“It’s a pretty simple metric,” Jason says. “When you look at numbers, the fact that there are millions of students, young people, who folks say aren’t likely, aren’t expected to vote, even though they’re eligible voters, there’s a lot of room to grow and there’s a lot of room to make a huge difference here.”

According to a 2018 poll, 20% of young voters never vote in primary elections. Research has also shown that voting habits are often formed during childhood and adolescence. Moreover, participation in the first three elections a young person is eligible to vote in can determine lifetime voting behavior.

Evelyn Lees, a science teacher at Lincoln Middle School in Kearny, New Jersey, is volunteering with Cap, Gown, Vote! to register graduating high school students and tells Teen Vogue that “learning does not end within the classroom walls.”

“As an educator, modeling active citizenry for younger generations is my obligation,” she says. ”Schools are a microcosm of the students’ environment.”

Students right now have a wealth of options when it comes to harnessing their political power. But Lane, who is publicly supporting Cap, Gown, Vote! in her capacity as executive director of National School Walkout, says “having an organization like Cap, Gown, Vote! help contribute guidance and the tools to get that action is really, really important. [They’re] not just saying ‘register to vote,’ but ‘here are the tools.’”

Among those tools is a student ambassador program that enables students to serve as peer-to-peer mentors, initiate conversations about the importance of voting, and register their peers via the online toolkit. A leaderboard feature lets students and schools “compete” with others around the county to register the greatest number of students. It’s an approach similar to the “collaborative innovation” strategy being used to increase voter registration on college campuses and has been instrumental in fostering improvements in areas like homelessness and hospital patient safety, which David Bornstein discussed in a recent New York Times op-ed.

So far, among the several dozen high schools and colleges that have signed up to participate, an “overwhelming” majority are public, according to Let America Vote communications director Jason Noble. Gary Simcox, a 15-year-old student activist and rising junior at Pottsgrove High School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, recently led a voter registration drive with Cap, Gown, Vote!’s online toolkit, and tells Teen Vogue, “Our school in particular had many students who were interested in getting involved with these youth movements, but didn’t exactly have the resources or knowledge on how to do so.” Gary cites the student ambassador role as something that’s helped to improve the resources available to peers and educate them on “the importance of voter registration and democratic participation.”

For his part, Jason says he’s “flabbergasted” by politicians who refer to young people as entitled. “When I see young people getting really involved right now and really active and I see folks who criticize them, I’m just like, No they’re trying to improve their country, and they’re not going to wait until their 40s or 50s to do it. They’re going to do it right now, and all that makes them is patriots.”

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