Grace Funk & Gratia O’Rafferty
THESIS
To enfranchise the youth vote in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in California, and with 80% of the eligible youth vote being people of color, LA County should implement a voter education unit in mandatory government classes for high school students.
BACKGROUND
Los Angeles County is the most populous county in California, with over 6 million eligible voters in the 2020 election. While 94.84% of eligible voters were registered in 2020, the county’s youth voters were not registered at comparable rates and sufficient efforts are not being made to aid young people in the process of voting.¹ In Los Angeles County, the number of students preregistered to vote has declined 7% compared with two years ago (from 29,592 to 27,517).² This decline highlights the issues in the county, as young people are not getting adequate support in their early years as citizens eligible to preregister and soon vote. Even with increasing political awareness among students, only 11% of 16- and 17- year-olds across all school districts in Los Angeles County had preregistered to vote.³
LA County currently does not implement any voter registration or education policies in high schools, meaning efforts are not universally applied throughout the high schools in LA County. Without mandated educational programs, many students are not receiving voter education and have no support when trying to preregister, register, and vote. This is causing a generation of students to struggle to access the resources available to engage them in politics, despite those efforts made available online and in person through government and political organizations.
POLICY IDEA
Our policy idea is to implement a mandatory voter education unit in LA County high schools’ government classes. This will help young people who may not otherwise receive information or education at home about the significance of voting. In addition, this unit will teach high school students how to register to vote and partake in voting and democracy as a whole.
POLICY ANALYSIS
Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest school district in the United States and the country’s most populous county. Our nation’s future is our youth, and the youth of LA County deserve to have their voice heard. For LA County specifically, we must be able to harness the power of the youth vote. “In California [generally], about 500,000 young people turn 18 and become eligible to vote each year.”⁴ The youth’s power, especially disenfranchised youth, is untapped and unheard of without voter education.
LA County students already must take a mandatory semester of government and civics; implementing a nonpartisan voter education unit could be incorporated seamlessly into the civics portion of the semester. Voting is arguably the most important civic responsibility a person has because it determines who is in charge of creating and implementing policy issues in our country. Further, young people who learn about voting in high school become more “informed and engaged voters” throughout their lives than those who do not.⁵ This policy will have long-lasting consequences because the unit will inform young people about voting and influence their future participation in the democratic process. It will instill in them the value of democracy and civic engagement.
IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
Within the required unit, teachers will assist students who have not yet pre-registered or registered to complete the online process. In addition, LA County can release a one-to-two-week curriculum guide to help teachers transition to the new unit requirement. This voter education unit would provide information about voter registration and the different ways to vote (either by mail or in person) as well as resources to complete a mock ballot and to learn about the various policies presented on the ballot. Then, the county can measure the success of the unit by collecting data on voter registration numbers and turnout rates in the county.
POWER PLAN
This policy aims to engage young people in the democratic process by providing them access to it. Their voices should be heard. It is essential to gather student support for the policy and give them space to express why voter education is crucial to them and their peers. This advocacy can arise internally within LA County high schools and additionally by partnering with organizations such as “ I Am a Voter” and “Alliance for Youth Action.” Harnessing the power of student voices, we can present a compelling cause to the Los Angeles County Board of Education, including Superintendent Debra Duardo, to include a mandatory unit of voter education for all LA County high school students.
References
1. “Registration by County - California Secretary of State.” Accessed May 12, 2022.
https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ror/15day-gen-2020/county.pdf.
2. “Op-Ed: What California Can Learn from Georgia about Increasing Youth Voter Turnout.” Los
Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, February 4, 2021. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-04/california-georgia-youth-voter-turnout.
3. Ibid.
4. “Will California's Youth Turn out for the Recall Election?” Youth vote California recall election.
Accessed May 12, 2022. https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/politics/2021/08/25/will-california-s-youth-turn-out-for-the-recall-election-.
5. “Youth Who Learned about Voting in High School More Likely to Become Informed and
Engaged Voters.” CIRCLE, August 31, 2020. https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/youth-who-learned-about-voting-high-school-more-likely-become-informed-and-engaged.
6. Op-Ed, Los Angeles Times, 3
7. “Youth Who Learned about Voting,” CIRCLE, 1.
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