voter education programs

October 7 – 11, 2024

I want to vote

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Helping voters bridge the gap between registering to vote and actually casting a ballot.

National Voter Education Week (NVEW) is an open-source, nonpartisan voter education campaign. During this week of interactive education, voters have the opportunity to find their polling location, understand their ballot, make a plan to vote, and inspire others to get involved. Together, we can help voters overcome common barriers to become confident voters and ambassadors of voting in their own communities for every election.

People are more likely to cast their ballot when someone they trust asks them to vote . 

As a trusted messenger, you can make a huge impact in helping people in your community cast their ballots with confidence by participating in National Voter Education Week.

“National Voter Education Week has served as a blueprint for our units to engage, register, educate and mobilize their peers and community … We’ve seen an increase in NAACP units creating their own initiatives that meet and prioritize the needs and interests of their communities.”

Derrick Lewis, NAACP Youth & College Division

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We are voters.

We exist to educate, empower, and engage voters across America in order to keep democracy alive.  As a nonpartisan nonprofit, we provide access to information helping voters and potential voters make purposeful decisions on our collective future.

We are building the next generation of voters through our voter education and advocacy programs. We serve K-12, colleges and HBCUs, communities, and more!

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Educating Voters

We host hundreds of events and programs every year to educate voters about candidates in thousands of federal, state and local races, as well as distribute millions of educational materials about state and local elections. 

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Why It Matters

The leaders we elect make decisions that affect our daily lives. Elections are our chance to stand up for what matters most to us and to have an impact on the issues that affect us, our communities, our families and our future. 

What We're Doing

We host hundreds of candidate debates and forums across the country each year and provide straightforward information about candidates and ballot issues. Through print and online resources, including VOTE411.org , we equip voters with essential information about the election process in each state, including polling place hours and locations, ballot information, early or absentee voting rules, voter registration deadlines, ID requirements and more. 

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LWV Kansas sued in state court to overturn several laws restricting voter education, mailing advance ballot applications, delivering advance ballots, and tightening signature match requirements

Every June, the League, our partners, and people around the country await the US Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) opinions on critical issues like access to the ballot, redistricting, reproductive rights, and more. This blog reflects on several end-of-term cases from the last decade or so that have had a major impact on democracy.

This story was originally published in News Now Warsaw on June 19, 2024.

A new group is working to revive efforts to establish a League of Women Voters chapter in Kosciusko County, Indiana.

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24 Ways to Grow Voters In 2024

CIRCLE recently released a new estimate that 23% of young people voted in the 2022 midterm elections . That was among the highest youth turnout rates in a midterm election in the past three decades, but the fact that only about 1 in 4 young people cast a ballot last November remains an indictment of how our communities and institutions are—and are not—preparing young people for democratic participation.

Our research frequently highlights ways to increase youth voting and address stubborn inequities in participation: from electoral laws that make it easier to register , to engaging youth based on the issues they care about . But achieving drastic improvements and eliminating, not just addressing, inequities requires major shifts in how we approach the task of ensuring all youth are informed, motivated, and ready to vote.

Our CIRCLE Growing Voters report and framework , published in 2022, features dozens of recommendations for how various stakeholders can jumpstart those structural changes. One key imperative is starting early and working year-round, not in a cyclical way that often ignores youth until a few months before an election.

We’ve distilled 24 key recommendations from the report that individuals, communities, and institutions can begin working on now —starting with one recommendation to help you assess how you can have an impact.

For starters...

• Fill out our Mapping Your Community Ecosystem tool to understand the needs and opportunities in your community to deepen and diversify outreach to young people, and to get started on an action plan based on how you can contribute.

