people with disabilities can fully participate in the electoral process.
• The Department of Homeland Security will invite state and local governments and nonpartisan nonprofit organizations to register voters at the end of naturalization ceremonies for the hundreds of thousands of citizens naturalized each year, and will develop a new online resource on voting for recently naturalized citizens.  The Department will also provide information and resources for voters impacted by a disaster or emergency event through its training preparedness initiatives.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development will communicate with public housing authorities (PHAs) — more than 3000 authorities, managing approximately 1.2 million public housing units — through a letter to Executive Directors that provides useful information to PHAs about permissible ways to inform residents of non-partisan voter registration information and services. The Department will also assist relevant HUD-funded service providers by highlighting and sharing promising practices that improve non-partisan voting registration and voting access for people experiencing homelessness. 
• The Institute of Museum and Library Services will create and distribute a toolkit of resources and strategies that libraries, museums, and heritage and cultural institutions can use to promote civic engagement and participation in the voting process.
• The Department of the Interior will disseminate information on registering and voting, including through on-site events, at schools operated by the Bureau of Indian Education and Tribal Colleges and Universities, serving about 30,000 students.  The Department will also, where possible, offer Tribal College and University campuses for designation by states as voter registration agencies under the National Voter Registration Act.
• The Department of Justice has created an online resource for the public that will provide links to state-specific information about registering and voting; detail the Department’s enforcement of federal voting rights laws and guidance it has issued to jurisdictions on the scope of those laws; and explain how to report potential violations.  The Department will also provide information about voting to individuals in federal custody, facilitate voting by those who remain eligible to do so while in federal custody, and educate individuals before reentry about voting rules and voting rights in their states.  And after the Census Bureau determines localities with specific responsibilities for language access, the Department will deliver guidance and conduct outreach to each covered jurisdiction to facilitate compliance.
• The Department of Labor will issue guidance encouraging states to designate the more than 2,400 American Job Centers, which provide employment, training, and career services to workers in every state, as voter registration agencies under the National Voter Registration Act. The Department of Labor will continue to require Job Corps centers to implement procedures for enrollees to vote, and where local law and leases permit, encourage Job Corps centers to serve as polling precincts.  The Department will also provide guidance that grantees can use federal workforce development funding, where consistent with program authority, to conduct nonpartisan voter registration efforts with participants.
• The Department of Transportation will communicate guidance to transit systems — including more than 1,150 rural public transit systems and more than 1,000 urban public transit systems — to consider providing free and reduced fare service on election days and consider placing voter registration materials in high-transit stations.  The Department will also work with state and local entities seeking to mitigate traffic and construction impacts on routes to the polls, particularly in underserved communities. 
• The Department of the Treasury will include information about registration and voter participation in its direct deposit campaigns for Americans who receive Social Security, Veterans Affairs, and other federal benefit payments.
• The Department of Veterans Affairs will provide materials and assistance in registering and voting for tens of thousands of inpatients and residents, including VA Medical Center inpatients and residents of VA nursing homes and treatment centers for homeless veterans.  The Department will also facilitate assistance in registering and voting for homebound veterans and their caregivers through VA’s home-based and telehealth teams . 

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27 Ideas for Encouraging Youth Participation in Elections

This round-up was featured in our ELECTricity newsletter in February 2021. (Note: This is a round-up of what election offices across the country are doing; CTCL does not have official policy recommendations). Sign up to receive more success stories from election offices across the country.

As election officials, you probably would agree that it’s never too early to teach someone about voting. Engaging young people helps prepare the next generation to be civically engaged citizens. And when young people learn about election processes, they are more likely to trust the election system and have faith in their local election officials. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up success stories from election officials across the country. We’ve put together 27 ideas for encouraging young people–whether they are 8 or 18–to learn about elections and get involved. Feel free to copy the ideas that would work well for your jurisdiction, and ignore the rest.

What youth engagement activities does your election office have? Let us know by filling out this brief survey . With your permission, we will publish your responses in this article so that other election officials can learn more about your work!

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Categories:

Engaging Future Voters

Social media and online outreach, poll worker recruitment, voter registration strategies, increasing youth turnout.

1. Creating special activities for young children. Many young children first learn about elections by entering the voting booth with their parents. But in Thurston County, Washington , election officials have gone a step further to engage children by creating a special activity just for them. At registration drives, they set up a five-foot cardboard cutout of Billy the Ballot Box, a cartoon character who teaches children about civic participation. Election officials tell children that Billy “grows big and strong as voters put their ballots in him.” They also pass out coloring pages and crayons for the kids to enjoy. Other election offices offer digital resources. For example, Bernalillo County, New Mexico has a whole “Civics Education” section on their website, along with links to resources for parents and educators. Davis County, Utah has an “Elections Just for Kids” section with word searches, fun facts, and other activities for future voters.

2. Hosting mock elections. What better way to teach children about voting than by letting them participate in their own mock election? Election officials across the country have implemented mock elections for kids, each with their own unique twist. In Madison, Wisconsin , election officials help children use voting machines to cast ballots for their favorite pizza toppings or superheroes. In Weber County, Utah , the County Clerk uses familiar stories like “The Three Little Pigs” to teach children about candidates, researching issues, and voting. After reading a story to the children, the County Clerk invites the children to vote on a particular issue. For instance, the children could cast a ballot to determine whether the pig or the wolf in the story would be a better leader. In Tennessee , Kentucky , and Iowa , the Secretaries of State have taken a different approach. They developed mock election programs for school students, where children can vote for their preferred presidential candidate. The states offer teachers lesson plans on civic engagement to prepare for the mock election, and results are later posted online. In Tennessee, the Secretary of State’s Office also provides schools with posters and “I Voted” stickers to engage students on social media. Election officials in Waterford Township, Michigan similarly conduct mock elections, and teach students who will soon turn 18 how to fill out a ballot.

3. Holding sticker design contests. Speaking of “I Voted” stickers, holding a contest to determine who can design the most creative sticker is another great way to engage young people. Plus, they allow young adults to reflect on the importance of voting. In jurisdictions like Adams County, Colorado , Macomb County, Michigan , Ulster County, New York, and Cape Girardeau County, Missouri , high school and college students can submit hand-drawn and digital submissions for the chance to win cash prizes or a pizza or ice cream party for their class. The City of Fairfax, Virginia Office of Elections hosts a “Future Voter” sticker contest for K-12 students. And the winning sticker design is distributed to minors who accompany their parents to vote on Election Day. Election officials in Knox County, Illinois also hand out “I Voted” stickers to children at the polls; one election official told us, “The smiles you get from the kids is priceless.” 

4. Hosting student art contests. Yet another way to combine civic engagement with creativity is by hosting art contests for students. Douglas County, Colorado creates different contest categories for students from grades K-12, including “Citizenship in My Community” and “My Vote, My Voice.” Sully County, South Dakota also hosts coloring contests for children. In Brevard County, Florida , the Supervisor of Elections’ Office invites 4th and 5th grade students to submit a poster highlighting the importance of voting. The winning artwork is framed and displayed in the elections office for one year, and the office partners with Chick-Fil-A to provide prize packages to winning students.

5. Creating future voter guides. In order to familiarize children with the registration and voting process, Leon County, Florida put together a future voter guide which features crossword puzzles and other games to teach youth about voting. Children can complete the guide with the help of a parent at home, or as part of a civics lesson in school. For young adults who are old enough to vote, Mendocino County, California put together voter information packets and distributed them in high school civics classrooms. Similarly, Idaho ’s Citizen’s Guide to Participation is an excellent resource for youth and other first-time voters. The guide is available in English and Spanish, and covers everything a new voter would need to know about voting. The comprehensive introduction includes information about registration, early and absentee voting, how to fill out a ballot, election dates and more.

