{"id":247562,"date":"2026-07-20T10:23:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T10:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/247562\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T10:23:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T10:23:06","slug":"study-pennsylvania-ranks-last-in-youth-voter-registration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/247562\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Pennsylvania ranks last in youth voter registration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania\u2019s free newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Pennsylvania has seen healthy turnout <\/a>in recent elections, but one important segment of the electorate isn\u2019t participating in such high numbers.<\/p>\n

According to a recent study<\/a> of 30 states, Pennsylvania has the lowest rate of 18-year-olds registering to vote of any of them. <\/p>\n

Just 22% of 18-year-olds in the state are registered to vote, according to the study from The Civics Center, a nonprofit organization focused on registering high school students. That\u2019s far below states like Oregon, which leads the pack at 86%, and even neighboring states like New Jersey and West Virginia, at 48% and 55%, respectively.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not the young people\u2019s fault, said Laura Brill, CEO and Founder of The Civics Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that young people in Michigan are so much more impassioned and and inherently organized than young people in Pennsylvania,\u201d Brill said. \u201cIt\u2019s that they\u2019re involved in different systems and [have] different supports to help them do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The positive news, Brill said, is that the factors that lead to low youth registration are all changeable. She said one of the biggest things states can do is to allow people to preregister to vote \u2014 at age 16, or even earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf of U.S. teens live in states where they can preregister at age 16, and what we are definitely seeing is that states with preregistration have higher registration rates for 18-year-olds, just because there\u2019s a bigger on-ramp for people to learn about it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The top three states in The Civics Center study all allow 16-year-olds to preregister to vote<\/a>, and Colorado recently reduced that to 15 years old.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, allows people to register only if they will be 18 by the time of the next primary or general election. If they are turning 18 between the primary and general election, they have to wait until after the primary to register. That creates a barrier for on-the-ground organizations trying to register youths, particularly through school-based programs.<\/p>\n

Angelique Hinton, executive director of PA Youth Vote, said the tight window after the state\u2019s primary \u2014 which takes place in the third week of May \u2014 and before students graduate or go on summer break makes it hard to capture those with in-between birthdays.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very disjointed and it makes it unnecessarily clunky and hard to do,\u201d she said. \u201cWe also lose a lot of students that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brill said automatic voter registration is also a big factor in boosting numbers. But when Pennsylvania residents are first allowed to get their driver\u2019s licenses at 16-and-a-half, they can\u2019t also preregister to vote, like people 18 and older can. <\/p>\n

Although Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced bills to allow young people to preregister to vote, none of the legislative efforts have succeeded.<\/p>\n

Brill and Hinton also both separately mentioned financial factors. Brill said the data reveals that school districts in areas with higher income tend to have higher youth registration rates, and Hinton said she has noticed a problem with underfunded school civics programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not being taught how government works,\u201d Hinton said. \u201cThey\u2019re not provided with the education to really help them understand how to make government work for them, and so they grow up and they don\u2019t participate. And because they don\u2019t participate, then they are never a priority of their elected officials, and there\u2019s a cycle that just perpetuates itself.\u201d <\/p>\n

Brill said, however, that another factor can overcome this: teachers. She said she has noticed that when a school district has teachers dedicated to helping students understand the importance of voting and running registration drives, more young people register. She said The Civics Center has done three separate studies showing that when students and educators run registration drives, registration rates increase by 6% \u2014 an increase anyone looking to improve voter registration rates would be \u201cover the moon\u201d about.<\/p>\n

One school with such a program is Franklin Towne Charter High School in Philadelphia, which received the Governor\u2019s Civic Engagement Award earlier this year for its student registration efforts. In 2025, the school registered 86% of eligible students.<\/p>\n

Vincent Wisniewski, the school\u2019s chief of staff, oversees its voter registration work and said he was surprised to see Pennsylvania rank so low in The Civics Center\u2019s study. <\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I was shocked,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Wisniewski described a strong civic culture in Philadelphia, with organizations such as the Committee of 70, League of Women Voters, and the Office of the City Commissioners eager to help get the word out to young people. Wisniewski said the school takes advantage of every opportunity it can.<\/p>\n

He agreed that having a point person to lead these efforts in a school makes a difference, though he noted that that takes resources. He thinks the governor\u2019s award has been a good way to promote registration and that more friendly competition between districts could also help. <\/p>\n

Brill said she hopes what people will take away from the study is that states have the power to improve their ranking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are systems that we can change and do better,\u201d she said. \u201cThe most actionable pro-democracy, nonpartisan things people can be doing right now [are] to help young people register to vote and guide them through the process.\u201d <\/p>\n

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":247563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6704,105802,539,28,30,29,78716,1823,105801],"class_list":["post-247562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-high-school","tag-high-school-voters","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-register-to-vote","tag-vote","tag-youth-voters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}