Start Early and Start Young

• It is never too early to start building civic responsibility: Talk in children’s and teen programs about voting as one of the tools people use to improve our communities.  
• Social connections and a sense of belonging are foundational to civic engagement, and the years between national elections are the perfect time to get started! Create or support free spaces by and for teens where young people can connect with issues and with older community members through arts, media creation, and discourse—especially in ways that relatively equalize power relationships.  
• More than 8 million young people have turned or will turn 18 between last year’s midterms and the 2024 election. Seek out some newly eligible youth and help them register them to vote .  
• If your state offers pre-registration, confirm the age restrictions in your state and start helping 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register. Look for existing organizations in your community whose work registering teens and high schoolers you can plug into or check out national organizations and programs, like The Civics Center and High School Voter Registration Week , which have resources for hosting registration drives and launching new initiatives.  
• Figure out which state statutes that help grow voters are in place in your state and find out how they are being enacted in your local school and community. (These are policies like voter education programs in schools and programs that allow teens to serve as poll workers.) Use this information to create and support opportunities for engagement for young people under 18 , such as facilitating registration and GOTV in high schools.  
• As you learn more about civic education at your local schools, examine resources made available for educators and administrators by the Teaching for Democracy Alliance . Introduce the Preparing Future Voters Pledge to educators in your community and advocate for their participation.

Education Leaders: Prepare Future Voters

If you’re a school or district leader, sign the Preparing Future Voters Pledge to join a cohort of school leaders who will receive access to monthly programming from June through December 2023, including workshops, panel discussions, and curated elections and voting instructional resources.

• Ask children in your life about issues they care about, encourage them to develop their own stances and opinions, and help them hone and wield their political voice . Support youth as they learn to connect their concerns with the decisions made by local, state, and national leaders, so they understand how voting can make a difference in their communities.

Build Youth Voice and Power

• Learn about and reflect on adultism : the tendency to assume that older people and those in power know more than youth and have the best solutions. Becoming aware of this bias that adults/older people might bring to an interaction with a younger person is an important step toward our society’s capacity to develop voters. Creating systems and practices to regularly integrate diverse young people’s voices and expertise in decision-making can help combat adultism.  
• Encourage a young person to run for office . Point them to some of the many organizations and resources that offer training, support, and information for new candidates.  
• Follow news stories about issues that matter to young people in your community and seek out publications that prioritize speaking to young people as sources .  
• Support young people in exploring what civic engagement looks like “between cycles.” Invite teens and youth to join you in civic activities and help them to understand how their interests can connect to issues and opportunities for action in their communities.  
• Build systems for youth voice in your institutional planning and decision-making, such as youth advisory councils or designated roles for youth in your organization .  
• If you’re thinking about launching, volunteering for, or supporting a political campaign in 2024, plan and discuss how you are going to listen to young people  and incorporate their voices into your team and work.

Work Local and Form Partnerships

• Identify off-cycle elections this year at the state, county, and local election that you can use as an opportunity for outreach to young peopl e.

Elections in 2023

States with statewide elections in 2023 include: CO, KS, KY, LA, ME, MS, NJ, OK, OH, PA, VA, WA, WI. And localities within almost every state have elections for school board or municipal government which can be a great way for young people to connect to their local communities.

• Learn the voting laws in your state, especially those key to youth like same-day registration, automatic voter registration, and/or the ability to vote before age 18 in primaries or local elections. If they're not on the books, lobby your elected officials for them. If they are, help ensure they're being implemented and promoted effectively and equitably . Election officials can often use support doing so!  
• Track changes in voting policy that may impact young voters so you are prepared to shift information and strategies to best support young people. Organizations and outlets like  Brennan Center and Democracy Docket track the latest political and legal efforts to change voting laws.  
• Identify and connect with organizations within your community that you can partner with for 2024 education and outreach efforts . Some potential partners: your local chapter of the League of Women Voters , local youth-led organizations like those in the Alliance for Youth Organizing , or other institutions you identified while mapping Your community ecosystem.  
• Look beyond digital tools and social media to think about how to engage young people in your local community. Where do youth in your community spend time and get information offline? Are local news outlets accessible to young people, and do they report on issues in a way that supports young people’s engagement with them ? Understanding the institutions and media sources that young people are connected to can help reach them with opportunities for election learning and engagement more effectively.  
• Create, support, or amplify opportunities for young people to support the work of election offices, such as youth poll worker programs, youth-led outreach teams, and internships that allow young people to learn how elections work. Partnering with local nonprofits and schools is an effective way to facilitate the connection between young people and election offices; here’s a toolkit to help election officials get started.