6. Assembling a committee dedicated to voter education. Educating young people about voting takes time and resources. Setting up a subcommittee of staff members or volunteers to focus on youth education is a fantastic way to prioritize youth engagement while allowing other election officials to focus on other important tasks. The U.S. Virgin Islands Board of Elections recently established a subcommittee to educate students about their voting rights and options. The group will focus on registering students, familiarizing them with voting machines, and encouraging them to get out and vote.

7. Meeting with students virtually. Since 2018, the Yolo County, California Elections Office has partnered with other local activist groups to host the Youth Empowerment Summit (YES). At this annual event, high school students are invited to discuss political issues directly with elected officials. Plus, they can register and pre-register to vote if they are eligible. Due to COVID-19, the 2020 event was made virtual. It featured a youth activist panel and a roundtable discussion on social justice and human rights. To incentivize youth to participate, students had the opportunity to win cash prizes. Similarly, in Iowa , election officials participated in a virtual voter engagement summit to inform young and first-time voters about how to vote safely during the pandemic. And in Massachusetts , election officials joined the Cambridge mayor and a Harvard fellow to present a pre-election virtual panel titled “Voting, Participation, and Why it Matters.” The panelists spoke about the changes to elections due to the pandemic, youth activism, and civic engagement.

8. Going live. In another effort to adapt outreach efforts during COVID-19, election officials took advantage of live streams on social media to reach young voters with important information. During the 2020 primary election, the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office held a live Facebook Q&A session to answer voters’ questions about the new mail-in ballot process. In Dauphin County, Pennsylvania , election officials leveraged the social media site to demonstrate their new voting system and answer questions from the public. And the Cuyahoga County, Ohio Board of Elections held live updates on their Facebook page every Wednesday and Friday for two months leading up to Election Day. They kept the videos under 10 minutes long in an effort to hold their constituents’ attention. Cuyahoga County also created an Instagram account to engage younger voters on that platform.

9. Supporting the selfies. Young people love taking selfies on Election Day and posting them to social media. It’s the perfect way to let their peers know that they exercised their right to vote, while encouraging others to do the same. While many states do not allow voters to take photos of their ballots, election officials have gotten creative to support the enthusiasm for Election Day selfies. In Iowa and Illinois , two states that have laws that prohibit taking selfies while voting, local election officials set up designated selfie stations. The fun backdrops help voters resist the temptation of snapping a photo in the voting booth, while still offering an opportunity to take a selfie and post it to social media. At early voting sites in San Bernardino County, California , election officials similarly set up a station for voters to take a photo with their un-voted ballots.

10. Creating a hashtag. Creating a unique hashtag can be a wonderful way to mobilize young voters to spread the word and vote. In Oakland County, Michigan , election officials partnered with local schools to create the #VoteLoudOC campaign. Through the digital campaign, students are encouraged to register to vote and sign up to be poll workers if they are eligible. Harris County, Texas and King County, Washington also use unique hashtags like #HarrisVotes and #KCVotes to engage their younger voters on social media.

11. Encouraging young people to lead outreach efforts. In 2015, the Rhode Island Secretary of State created a program designed to allow young people engage their peers in creative, new ways. Under the Rhode Island Civic Fellowship program, participating students design and implement a non-partisan plan to engage millennials through social media. Similarly, Georgia’s Secretary of State hosted a Secure the Vote TikTok voter education challenge. The campaign was designed to encourage youth to create videos on the social media platform, TikTok, that educate their peers about Georgia’s new secure paper ballot system.

12. Updating election websites with resources for young voters. Including information tailored toward young voters on your website is a great way to engage youth and ensure that they stay up to date on the candidates and local issues. Linn County, Iowa features a page dedicated to answering questions that college students typically have about voting, like “Do I register at school or home?” The Oregon Secretary of State ’s website also has a page for student voters that addresses important questions such as “What if I study abroad?” For election officials looking to create a web portal specifically for young voters, Rhode Island’s RI Votes website is an excellent example. The interactive design directs young adults to relevant content based on their responses. For instance, those who are unsure about whether they will vote are directed to short video clips of their peers explaining why voting is important. If a user expresses that they don’t know enough about the candidates, they are offered reliable information sources so that they can make an informed decision. For those who are already committed to voting, they are directed to a website where they can register to vote online.

Note: For tips and tricks recruiting poll workers of all ages, check out our round-up of 50 Ideas for Recruiting and Retaining Election Workers .

13. Recruiting young students to help with elections. In most states, a person must be at least 16 years old to serve as a poll worker. But in jurisdictions like Montgomery County, Maryland , election officials have come up with creative ways for younger students to get involved. Through their Future Vote program , students in the 6th grade and up can set up polling places, provide administrative assistance, offer language support, or conduct voter education. The program increases future voters’ knowledge of the electoral process, and has seen impressive results. Over 38,500 students have participated in Future Vote since 2004. In Watertown, Minnesota, election officials also recruit younger students to assist in elections. One election administrator shared, “The great thing about this is that when the students turn 18, many of them want to become one of my election judges and it gets them very interested in the election process. Many of them are excited to have their friends come in to vote to see them working!”

14. Recruiting high school students to be poll workers. In many states, the average poll worker is over 65 years of age. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, many high school students stepped up so that older populations vulnerable to the virus could stay home and stay safe. Election offices across the country, like Wyandotte County, Kansas began amping up recruitment efforts of high school students in 2020. Other offices, like Minneapolis, Minnesota have been actively engaging high school students for years. Your election office might consider creating a communications strategy to ask colleges and high schools to recruit both teachers and students, like the Virginia Department of Elections did. Recruiting high schoolers has so many benefits. These younger poll workers tend to be more technologically savvy, and often serve as a great source of bilingual election workers . Plus, getting involved helps students understand the importance of civic participation so that they become lifelong voters. It is important to think about what kind of incentive is appropriate for your local high school students. For example, many election offices offer payment or work with schools to offer extra credit. Alaska offers students the honorable title of “Youth Vote Ambassador.” And the D.C. Board of Elections offers community service hours. Finally, using an online application makes the process as simple as possible for prospective poll workers.

15. Encouraging students to adopt a precinct. Election offices with Adopt-a-Precinct programs hope to make serving as a poll worker even more exciting and fun for high school and college students. Instead of serving alone, students can sign up to be poll workers with their entire sports team, sorority or fraternity, or community group. Precincts benefit by receiving large numbers of enthusiastic and tech-savvy election workers. And students benefit by raising funds for their school programs or organizations. While some election offices, like Washoe County, Nevada launched their first adopt a polling place program in 2020, others have been running their programs for decades. Orange County, Florida started their Adopt-a-Precinct program back in 1998 and has distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to participating organizations over the years.

16. Recruiting students with disabilities. In Boone County, Missouri , the County Clerk has worked with The University of Missouri to recruit and train college students with disabilities to serve as poll workers. Election officials partnered with the university to develop recruitment and training materials to meet the specific needs of the students. By including young people with disabilities, election officials were able to receive feedback from the new poll workers about how to make their polling places more welcoming to all voters.

17. Hiring younger poll managers. In an effort to get youth involved in elections in a lasting way, the Muscogee County, Georgia Elections and Registration Office has recently focused on hiring younger poll managers. These election officials, who are as young as 21 years old, have played a key role in recruiting poll workers and engaging new voters. Plus, hiring younger staff members ensures the ongoing success of an election office. Muscogee County Elections and Registrations Director Nancy Boren explained, “You hope to build a legacy…so that when you’re ready to step down and let the young people take over, there’s experience to do that.” Other jurisdictions, like the City of Falls Church, Virginia, has an internship program designed to engage youth representatives over time. 

18. Hosting essay contests. Once students in Tennessee complete their duties as poll workers, they are invited to participate in an essay contest designed by the Secretary of State’s Office. The competition offers students the opportunity to reflect on the importance of their work and the work of election officials. To encourage participation, the first-place winners receive a $1,000 scholarship. Essay contests can easily be conducted at the local level as well, and can involve younger students. For instance, the Borough of South Plainfield, New Jersey , held an essay contest for grades 7-12 to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment. In addition, The Association of Indiana Counties invited 4th grade students to interview election administrators and write about how they fairly and efficiently administer elections. This gave students a unique opportunity to gain insight into election processes at a young age.

