For the second year, Alameda Unified School District (AUSD) high school students have teamed up with the League of Women Voters of Alameda (LWVA), a nonpartisan organization that works to protect and expand voting rights, to facilitate a national High School Registration Project aimed at getting more young people to vote.
“Voting is in our DNA and we have a responsibility to share our mission with the next generation,” Linda Bytof, a retired judge, political scientist, and chair of the Youth Outreach Committee of LWVA, told AUSD last year. “We do this by encouraging young voters to get involved, teach them how to get involved, then stand back and watch them put their passion into action.”
Educating students on the power of voting
In the United States, youth can register to vote when they turn 18. In California, students ages 16 and 17 also have the right to pre-register to vote, which allows them to be automatically registered when they turn 18, AUSD reports.
California’s Education Code designates the last two full weeks in April and September as “High School Voter Education Weeks,” a time when schools are encouraged to provide education on the importance of voting and opportunities to register…