Broaden Outreach and Provide Support

• Not all young people can afford to volunteer their time on civic engagement efforts. Secure funding to pay young people for their time in 2023 and 2024 so that a wider diversity of young people can participate in electoral work.  
• Reach beyond college campuses to youth-serving organizations, GED programs, youth employment programs, and other organizations that reach young people who aren’t enrolled in high school or college. With so much youth outreach happening on campuses, these groups of youth may not feel they are welcome and valuable unless you intentionally include and invite them.  
• Consider what barriers different groups of young people encounter when finding and participating in opportunities for civic learning and engagement. Do youth have or need transportation to meetings? Are work and family commitments getting in the way? Are there language barriers or distrust in some institutions? Reflect on how might your work be unknowingly perpetuating inequities in participation and strategize with partners on how to limit and overcome these barriers .
• Join our  email list to make sure you see all our upcoming research, resources, and opportunities to connect with other individuals and organizations.

CIRCLE Growing Voters

Released in 2022, the CIRCLE Growing Voters report introduces a new framework to transform how communities and institutions prepare youth for democracy. It includes major recommendations for organizations across sectors to do this work more equitably and effectively.

POLYAS Election Glossary

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Voter Education

Voter education means providing citizens of a democracy with basic information about participating in elections. Voter education is often provided by the state itself, often through a national electoral commission, so it is therefore important that it is politically non-partisan. Government departments that focus on voter education are often highly scrutinized by a third party. In addition, there are various private institutions whose mission it is to strengthen democratic values by increasing voter education. The focus is often on how to vote rather than  who to vote for. An appropriate voter education would provide citizens with knowledge regarding:

• How to register to vote – most democracies require citizens to first register as a prerequisite to voting in elections or referenda
• How to complete ballot papers – filling out ballots incorrectly can mean an individual’s vote is misrepresented in the final count or counted as invalid . Therefore, clearly demonstrating how ballots are to be correctly filled out is essential
• The electoral system – it is important that citizens know how their votes will contribute to the final result in an election. Is the election conducted under a system of proportional representation or first past the post ? Does it involve a more complicated preferential voting system?
• Proportional representation in the election glossary
• First Past the Post explained in the Election Glossary!
• Electoral System explained in the Election Glossary!

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HOW WE WORK

Kids Voting USA is a nonpartisan, grassroots-driven voter education program committed to creating lifelong voting habits in children, increasing family communication about engaged citizenship, and encouraging greater adult voter turnout.

Kids Voting USA relies on its over twenty-five year history (since 1988), continual feedback from educators, and experience of their Affiliates when developing the model to implement programming. 

The programming model operates with five key components:

• Strong curricula for grade levels K-12, that offer easily implemented, interactive lessons at no cost to the schools.
• Choice of mock election processes to meet the individualized needs of the schools: paper ballots, electronic voting software, and/or a combination of both.
• Activities to involve families in teaching their children their own voting values.
• Educator support through local Affiliates to provide assistance with ballot creation, volunteers for activities, and resources needed for teaching civic lessons and creating voting habits.
• Continuing research on impact and effectiveness.

Kids Voting USA believes it is of primary importance to utilize local Affiliates for Educator support. The local Affiliates offer the schools the assistance needed so the already over-burdened Educator is not handed one more responsibility with no support offered. 

If there is not a local Affiliate in your area, Educators can contact Kids Voting USA directly for access to the curricula, the software voting tool, and to explore the possibility of finding the needed local support to serve as an Affiliate. 

Kids Voting USA, as of 2015, is operated under the administration of the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services & Education (aka Arizona Bar Foundation).  We invite you to review the history page  of this website to learn of the dedicated people, across the nation, who have stepped up to assure that Kids Voting USA continues to strive toward the mission of creating lifelong voting habits in children, increasing family communication about citizenship, and encouraging greater adult voter turnout.

As a national nonpartisan, grassroots-driven voter education program, Kids Voting USA relies on local Affiliates to keep the program meeting local needs and honoring our country’s founding philosophy of “We the People” as key to our democracy and this program.

Many of our Affiliates further localize their support through Sub-Affiliate groups. Other states have chosen to meet the needs of their state by having multiple main Affiliates.  You will find details of the current states offering KV USA programs below.  Our Affiliates by State:

CONNECTICUT

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NORTH CAROLINA

NORTH DAKOTA

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Voter education & outreach

Voter education and outreach increase the meaningful participation of all eligible voters

Active voter engagement is the bedrock of a healthy democracy. Well-informed voters are more civically and politically engaged, and more likely to vote and hold their representatives accountable through elections. IFES supports local partners to build voter knowledge, skills and democratic values that support peaceful and meaningful participation in elections. IFES targets its voter education and outreach programs through evidence-based approaches and focused messaging and delivery to increase participation of marginalized voters at the polls.