19. Pre-registering high school students. While of course you must be 18 years old to vote, 23 states and DC allow people as young as 16 years old to pre-register. That way, once their 18th birthday comes around, they will be immediately registered. Chief election officials from states like California and Iowa regularly visit with high school students to encourage them to pre-register. In past years, the Ohio Secretary of State has sent voter registration packets to high school civics teachers for them to distribute to graduating seniors. The packets contained a letter, a voter registration form, and information about how to sign up as a poll worker.

21. Registering young voters in creative ways. In jurisdictions throughout the country, election administrators have adapted their programs after COVID-19 made large voter registration drives unfeasible. One benefit is that these new initiatives typically make it as easy as possible for young people to register to vote. In Travis County, Texas , for example, new voters can register via a text-2-register app. After sending some basic information through text messages, residents receive a link to a completed online form, which they can print out at home and send back to the county office. Election officials say the new program will also make their jobs easier. The program won’t let someone submit an application unless all of the information is entered, so election officials will no longer receive incomplete applications.

22. Writing a letter to the editor. Publishing content in student-led media sources is an excellent way to reach young people directly. In Missouri, the Boone County and Greene County Clerks submitted a letter to the editor in a student newspaper encouraging young people to register to vote. In the message directed to college students, the County Clerks wrote, “As local election authorities, we both remember well our first votes cast in a presidential election and we know how important it is that every voter has the tools they need to make their voice heard.”

23. Expanding the electorate. In an effort to improve access to voting for historically underserved groups, election administrators in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Tucson teamed up with youth leaders to identify the challenges that prevent youth from casting a ballot. The collaboration worked to develop targeted solutions for low-income communities and Black and Brown communities. For example, The King County Elections Office expanded registration efforts to housing-insecure youth. And in Tucson, the election officials increased voter education efforts to young people who incorrectly believed that they were disenfranchised because of a criminal record or other issues. As a result of the program the Center for Information on Civic Learning and Engagement created a report with 10 recommendations for improving voter participation among low-income youth.

24. Opening vote centers on college campuses. If your state allows vote centers to be set up on college campuses, it can be an excellent way to engage young voters. The California Secretary of State has partnered with universities to set up vote centers on college campuses, making it easy and convenient for students to vote. Through the California Students Vote Project , all major colleges have commitments to partner with the Secretary of State’s office to encourage civic engagement efforts. And last year in Georgia , state and local election officials worked with the University of Georgia to set up a voting venue at the university’s basketball arena. The Stegeman Coliseum, which has a seating capacity of 10,500, was large enough to accommodate safe social distancing measures.

25. Setting up drop boxes on college campuses. During the 2020 presidential election, election officials made it easier for college students to cast their ballots by setting up drop boxes on campuses. These initiatives are particularly beneficial for first-year students without a car, or who don’t know the surrounding area well. In La Plata County, Colorado , the County Clerk and Recorder set up a 24-hour ballot box at Fort Lewis College so that students could vote at any time that was most convenient for them. Benton County, Oregon similarly offers drop boxes with 24-hour access at Oregon State University. Plus, voters receive a pamphlet that lists the locations of every drop box in the county.

26. Partnering with university athletic departments. In an effort to increase voter participation among students and student athletes, Michigan State Athletics partnered with local election officials in Ingham County and the East Lansing City Clerk’s Office . Together, they conducted virtual town halls to provide information about voter registration and answer any questions or concerns from students. Election officials helped to set up satellite voting locations on campus, and collaborated to produce voter education materials, including PSAs and infographics.

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Voter Education Toolkit

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]The SABE Voter Education Toolkit is a guide created by leaders in the self advocacy movement to help people teach voter education trainings in their communities. The SABE Voter Education Toolkit includes 8-10 hours of training about registering to vote, voter rights and responsibilities, how to learn about candidates and issues, different ways that people vote, and how to increase partnerships between self-advocacy groups and protection and advocacy organizations .

All of the SABE Voter Education Toolkit and Training Materials are online and you can download and use them in your own training, free of charge .

Voter Education Toolkit Overview

The Voter Education Toolkit is comprised of the components listed below. The most important item is the Facilitator or Trainer Manual which teaches you how to educate people with disabilities about voting. The other components offer further support to improve your training effectiveness and resources you can use in your training, such as PowerPoint slides, handouts and training activities.

Voter Education Toolkit Components:

• Facilitator or Trainer Manual2019
• PowerPoint Slides2019

2020 PowerPoint Slides

• Topic 1 SABE GoVoter ppt Introduction
• Topic 2 SABE GoVoter ppt How Voting Fits Into Your Life
• Topic 3 SABE GoVoter ppt Registering to Vote
• Topic 4 SABE GoVoter Rights and Responsibilities
• Topic 5 SABE GoVoter ppt How Do You Vote
• Topic 6 SABE GoVoter ppt Ways to Learn About Candidates and Issues
• Topic 7 SABE GoVoter ppt Ways to Get Around
• Topic 8 SABE GoVoter ppt Civic Engagement
• Topic 9 SABE GoVoter ppt Building a Voting Community

Supplemental Materials

• How Do You Vote Handouts and Training Activities

Voting Videos

• Tips for a Successful Training
• SABE GoVoter Distance Training Plan Form 2021

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_tta_accordion style=”modern” color=”juicy-pink” active_section=”0″ no_fill=”true” collapsible_all=”true” css=”.vc_custom_1601573281553{background-color: #e8e8e8 !important;}”][vc_tta_section title=”Chapter 1″ tab_id=”1601572674963-fbc243c7-02aa”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Manual” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Powerpoint” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Big Paper Discussion Question” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]

What is the most important voting question you would like us to answer today?

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Handouts” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Agenda” color=”danger” align=”center”][vc_btn title=”Get to Know Each Other” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Videos” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Chapter 2″ tab_id=”1601572674996-bed4c31a-acfe”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Manual” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Powerpoint” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Big Paper Discussion Question” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]

How does voting fit into your life?

What are other things you vote on?

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Handouts” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Candy Handouts” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Videos” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Why Voting is Important” color=”danger” align=”center”][vc_btn title=”30 Second PSA” color=”danger” align=”center”][vc_btn title=”NEW SA & Civil Rights Video” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Chapter 3″ tab_id=”1601572721879-b2a47a9b-4a3e”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Manual” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Powerpoint” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Big Paper Discussion Question” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]

Where can you register to vote?

What makes registering hard?

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Handouts” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Find Your State to Register to Vote” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Videos” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Chapter 4″ tab_id=”1601572750012-1f93a8ce-5c05″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Manual” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Powerpoint” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Big Paper Discussion Question” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]

What are the voting rights in your state?

What are your responsibilities as a voter?

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Handouts” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Videos” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Voting Rights” color=”danger” align=”center”][vc_btn title=”My Vote Poem by Jeff Ridgeway” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Chapter 5″ tab_id=”1601572751305-50be621c-1a11″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Manual” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Powerpoint” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Big Paper Discussion Question” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]

Who would you vote for and why?

What would change your mind and why?

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How do you vote in your state?

Where can you vote in person? If your state allows you.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Handouts” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Videos” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Chapter 7″ tab_id=”1601572753634-18099591-89d6″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Manual” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Powerpoint” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Big Paper Discussion Question” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]

Solutions to Getting around voting problems.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Handouts” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Change Activity cards to Getting around voting problems” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Videos” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Possible Problems Video” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Chapter 8″ tab_id=”1601572754280-21b95333-3559″][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Manual” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Powerpoint” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Community partners you work with now” color=”danger” align=”center”][vc_btn title=”Other voting groups” color=”danger” align=”center”][vc_btn title=”How can you work together on voting efforts in your state?” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Big Paper Discussion Question” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]

What are other ways you can get involved in Civic engagement?

