21 September (Index Treasure) Voter registration is hitting records as Election Day nears. This is especially true among young, first-time voters.
On Tuesday’s National Voter Registration Day, over 150,000 people registered through Vote.org. It was the most the organization has ever seen on that day. The organization registered 279,400 voters in all of last year.
Last week, over 400,000 people clicked a link on Instagram. It was posted by pop star Taylor Swift. The link directed them to their state’s voter registration site.
Swift said she would vote for the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. People don’t have to declare a party affiliation when they register. Neither vote.org nor Swift track registrations by party. Vote.org has previously told USA TODAY that about 80% of people they register turn out in the next election.
A huge percentage of the newly registered voters are young people, many voting for the first time.
Vote.org says voters under 35 made up 81% of Tuesday’s registrations. The biggest spike was among 18-year-olds. On this year’s National Voter Registration Day, 11% of registered voters were 18. That’s 53% higher than four years ago.
“We’re witnessing a rise in 18-year-olds registering to vote,” said CEO Andrea Hailey. “If we can get people registered and voting, we can welcome the next generation into our democracy.”
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, is also trying to make it easier for people to register to vote.
After years of lobbying, she announced Friday that those filling out applications for health insurance through the HealthCare.Gov website would be offered an option to receive voter registration information.
“The health of our democracy depends on Americans registering and exercising their right to vote,” Warren said in a statement. Many people looking for coverage through the website have low-wage jobs that don’t offer insurance or are just coming off of their parents’ insurance at age 26.
“I’ve pushed for the government to use every tool to make it easier to register, particularly for younger and lower-income individuals, and this update is an important action by the Biden-Harris administration to protect the right to vote for all Americans,” Warren said.
Others are finding creative ways to register young voters, including Ezra Gershanok, whose New York City apartment subletting company, Ohana, is aiming to attract younger people in a way that catches their’ attention: funny memes.
He and others at the company have been passing out flyers with election-related jokes and a QR code that leads to a voter registration site.
His hope, he said, is to get young people new to the region ‒ precisely his company’s demographic ‒ to register to vote. “This past month, our website traffic hit 40,000 people per month, and a lot of them are these young people that are fresh out of college taking their first job in New York, or in this demographic of folks that don’t often register to vote,” he said. “So we were like, ‘could we make an impact in this election by just getting our own users to register to vote?'”