Explore our resources linked here to learn more and get involved.

Empowering Tomorrow through Youth Engagement

Developing an Active Citizenry through Civic Education

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Al Jazeera Nigeria election 2023: Five reasons to care about the vote IFES Country Director for Nigeria, Seray Jah, speaks to Al Jazeera on the 2023 Nigerian General Elections. February 23, 2023

IFES Democratic Resilience Lab

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The ACLU Voter Education Fund

Launched in March 2024, the ACLU Voter Education Fund is a federal political action committee to inform and educate voters about what's at stake during the 2024 election cycle and beyond.

As a non-partisan organization protecting and defending civil liberties and civil rights for over 100 years, the ACLU does not endorse or oppose candidates — and this remains unchanged. However, the ACLU Voter Education Fund will ensure voters are aware of candidates’ positions on key issues so they can vote for their rights.

The ACLU was compelled to create this fund because of critical issues on the ballot this election — like abortion rights, voting rights and for the future of democracy. Our role is to protect these rights from politicians regardless of political party, and the ACLU Voter Education Fund will expand this crucial work by allowing us to defend rights in races up and down the ballot.

Paid for by ACLU Voter Education Fund, 212-549-2500, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

How the ACLU has helped voters elect candidates that will fight for our rights:

Learn more about the issues on this page.

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Talking Elections: Voter Education

By Claire DeSoi 10.27.2020

https://electionlab.mit.edu/articles/talking-elections-voter-education

Shining Stars

Expectations.

In  Episode 3 of our video series Talking Elections , we wanted to take a look at voter education which is an important topic that doesn’t get enough notice in the elections community. There is a lot of information that voters need to know to vote and have their votes counted accurately, from registration deadlines and the documentation they might need to register to the location of polling places, voter identification requirements and how to properly mark their ballots as they’re counted.

There are special challenges in voting in the midst of Covid where things are changing so fast — especially on an emergency basis sometimes within hours of the polls opening. This is why this topic is so relevant now.

We were joined by three guests on this episode: Mara Suttmann-Lea of Connecticut College, Lia Merivaki of Mississippi State, and Veronica Degraffenreid of the Pennsylvania Department of State.

What are the challenges that state and local officials face when they design and implement voter education efforts?

Mara:  Lia and I have both worked in mapping out what voter education looks like across the states, and it has proven to be a challenging endeavor in and of itself. But there are a couple of things that we have noticed during our research and also just in our conversations that we have with local election officials and state election officials. There is a lack of resources for implementing high-quality voter education plans. This is something that we’ve seen in some of the state statutes. We look at questions about whether mandates for voter education at the local level are funded, but it’s also come up just in conversations that we’ve had with local election officials: about dealing with unfunded mandates for voter education. The centralization, or lack thereof, of authority over voter education within a given state can also be a potential challenge. Oversight and implementing voter education plans can be difficult in states with localities that have a lot of autonomy from their state governments (here in Connecticut that’s the case). Of course some amount of flexibility is needed because different jurisdictions have different needs, but that lack of centralization can be a potential challenge as well.

Also, looking at the scope of voter education across the United States for assessing the quality of voter education as a whole, there’s really a lack of consistency and what those policies look like and having a baseline definition standard of voter education so voters are going to experience a lot of variation in the types of education that they have access to depending on where they live. Of course, this isn’t surprising given what we know about how decentralized election administration is in the United States, but it is something that is worth noting if we think of voter education is something that every voter should have access to.

What are some exemplary efforts of voter education that others can emulate?

Lia:  Just a disclaimer: what is reported is most likely a small fraction of what is actually happening across the states and at the local level because we cannot possibly know and collect all the information that is necessary to make an assessment right. And states don’t really need to reinvent the wheel; we know that there are some things that work, and if done consistently, they can make a difference.

For example, small efforts such as a PSA announcement or printing an ad with a local newspaper or radio — those are standard things that we should expect localities are doing but we’re not really sure they are done uniformly, mainly because of resources.