Voting Coalition: How can you develop a working group?

SABE GoVoter Distance training plan

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Handouts” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][vc_btn title=”Link to SARTAC Coalition Building Toolkit” color=”danger” align=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Videos” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Chapter 9″ tab_id=”1601572754923-723358f4-e54c”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Manual” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Powerpoint” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Big Paper Discussion Question” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]What is the most important voting question you would like us to answer today?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Handouts” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/5″][vc_custom_heading text=”Videos” font_container=”tag:h4|text_align:center” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:500%20bold%20regular%3A500%3Anormal”][vc_separator][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_accordion][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_row_inner el_class=”featuredBox red” el_id=”govoter_manual”][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]

Facilitator or Trainer Manual

This Trainer Manual (8th Edition) features over 90 pages of instruction detailing how to effectively present to and train people with disabilities about all aspects of voting. The manual is divided into 10 chapters with instruction detailing how to present the GoVoter training.

Trainer Manual Topics:

• Introduction to the Training
• How Did We Get to Where We are in Voting
• Registering to Vote
• Rights and Responsibilities
• Ways to Learn About Candidates and Issues
• How Do You Vote?
• Ways to Get Around Voting Problems
• Civic Engagement: Get Involved with Your Voting Community
• Best Practices for Partnering
• Evaluating the Training and Getting Feedback

The Trainer Manual is available for download as a PDF , or as a text-only version .

Download the Facilitator/Trainer Manual [PDF]

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PowerPoint Training Slides

The PowerPoint is a complete presentation you can use in your training. It including participant introductions, voter rights laws, featured topics such as places people can register to vote or cast their ballot, voting responsibilities, how to learn about candidates and issues, role playing, how to vote, using voting machines, how to get around voting problems, and much more.

The PowerPoint allows state training teams to add specific voting rules that their state uses. You can use the PowerPoint training slides exactly as they are when you present, or adapt them to meet your specific needs.

Download the Training Slides [PPT]

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Handouts and Training Activities

You are welcome to use the following handouts and training activities in your GoVoter training.

• SABE GoVoter Project Agenda [PDF]
• Get to Know Each Other [PDF]
• Candy Ballot 1 [Word Doc]
• Candy Ballot 2 [Word Doc]
• Voting Rights [PDF]
• Activity Cards [PDF]
• Partnering Guide [PDF]
• SABE GoVoter Distance Training Plan Form 2020
• Vote Evaluation Form [Word Doc]
• GoVoter certificate award with one and two signatures 2023

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The following are videos you can show in your training sessions. Some of the videos address common problematic situations voters with disabilities may face when trying to vote (e.g. “What would you do in this situation?”) — others are videos from different states.

Training Videos:

• What’s Important to You? (30 seconds)

Possible Problems at the Polling Place Videos:

• Rude pollworker (1min 45sec)
• You’re in a voting booth and you don’t know what to do (1min 32sec)
• You don’t know how to get information (2min 59sec)
• The pollworker says you can’t vote (2min 11sec)
• The pollworker asks for your guardian (1min 35sec)

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ELECTORAL FRAMEWORK

Electoral participation, electoral management, electoral integrity, electoral operations.

