Most 18-year-old Texans aren’t signed up to vote despite law requiring voter registration

by TEXAS TRIBUNE | POOJA SALHOTRADeBakey Civics Club Vice President Mihir Relan, 18, left, and President Bianca Juarez, 18, register to vote following a voter education workshop on April 5, 2024. A 1980s law requires Texas high schools to distribute voter registration forms to eligible students, but not all are complying. Credit: Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune

“I don’t think the administration supported the initiative so much as they tolerated it,” Dzul said. “They weren’t actively setting up tables and telling students to register, but they allowed us to occupy space and get volunteer deputy voter registrars into the schools.” The 1983 law requiring high schools to distribute voter registration forms to students who are 17 years and 10 months old or older was intended to boost turnout among young voters. But the secretary of state’s office, which was charged with creating the instructions to implement the law, doesn’t track compliance. And schools that fail to distribute registration forms to eligible students aren’t penalized.

“It’s not enough to just tell people, ‘voting is important,’” said Maggie Stern, who promotes youth civic engagement through the nonprofit organization Children’s Defense Fund Texas. “That produced a really big chilling effect on anything related to civics education,” Stern said. “It has really deterred a lot of schools who used to be doing this work from having any sort of conversation with students around voting and civic participation.”

Voting rights advocates argue that the state should do more to ensure students are registered to vote, for example, by documenting compliance with the high school voter registration law. “I’m not sure you would get much better results,” Pierce said. “If it just shows up at their door and they weren’t already planning to use them, then you just have these registration forms sitting there.”Some students have taken matters into their own hands. Rice University has partnered with the League of Women Voters to create an internship program where students, most of whom are in the Houston Independent School District, organize voter registration drives at their high schools.

Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)

Elections High Schools Law Texas Voter Registration Voting Rights Young Voters

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