Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo
Abortion rights activists march to the White House during a rally in Washington, July 9, 2022.
More people turned out to vote in Kansas earlier this month than in any primary in the state’s history, striking down a ballot measure that could have further restricted statewide abortion rights.
This surge in turnout for the primary, typically a low-turnout election, was thanks in part to younger voters, particularly young women of color, who organized to get their peers to the ballot box.
Vote.org, a nonpartisan voting registration site, reported a roughly 1,000 percent increase in Kansas voter registrations on its site immediately following the Dobbs decision in June, as well as registration spikes of 500 percent or more in ten other states. About 81 percent of people who register on the site, where a large percentage of users are women under age 35, also turn out to vote, according to Vote.org’s Andrea Hailey.
“To see almost twice as much voter turnout compared to the prediction, I have to believe young people played a role in that,” said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of Tufts University’s CIRCLE, which tracks youth civic education and engagement.
Though voters ages 18 to 35 comprise one of the largest voting blocs in the country, they have historically turned out in lower numbers compared to older Americans. But in a post-Roe era of abortion bans and threats to other forms of reproductive health care, including birth control and IVF, Kansas may be an indicator of what’s to come, as young people are mobilizing their peers and registering to vote in higher numbers because this issue affects them personally.
For Annie Wu Henry, 26, a digital and communications strategist who previously worked for the nonprofit Gen-Z for Change, the upcoming midterms are a chance for young people to make their voices heard at the ballot box. But younger people don’t want to be told that voting is the only solution, Wu said, and are also motivated to organize and put pressure on elected officials.
Talia Wlcek, deputy communications director for the student-led group Voters of Tomorrow, said she has friends in their early twenties who haven’t voted before, but decided they can’t sit back for upcoming elections—adding that she thinks young people realize that if they don’t participate, “things are just going to get worse.” A July Voters of Tomorrow poll surveying young adults ages 18 to 29 found that “the data is clear: young people fear for their future,” listing gun violence and abortion as top concerns.
Polling that predicts young people are energized to vote ahead of the midterms comes after 2018 already saw historic youth voter turnout. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake explained that voters who cast their ballots in a midterm for the first time in 2018 are among those planning to vote again this cycle. “We just need to get all of the young people who turned out in 2018 and had no previous midterm history to vote again, and we will win,” Lake said.
There’s also time before November for campaigns and candidates to reach young people who didn’t vote in 2018. In half of the states, youth voter registration was lower in June than it was at the same point in 2018, particularly for newly eligible 18- and 19-year-olds, according to polling from Tufts CIRCLE.
Vote.org reported a roughly 1,000 percent increase in Kansas voter registrations on its site immediately following the Dobbs decision in June.
But getting people registered remains a major barrier to voting—and the subject of voter suppression efforts in some states. Since the uptick in youth voter turnout in 2018, at least 18 states have passed 30 laws that make it harder to vote, and introduced more than 400 bills that restrict voting access. States including Georgia require “wet signatures” for absentee ballot applications—meaning young people, who are less likely to own a printer, must print and sign forms in pen, disenfranchising voters without this access. (A judge blocked a wet signature requirement in Texas in June after Vote.org sued several Texas counties over the law, but it’s still being challenged in court in Georgia.)
“Small, arcane rules that you don’t always think about, like requiring people to have a printer so that they can fill out their forms, can start skimming off a couple thousand people at a time from participation [in elections],” Hailey said. “When you do that, you’re controlling results instead of keeping open access for everyone.”
Longer-standing barriers, including limited access to time off, to transportation, and to polling locations, also make it harder for young people to turn out for elections. Kawashima-Ginsberg added that heat waves this summer also curbed plans for in-person campaigning to mobilize voters. Despite these barriers, Hailey said she is still seeing people fight for their full right to vote.