Basic Voter Education Education in support of the electoral process has become known as "voter education" where a  voter is the primary target. There are a number of other areas of education required if an election is to be successful,. But these may variously be conducted by political parties and election administration officials. Voter education, on the other hand, is considered to be a separate and discreet function. It is usually identified as a function of the electoral authority and is occasionally subcontracted by them to private companies and civil society organisations. It is also fostered by public interest organisations independent of any mandate from the election authority. What is Voter Education? At its core, voter education is an enterprise designed to ensure that voters are ready, willing, and able to participate in electoral politics. It has been assumed that this entails election literacy and confidence that the electoral process is appropriate and effective in selecting governments and promoting policies that will benefit the individual voter. Is Voter Education Sufficient for Democracy? As indicated elsewhere in this topic area, voter education is essential to ensuring that voters can effectively exercise their voting rights and express their political will through the electoral process. If voters are not prepared or motivated to participate in the electoral process, then questions may arise about the legitimacy, representativeness, and responsiveness of elected leaders and institutions. At the same time, voter education is a much focused undertaking. It is targeted at eligible voters and addresses specific electoral events as well as the general electoral process. While voter education is a necessary component of the democractic electoral process, it is not sufficient for democracy. Voter education needs to be supplemented by on-going civic education efforts in order to achieve the democratic participation and culture that flows from and is, in fact, the rationale for periodic elections. Civic education employs a broader perspective than voter education. It is concerned with citizens, rather than voters, and emphasizes the relationship between active citizenship and democratic society. It is understood that citizens must engage the political process routinely, not just at the time of elections (for more on this see  Civic Education ) Certainly, participation in elections and the status of "voter" have a special weight in transitional countries holding founding elections and where the right to vote has been obtained through social struggle. As the democratic world moves toward a universal franchise, however, voting is viewed as one of the many ways in which citizens participate in and support democracy. International Comparisons The scope of voter education efforts required in any given country will depend upon a variety of factors. Does the country have a long history of democratic elections, or is this a founding or transitional election? Is voter registration mandatory or voluntary? Who is responsible for voter registration? Has the franchise been extended to include new groups of voters? Have there been changes to the system of representation or the voting process? Do the electoral process and political institutions enjoy the confidence of the electorate? Is the election campaign open and competitive? Have voter education efforts been undertaken in the past? Is there an on-going civic education effort? The answers to all of these questions and more will impact on the nature and reach of the voter education programme. Whose Responsibility? While voter information is certainly the responsibility of the election authority, voter education can easily be viewed as the responsibility of both of the election authority and civil society. A variety of other government agencies may also have some role in informing and educating citizens. The mandate of the election authority or other government agencies may be determined on the law, while civil society organisations may have, as part of their mission, a commitment to voter education and citizen political participation. The need to educate people to take part in elections is not at issue. Whether these people are children or adults, there are many educational needs that relate to the conduct of elections.  But there are also the needs related to active participation in competitive politics. One educational activity involves the use of mock or parallel elections. In Chile, for example, children accompany their parents to the polls on Election Day and actually cast ballots in a parallel election. In other cases, mock election activities may either be narrowly focused on voting behavior or incorporate the entire electoral campaign. Having children run for election or campaign for others provides important lessons that cannot be learned through an approach that focuses solely on Election Day activities. Aims of Traditional Voter Education Traditional voter education aims to create of a climate of knowledgeable participation by all potential voters in a forthcoming election. Is also seeks to enable potential voters to cast their votes with confidence. These objectives may also be achieved through other interventions, and educators will want to establish programmes that work in conjunction with initiatives that address such issues as voter security, basic voting procedures, accessible voting stations, and lively but nonviolent and least intimidating campaigns on the part of candidates. Balancing voter education programmes against these other interventions is important in ensuring that budgets are not inflated. Costs of voter education programmes can and should be based on cost-per-voter estimates. It may be argued, and is on occasion argued, that elections, however expensive, are cheaper than war or endemic community conflict. This is true, but the purpose of democratic elections is to ensure ongoing periodic elections, and this cannot be done extravagantly forever. Costs need to be weighed carefully and cost effective programmes developed. Sometimes this may require constraining the objectives that really have to be achieved by the programme in order to have an effective election. Timing of Information The timing of voter education may - or may not - be the same as that of a voter information programme, although they are likely to run concurrently at some points. In particular, the timing of a voter education programme may depend upon the duration of the programme, the institution undertaking the programme,  the mandate or mission of that institution, the parameters of the programme, the types of instructional materials being developed, and the needs of the target group(s). In settings where there is no permanent election authority and where resources are limited, a voter education programme may only be conducted at the time of elections and in conjunction with any voter information efforts. In some cases, voter education may be initiated somewhat earlier than voter information, particularly if major changes are being made to a country's system of representation and legal framework for elections, where the franchise is being extended, and where significant changes are made to political and electoral processes. In countries with longer standing democracies and where there is a permanent election authority and sufficient resources, however, voter education may be an on-going activity. Depending upon the mandate of the election authority and the mission of certain civil society organisations, voter education may be handled through a broader civic education program as a component thereof. If conducted through the school system, a voter education short course may also be incorporated as part of a broader civic education curriculum. This course might be offered to children of various ages, or only to those approaching voting age. The amount of time spent on voter education in this case may also depend upon the depth and breadth of the course in question. Role playing, mock campaigns and elections, and learning exercises both inside and out of the classroom may be included. Activities might be limited to a particular class or include all classes and a number of grades. There might even be competitions between schools. The more thorough and complex the course, the greater amount of time that will need to be dedicated. Additional information on simulations can also be found under Simulations Messages and Methods Helping citizens understand and participate in elections, other than as a contestant or supporter of a contestant (an important and under exploited form of education),requires concentration on a few key concerns. These seem to have somewhat universal significance, although each election may have its own special features.  Educators will also have methodological considerations. These are addressed in  Potential Programme Elements . Various programme elements may be appropriate depending on the resources available and the objectives that have been set by the education organisation or, alternatively, by the organisation sponsoring the programme. Methodological variations demonstrate that voter education falls between "voter information" and "civic education". Standard Voter Education Messages Voter educators make use of certain standard messages. Standardisation implies two things. Certain key elements of a message must be conveyed and A message document can be reproduced as is or be recast for further distribution. There are four general messages that all voter education programmes will communicate. This will require that educators work with content specialists to ensure that the messages are discussed in ways that have meaning for the particular country in which democracy is being developed. Each country has its own history, and this history provides organising themes and democratic myths as well as procedural and principled nuances that will require a different treatment from that prepared even in a neighbouring country. It is possible, however, to outline the concerns that are likely to be addressed in each area. Elections and democracy:. It is impossible to conceive of democracy in a modern and complex organisation or society being possible without a system of establishing the choices of large bodies of citizens through voting procedures. Elections are one of the defining events of modern democracies,, With periodic and fair elections come the additional prerequisites that citizens will have choices between individuals, parties, and policy options. They will also have the freedom to make these choices without undue intimidation, and will have the right to put themselves or others forward as candidates for office. Finally, they will have the necessary freedoms to discuss policy options and to form associations that will either compete in elections, or endorse certain candidates or parties, and/or provide them with the information and discussion they need to make their election choices at the ballot box. They will also have the freedom of movement to campaign on behalf of their cause or candidate throughout the country. Developing these arguments is essential, as it is possible that there will be those who may think that elections could be conducted without such conditions being in place. In India, the election authority must determine whether such conditions are present before allowing an election to proceed. But there have been other times, in other places, when elections have been used to develop credibility and apparent legitimacy for a government that has no intention of ensuring that the necessary democratic rights are present during an election period. The role, responsibility and rights of the voter. The second message area provides citizens with motivation for participation in elections. They learn how individual participation in elections establishes representative government and ensures accountability by those who are elected. It is not enough, however, merely to concentrate on roles and responsibilities. Educators must also consider the rights to a free and fair election. Helping voters understand these rights facilitates election monitoring by all citizens and not just specialised groups. It ensures oversight of both candidates and the election administration. Your vote counts. While all systems present the principle that every vote counts, there are some nuances in message depending on the electoral system used. In first past the post systems, electoral success or failure may be determined by a small number of votes where there will be a marginal winner and loser. In systems that use proportionality, every vote counts toward building up the proportional representation of the voter's preferred candidate. Apart from the numbers game, voters need to be made aware that each individual vote has weight in determining the rights that they have over the elected party or representative once the election has been won or lost. If a representative relationship cannot be formed between citizens and elected officials, citizens may begin to feel that their vote does not, in fact, count for much. Your vote is secret. There are many circumstances where it is essential that voters be protected from intimidation and fear of subsequent political and personal consequences. In such circumstances, the message that a vote is secret has to be conveyed and, possibly, proved. Secrecy has both positive and negative connotations, and in societies that value community, secrecy may be suspect. Or there may be societies that consider secrecy to be impossible, whether as a result of dysfunctional administration or prevailing belief structures. In these circumstances, examples of matters that are secret, or that cannot be found out, provide educators with potential metaphors for the voting process. And there may be alternative approaches. Perhaps the most powerful is when elections are repeated and no dire consequences befall voters. But election legislation will have to back up the message by considering carefully the manner in which counting of votes takes place and results are announced. An individual vote may be secret, but a community preference may not, and this can have equally important consequences. Other Messages Each election will have an additional set of standard messages appropriate for the particular election. In many cases, these messages will include a catch phrase that can be used for shorter communications such as stickers, posters and clothing. These messages need to be prepared by educators in a form that can be widely used. They may even form part of a fax data bank so that educators with access to the correct telephone and fax facilities can dial in and obtain copies of the messages for further use and distribution. Those countries with e-mail and Internet access can provide distribution through these means. In addition to these standard messages, there is an additional standard message tool that has obtained wide currency and may even be the most important and widely distributed document prepared by an education programme. This is the Frequently Asked Questions document. Frequently Asked Questions From the very beginning of an election, educators will start collecting lists of questions being asked in workshops, in telephone calls, and by election staff as they are recruited and trained. These questions should be catalogued and categorised. When there is an initial list of about ten questions, succinct answers should be prepared and the document containing the question followed by the answer made available in as many ways as possible. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) list may be altered many times during the course of an election. Additional questions will be added, and additional information will be available that might change current answers or add to them. Someone should be given the task of keeping the list up to date and distributing it. Because it will change often, and may be sent out by fax or e-mail, or even distributed at training workshops, it is essential that every version be numbered, dated, and in the last days before an election even timed. If the FAQs are being prepared by an organisation or by the electoral authority, it should have a cover that gives all the details of the organisation that prepared and distributed it, together with ways of making direct contact for further information. There may be separate FAQs for election administration staff and for educators. It is important to understand that different people have different questions. Whatever the case, this summary of all the concerns that people have about the election and the short and authoritative answers will be a tool that can have an impact that will more than justify its preparation costs. Election Supplier Directory voter education Basic voter education. EISA - Promoting Credible Elections & Democratic Governance in Africa Elections Canada International IDEA United Nations. Electoral Assistance Division (EAD) INE - Instituto Nacional Electoral United Nations Development Programme The Carter Center Privacy Policy Terms of Use Accessibility Copyright and Disclaimer © 1998-2024 ACE project for Education Google Classroom Google Workspace Admin Google Cloud We're making Gemini available for teenage students to help them learn confidently. Learn more about this and other product updates. Students can soon learn confidently with gemini. learn more ., products that power education. Google for Education tools work together to transform teaching and learning so every student and educator can pursue their personal potential. Get started with Google Workspace for Education Get started Use Google tools together to drive educational impact Support learning with google workspace for education’s simple, secure, and flexible tools. Help your institution collaborate easily, streamline instruction, and keep the learning environment safer with tools designed for students and teachers. Manage, measure, and enrich learning experiences with Google Classroom Provide an easy way for educators to connect with their students and manage their classes with an all-in-one place for teaching and learning. Manage your education ecosystem with Chromebook Equip your school with versatile, intuitive, and secure devices designed for next-generation teaching and learning. 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Contact sales Find a partner What’s happening in education New ai tools for google workspace for education, updates on how we're using ai to support students and educators, get more out of google’s education tools with education navigator, more ways to connect:. We’re here to help Learn more about our products, find a purchase partner, and get specific answers from our support team any time. Get support You're now viewing content for a different region. For content more relevant to your region, we suggest: Sign up here for updates, insights, resources, and more. Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player Republicans are turning Biden’s voter registration order into a partisan flash point Hansi Lo Wang A sign saying “Register & vote!” is on display at the King County elections office in Renton, Wash., in 2020. Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images hide caption In these final months before this fall’s election, Republican officials are ramping up attacks on a three-year-old executive order President Biden issued to try to get more eligible voters signed up to cast ballots. The order calls for federal agencies to promote voter registration and participation in ways that are “consistent with applicable law.” Many election experts see the effort as a worthwhile attempt to take advantage of the regular interactions eligible voters have with the government and address long-standing barriers to the ballot, including those facing people of color , those with disabilities , those in federal custody and those serving overseas in the U.S. military . “It is our duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so,” the 2021 order says. But now, as the Democratic president faces reelection, his order has sparked growing pushback from the right, most recently congressional subpoenas to agency directors from the GOP-controlled House Administration Committee and an attempt by a group of Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania to get the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a dismissed lawsuit over the order. Backed with no substantial evidence, GOP lawmakers and state election officials, along with right-wing activists, have launched a barrage of claims that the Biden administration is using this order to overstep the federal government’s role in elections, garner more Democratic voters and register non-U.S. citizens, who cannot legally vote in federal elections. “This Executive Order is another attempt by the Biden Administration to tilt the scales ahead of 2024,” Republican Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chair of the House Administration Committee, said this month in a press release referencing “Bidenbucks,” what has become shorthand for unsubstantiated allegations that the administration is misusing federal tax dollars to benefit Biden’s reelection campaign. Why there's a long-standing voter registration gap for Latinos and Asian Americans What the order has actually done, however, has not fully satisfied its supporters. A few federal agencies have started new partnerships with states to help with voter registration, and others have released guides, mailers and updated websites. But it’s unclear how many new voter registration applications the order has yielded so far. What the executive order says and has done A main part of Biden’s order builds on existing federal laws that have carved out roles for federal agencies in the process of signing up voters. “It's a nudge encouraging federal agencies to do more to help people register,” says Dan Tokaji, an election law expert, who serves as dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School. “Until recently, the complaints were really the federal government wasn't doing enough, not that they were doing too much to advance voter registration.” Under the National Voter Registration Act , states must designate U.S. military recruitment offices in their state as official voter registration agencies, which are required to distribute registration forms, help people fill them out and hand off completed forms to state election officials — all with restrictions on any partisan activity. States can also partner with other local offices of the federal government to designate them as voter registration agencies. “But there was no real fire under them to do that,” Tokaji explains. Since Biden’s order, Kentucky and Michigan have announced voter registration designations for Veterans Affairs facilities in their states, and the White House has touted designations for a tribal university in Kansas and a tribal college in New Mexico operated by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Education. Michigan has also said it’s made an agreement to send state election officials to register eligible voters at local outreach events organized by the U.S. Small Business Administration. In December 2023, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, designated the Detroit Veterans Affairs Medical Center, shown here in 2014, as a voter registration agency in the state. Paul Sancya/AP hide caption Why Republicans are attacking it Partisan fights over voting policy have intensified since former President Donald Trump’s administration, and Biden’s order has become the latest target for Republican critics. The order directed federal agencies to submit to the White House strategic plans on how they can promote voter registration and participation. While some of those plans were made public after Freedom of Information Act requests by right-wing activist groups, many GOP officials have slammed the administration for a lack of transparency. West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner recently led a group of GOP state election officials in a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court for the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the order. In March, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Wilson, a Trump appointee, dismissed the lawsuit after finding that the Republican state lawmakers who brought it do not have legal standing, or the right to sue. Still, in an April press release , Warner called Biden’s order “Federal overreach.” “West Virginia will emphatically not give up our State’s duty to register voters in a nonpartisan manner to the Federal Government, nor will we accept voter registration forms collected by Federal agents,” Warner’s statement declared. The state has not announced any partnerships with federal offices on voter registration since the order’s release. But asked by NPR whether Warner considers U.S. military recruitment offices — from which West Virginia is required to accept completed forms — as “Federal agents,” Michael Queen, a spokesperson for Warner, clarified in an email that “West Virginia will follow all state and federal laws concerning the acceptance of voter registration forms.” West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, a Republican, recently led a group of GOP state election officials in a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court for a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of President Biden's executive order. Jeff Dean/AP hide caption Claims about Biden’s order “federalizing” the voter registration process leave out key context from the National Voter Registration Act, says Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who, before leaving the Biden administration in 2022, helped carry out the executive order as the White House’s senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights. “States have to start the dance,” Levitt says, referencing how the federal law leaves it up to states’ discretion to designate federal offices as voter registration agencies, in addition to the required designations for military recruitment offices. And some states have chosen to do that “in order to make life a little bit more convenient for people seeking service from federal agencies,” Levitt adds. Aside from claims that the administration is overstepping its authority, some Republican officials have also started linking Biden’s order to concerns about noncitizens voting in federal elections — a rare and illegal practice. In March, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote to the Justice Department about new requirements for prisoners in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service to be notified of the right to ask for voter registration information from the facility where they’re being held. Citing concerns that “this program could lead to the registration of illegal aliens in Mississippi,” Watson wrote it is “quite shocking” that the Biden administration “has chosen to expend tax dollars and vital law enforcement resources on a program that risks bloating state voter rolls with ineligible and non-citizen voters.” Asked by NPR for any evidence that a noncitizen in the U.S. marshals’ custody was encouraged to illegally register to vote because of this new requirement, Watson did not directly respond, saying instead in a statement: “Witnessing the secrecy surrounding the White House, Department of Justice, and most every other federal agency from whom we have asked for answers, we, nor anyone else, have any idea how deeply imbedded Executive Order 14019 has become and who may or may not be acting on it.” 1 in 10 eligible U.S. voters say they can’t easily show proof of their citizenship Republicans in Congress are trying to reshape election maps by excluding noncitizens The addition of talking points about noncitizen voting to Republican critiques of Biden’s order shows how it has become a “blank slate” for claims that risk undermining faith in elections, says Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of Documented, an investigative watchdog group focused on threats to democracy, who has been tracking right-wing reaction to the order. “There was nothing in the executive order that changed since it was issued in 2021. There's no evidence that I've seen that the executive order has resulted in noncitizens being registered to vote in any substantial numbers. But the messaging has shifted as the November 2024 election becomes closer and as immigration continues to be a major issue in the campaign,” Fischer adds. While Republicans criticize the order, voting rights groups want it to do more Robyn Patterson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that GOP claims against the order are “baseless” and “brought by the very people who spread debunked lies about the 2020 elections and have used those same debunked lies to advance laws across the nation that make it harder to vote and easier to undermine the will of the people.” “The Biden-Harris Administration will continue working to protect the voting rights of every eligible American regardless of their political affiliation,” Patterson added. Many voting rights groups, however, say that some of the federal agencies have been slow to carry out the executive order’s full intent. In a 2023 progress report , a coalition of groups led by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights outlined recommendations for agencies that the organizations said could generate an additional 3.5 million voter registration applications a year. One proposal is to add a question about voter registration to health insurance applications on HealthCare.gov — a move that Sara Lonardo, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, says the agency “continues to actively explore" in time for the next open enrollment period, which is set to start Nov. 1, four days before voting ends for this year's general elections. Biden officials keep states waiting on expanding Medicaid voter registration “I think all of the agencies could still do more to fulfill the letter and the spirit of the executive order,” says Leslie Proll, senior director of the voting rights program at The Leadership Conference. Proll notes that “because it was a fairly novel idea that agencies look at their own programs and make sure that they are promoting voter registration, some of them took longer to get going in the process.” “With the tsunami of voter suppression unleashed 11 years ago, when the Supreme Court's Shelby County decision gutted the hearts of the Voting Rights Act, it has become much harder for voters of color to register and, frankly, to stay registered to vote,” Proll adds. “And so this order does something in terms of trying to close that gap.” Exactly how much progress the order has made, however, is murky. In 2022, the White House announced two tribal schools operated by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Education — Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in New Mexico — as the first federal programs to be designated by states as voter registration agencies under the National Voter Registration Act since Biden’s order. But asked by NPR for the numbers of completed registration forms collected by these programs, spokespeople for the Interior Department and the secretaries of state for Kansas and New Mexico did not provide any figures. A statement from Whitney Tempel, a spokesperson for Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, however, noted that state election officials considered Haskell to be a voter registration agency long before Biden’s order. “The U.S. Department of Interior kept reaching out to the Governor and our office for a proclamation to deem the university a voter registration agency. This was simply a public relations strategy from the Biden administration,” Tempel said in an email, adding that “the 2022 proclamation didn’t change anything, as Haskell University has been a voter registration agency for over 20 years.” In response, Interior spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said in a statement that the department is “grateful” that both Kansas and New Mexico “engaged in productive conversations to provide documentation identifying the federal and state laws to designate voter registration agencies.” Haskell University’s designation “comes with a great responsibility and honor,” Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, says in the proclamation for the school , “as voter registration is the foundation of our Democracy and electoral process.” Edited by Benjamin Swasey voting stories Election 2024 Entertainment Newsletters Photography Personal Finance AP Investigations AP Buyline Personal Finance AP Buyline Shopping Press Releases Israel-Hamas War Russia-Ukraine War Global elections Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East Election Results Delegate Tracker AP & Elections Auto Racing 2024 Paris Olympic Games Movie reviews Book reviews Financial Markets Business Highlights Financial wellness Artificial Intelligence Social Media GOP targets a Biden executive order on voter registration ahead of the fall election FILE - A QR code sign is displayed at Florida Atlantic University April 11, 2024, in Boca Raton, Fla. for students to register to vote. A three-year-old Biden executive order asking federal agencies to prioritize voter registration is being targeted by Republicans as this year’s presidential election draws closer and has become entangled in the politics of immigration. (AP Photo/Cody Jackson, File) FILE - President Joe Biden speaks in support of changing the Senate filibuster rules that have stalled voting rights legislation, at Atlanta University Center Consortium, on the grounds of Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, Jan. 11, 2022, in Atlanta. A three-year-old Biden executive order asking federal agencies to prioritize voter registration is being targeted by Republicans as this year’s presidential election draws closer and has become entangled in the politics of immigration. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File) Copy Link copied ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans and conservative activists have increasingly been targeting an executive order issued three years ago by the Biden administration that is intended to boost voter registration, claiming it’s unconstitutional and an attempt to interfere in the November election. A recent fundraising email sent by a GOP political action committee is an example of how they are framing the order, saying it compels federal agencies “to act as Biden’s personal ‘Get-Out-The-Vote’ machine.”A Republican-led House committee recently issued subpoenas to agency directors and a group of GOP secretaries of state asked the Supreme Court to take up a case challenging the order. Despite the pushback on the right, there has been no indication the order favors voters of one party over another. White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson said the administration will continue to protect the voting rights of eligible citizens regardless of political affiliation. Biden issued the order in 2021 as Republican legislatures across the country were debating a wave of state voting restrictions amid the false claims that widespread fraud had cost former President Donald Trump reelection. “These are baseless claims brought by the very people who spread debunked lies about the 2020 elections and have used those same debunked lies to advance laws across the nation that make it harder to vote and easier to undermine the will of the people,” Patterson said in a statement. Here’s a look at what the order does, what federal agencies have done so far to comply with it and what Republicans are saying about it. Intended to make voting easy What to know about the 2024 Election Democracy: American democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020. More challenges lie ahead in 2024. AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more. Read the latest: Follow AP’s complete coverage of this year’s election. Biden issued the executive order on March 7, 2021, noting the federal government’s “duty to ensure that registering to vote and the act of voting be made simple and easy for all those eligible to do so” and that it would be implemented “consistent with applicable law.” Agency leaders were asked to submit a strategic plan within 200 days. The order directed updates to the federal website vote.gov, including ensuring that voting information be made available in more than a dozen languages. The site is not engaged in registering voters directly, but instead connects visitors with state and local election offices to begin the registration process. The order specifically mentions the Department of Defense and asks it to establish procedures to provide active-duty military personnel the opportunity each year to register, update their voter registration information or request an absentee ballot. It also directs the Department of Justice to provide educational materials about registration and voting to those in federal custody as they prepare to be released, along with information about rules that might prohibit them from voting. Republicans question approach A year after the order was issued, congressional Republicans sent a letter to the White House raising concerns that the administration had exceeded its authority and was directing federal agencies to engage in activities beyond their mission. Republicans said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service had informed state agencies that the costs of providing voter registration services were allowable administrative expenses under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and could be “reimbursed at the 50 percent level.” “Using the nation’s multi-billion-dollar nutrition program to implement the Biden Administration’s voter registration scheme is not only a cause for concern, but one that necessitates further scrutiny,” the Republicans wrote. What the letter didn’t say, according to a former White House official who helped implement the order, is that states administer the food assistance program and that states were specifically directed to provide voter registration information under a federal law passed years ago. Justin Levitt, who served as a senior policy adviser at the White House, also said the agency was only reiterating previous guidance that those expenses were reimbursable. A few months later, Republicans sent letters to federal agencies requesting information about their plans to comply with the order. They also included repealing the executive order in a broad elections bill they introduced last year. Last month, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration sent letters requesting documents related to the order and set a two-week deadline to comply. The chairman, Wisconsin Republican Rep. Bryan Steil, then issued subpoenas. He called the federal order “another attempt by the Biden Administration to tilt the scales ahead of 2024.” A White House official said the Office of Management and Budget had sent an initial response and other agencies were working on responding to the committee when it issued the subpoenas. The order requires state buy-in While federal agencies have not published their proposals, they have announced steps they’ve taken to comply with the order. Levitt, a lawyer and expert on constitutional law, described the order as groundbreaking but limited in scope. Although federal law allows agencies to help with voter registration, he said military recruitment offices were the only ones doing it before Biden issued the executive order. He also said a federal agency can do this only if a state requests it. “Most of what the agencies have done is directly what states have asked them to do or clarified the rules to make sure people know what the rules are,” Levitt said. Kansas and New Mexico designated two Native American colleges run by the U.S. Department of Interior as voter registration agencies. Kentucky and Michigan have said they will designate Veterans Administration offices in their states. Michigan also plans to add offices of the federal Small Business Administration. Asking the Supreme Court to step in A group of Republicans, who serve as their state’s top election officials, also has been critical of the order, calling it federal overreach into states’ administration of elections. West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner sent a letter in May 2022 asking Biden to rescind it and spoke against it when testifying before Congress last year. A few months ago, he issued a statement saying his state would refuse to accept any voter registration forms collected by federal agencies. “Adding federal agencies to an already complex administrative process will make it even more challenging for election officials to ensure timely and accurate registration services before the election,” he said in a statement in April. In May, Warner joined eight other GOP secretaries of state to file a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to take a case challenging the order. The others were from Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Wyoming. The court rebuffed a plea to take up and decide the case by the end of June, and won’t consider it for the first time until the justices’ first private conference in early fall. In the unlikely event the court agrees to hear the case, arguments wouldn’t take place before early next year. ‘Innocuous as an order gets’ Republicans who oppose the executive order have labeled it “Bidenbucks,” an apparent reference to the controversy that erupted after the 2020 election when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg provided more than $350 million to a nonprofit that was later distributed to election offices. Republicans have claimed the “Zuckerbucks” effort was an attempt to benefit Democrats. David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who leads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the timing of the ramped-up criticism — years after Biden issued the executive order and just months before the presidential election — is noteworthy. “It’s being portrayed as some deep-state power grab, when in reality it’s an effort to ensure that eligible citizens who are engaging with the federal government can easily register or have their registration updated,” Becker said. “It is as innocuous as an order gets.” He said an important benefit of the federal order is that voters already registered are provided opportunities to update their information. That ensures more accurate voter rolls, something Republicans have said is needed. “It’s good for election integrity. It’s good for participation,” Becker said. “This didn’t used to be controversial.” Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report. 273 IMAGES Home Voter Education Programs Student Vote program looks to engage, educate students on election Voter Education: Prep for Election Day With a Plan // Center for Voter education FREE Voter Education for Future Voters Ages 16-18 VIDEO Which candidate has the best education plan? MAGA And Trump's Failure To Help Americans #shorts #election #trump Guide to the Guide COMMENTS Home Take action! National Voter Education Week (NVEW) is an open-source and nonpartisan campaign to help voters bridge the gap between registering to vote and actually casting a ballot. During this week of interactive education, voters have the opportunity to find their polling location, understand their ballot, make a plan to vote in person or ... Educating Voters Donate and support our work. We host hundreds of events and programs every year to educate voters about candidates in thousands of federal, state and local races, as well as distribute millions of educational materials about state and local elections. We Are Voters: Building The Next Generation Of Voters We are building the next generation of voters through our voter education and advocacy programs. We serve K-12, colleges and HBCUs, communities, and more! Empower. We believe a stronger democracy is built on well-informed voters. From local to national Election Day reminders to nonpartisan research and messages, our goal is to make stronger voters. ABOUT US Kids Voting USA is a nonpartisan, grassroots-driven voter education program committed to creating lifelong voting habits in children, increasing family communication about engaged citizenship, and encouraging greater adult voter turnout. Kids Voting USA relies on its over twenty-five year history (since 1988), continual feedback from educators ... Equitable Civic Learning for All: How K-12 Schools Can Grow Voters Civic learning that reaches all youth, includes media literacy, and helps foster a democratic school climate is key to growing voters. The following is adapted, with minor changes, from the CIRCLE Growing Voters report and framework published in 2022. We include recommendations for teachers, administrators, and others in the K-12 school ... 24 Ways to Grow Voters In 2024 (These are policies like voter education programs in schools and programs that allow teens to serve as poll workers.) Use this information to create and support opportunities for engagement for young people under 18, such as facilitating registration and GOTV in high schools. PDF U.S. Department of Education Toolkit for the Promotion of Voter VOTER REGISTRATION. Current Applicable Law. Under the . Higher Education Act, institutions of higher education are required to make "a good faith effort to distribute a mail voter registration form, requested and received from the State, to each student enrolled in a degree or certificate program and physically in attendance at the Key Facts and Background NextGen Voters the organization's nonpartisan voter registration and education program. About NextGen's 2022 Program. NextGen America is embarking on a $32 million voter-outreach program aimed at reaching 9.2 million voters between the ages of 18 and 35 in eight key states in 2022. The program calls for on-the-ground field organizing in ... How States and Schools Are Working to Grow Young Voters Dudley students and teachers consider voter education a part of the school's historic legacy of student engagement; Dudley was the first black high school in the state, and it was central to the ... Voter Ed Voter Ed is Spread The Vote's civic and voter education program. Voter Ed is designed to help Spread The Vote accomplish its mission of closing the gap between registered voters and voter turnout by educating and energizing voters. As a way to engage the voting population and support discussions about voting 365 days a year, each month, Voter ... What is Voter Education and why is it Important? Voter Education. Voter education means providing citizens of a democracy with basic information about participating in elections. Voter education is often provided by the state itself, often through a national electoral commission, so it is therefore important that it is politically non-partisan. Government departments that focus on voter ... U.S. Department of Education Releases Voter Toolkit The U.S. Department of Education (Department) today released a "Toolkit for the Promotion of Voter Participation for Students" to provide resources for educational institutions to help them identify and implement actions to assist eligible students with voter registration and voting.Recognizing that our nation's schools, colleges, and universities have a critical role in promoting civic ... FACT SHEET: Biden Administration Promotes Voter Participation with New The Department of Education will prepare a tool kit of resources and strategies for increasing civic engagement at the elementary school, secondary school, and higher education level, helping more ... PDF Quick S Voter Education Guide Voter education is the act of providing voters with basic information about the voting process and elections. Voter education materials can be delivered through events, websites, mailings, and advertising. 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Democracy Class Democracy Class is a free, nonpartisan curriculum that educates high school students about the importance and history of voting and pre-registers and registers them to vote. Educators will have access to additional lesson plans featuring: The history and importance of voting. Modern-day voting rights. The importance of local elections. Voter education & outreach Voter education and outreach increase the meaningful participation of all eligible voters. Active voter engagement is the bedrock of a healthy democracy. Well-informed voters are more civically and politically engaged, and more likely to vote and hold their representatives accountable through elections. IFES supports local partners to build ... NVEW Shareable Content National Voter Education Week ("NVEW") is a collaborative project led by the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, a project of NEO Philanthropy, a 501(c)(3) organization. NEO Philanthropy is strictly nonpartisan, and does not support or oppose any candidate or party. No actions of any NVEW Steering Committee Member, Partner, Creative or ... Voter Education Toolkit The SABE Voter Education Toolkit includes 8-10 hours of training about registering to vote, voter rights and responsibilities, how to learn about candidates and issues, different ways that people vote, and how to increase partnerships between self-advocacy groups and protection and advocacy organizations. All of the SABE Voter Education Toolkit ... Voter Education Project Voter Education Project (VEP) raised and distributed foundation funds to civil rights organizations for voter education and registration work in the southern United States from 1962 to 1992. The project was federally endorsed by the Kennedy administration in hopes that the organizations of the ongoing Civil Rights Movement would shift their focus away from demonstrations and more towards the ... Voter Education Our voter education efforts impact the national dialogue through polling, research, get out the vote initiatives, and issue advocacy. Over the years, the ABA Voter Education program has partnered with our State Association Alliance to educate voters nationwide on pro-banking issues. The program's issue advocacy, polling, research and "Get ... Basic Voter Education Topic Index. Basic Voter Education. Overview. Education in support of the electoral process has become known as "voter education" where a voter is the primary target. There are a number of other areas of education required if an election is to be successful,. But these may variously be conducted by political parties and election administration ... Google for Education Access educational and online tools for teachers and students, including lesson plans, apps, and games to advance learning in the classroom at no cost. Pennsylvania Department of State The Department protects the public's health and safety by licensing more than one million business and health professionals; promotes the integrity of the electoral process; supports economic development through corporate registrations and transactions; maintains registration and financial information for thousands of charities, and sanctions professional boxing, kick-boxing, wrestling and ... Biden's voter registration executive order is targeted by GOP Three years after President Biden issued an executive order for boosting voter registration, GOP officials are ramping up efforts to turn it into a partisan flash point before this fall's election. GOP targets a Biden executive order on voter registration ahead of the 1 of 2 | . FILE - A QR code sign is displayed at Florida Atlantic University April 11, 2024, in Boca Raton, Fla. for students to register to vote. A three-year-old Biden executive order asking federal agencies to prioritize voter registration is being targeted by Republicans as this year's presidential election draws closer and has become entangled in the politics of immigration. Fact checking the CNN presidential debate President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump faced off during CNN's presidential debate in Atlanta Thursday night. How to Find Financial Aid for Vocational Schools Whether a student qualifies for aid depends on the length of the program. A student enrolled in a program that is at least 600 clock hours - equivalent to 16 semester or trimester credit hours ... Biden-Harris Administration Awards More Than $44 Million to Improve The U.S. Department of Education (Department) today announced more than $44.5 million for 22 grants under the Rural Postsecondary and Economic Development (RPED) program to improve rates of postsecondary enrollment, persistence, and completion among rural students through the development of high-quality career pathways aligned to high-skill, high-wage, and in-demand industry sectors and ... assignment essay homework paper phd report review speech thesis