Some exemplary things that we have observed as a minimum intervention includes sending information to voters before Election Day. That seems intuitive, but it might not be. Of course, you might have to deal with issues with mail returning and that starts a chain of events.

Social media presence: we have seen there are some localities that have been active on social media and they’re out in the community. Voters reach out to their local officials and those officials respond. Now there have been some initiatives to include the community broadly defined, like connecting with local high schools, holding registration drives, and working with other organizations. Connecticut is one of the states that has a competition for high schools to do registration drives. Trying to bring the community along — that’s a great example of how states can build these partnerships and local resources.

Voters rely on their local elected officials and we know that from research that voters trust their local election officials and they seek them for information. So being out there, being proactive and reaching out to the community — we have found these small interventions have been fruitful. Being on the loop constantly is necessary because we have seen that there are some efforts to spread some misinformation or some inaccurate information regardless of the intentions. So local officials have to find a way to be on top of it, to get control over the information flow, because that appears to be the biggest challenge.

In terms of voter education there are many things that can be done and the lack of definition is it challenge but at the same time, states and localities have tools that they can use without necessarily thinking outside the box that “oh we have to find  that  strategy and  that  recipe to get everyone at the same time” and that’s easier said than done because voters need different things and they can be reached out in different ways.

What strategies have you pursued to get important information out to voters about how things have changed in the midst of the fact that Pennsylvania voting modes were going to be changing anyway?

Veronica:  There was historic legislation in Pennsylvania in 2019, which is one of the reasons why I came for a new challenge for myself professionally. They’re going to be doing a lot of new things in this state. Voter outreach and education were very much on the minds of the staff here at the Pennsylvania Department of State.

In 2019, with that historic legislation, all registered Pennsylvania voters can now apply for a mail-in ballot without needing to have an excuse, and they can vote from the comfort of their home. Since this method of voting is new to Pennsylvania, this state was already very much engaged in a program called #Ready2Vote. It wasn’t just an afterthought. We were also helping to educate voters about new voting systems, so those things were already happening prior to the change of the primary. Now, with the change of the primary date, certainly our outreach not only included educating voters about the new voting method but also about letting voters know about the date change and then also what efforts counties would be taking to keep voters and poll workers safe on Election Day, in response to Covid-19.

Voting by mail became even more critical with respect to our outreach as it was the way that voters, if they felt uncomfortable about voting in person on Election Day, could apply for a mail-in ballot. The voter can vote from the comfort of their home.

There’s a dedicated outreach team here with the Pennsylvania Department of State. We meet weekly with other interdepartmental staff, and we discuss and strategize on our outreach efforts. It is part of the business model so that we can quickly adapt as needed and it makes us responsive to our community.

One of the things that we did specifically right after the change of the primary date was update the website because that is the place that most people visit if they want to know what’s happening. Key details included: register to vote on time, request a ballot on time, and now because we’re getting close to that primary date, return your ballot by the deadline.

We quickly adapted our targeted media campaign so that included TV and radio. We mailed a postcard to Pennsylvania households informing them about the new primary date and the option of voting by mail and how to apply online for this.

Social media are part of our campaign efforts. We created a neat unboxing video. If you have kids you know exactly what that is, like open up the make-up or open up the new iPhone to see what that experience is. We recorded a similar video to help educate voters about what to expect when they get their ballot in the mail: what’s in the envelope and then of course what to do with the materials in the envelope and how to return their ballot and with it the effort of do it correctly so it will be counted and send it in on time.

New to our Department are webinars that we’ve been putting out kind of like this because we can no longer go in person and do presentations. Leveraging the use of technology is important. Things have changed in recent years since I first started in elections, so this state is developing methods of sending targeted emails to voters so voters when they apply for either online voter registration or requesting their ballot, they can opt in to receive emails. We also inform voters by email to track that process — i.e., “okay we got your application,” “it’s been processed,” “your ballot is in the mail,” “we got your ballot.” Even now because we’re so close to the election we’re sending targeted emails to voters who have requested a ballot and who have not yet returned their ballot to let them know that we need for you to get your ballot back in time and that the deadline is coming up.

When thinking ahead to education for November, what are you learning from this round that you think can be applied? What new and different sorts of things will get implemented in approaching the general election?

Veronica:  We’re going to continue to do what we’ve been doing. Part of that is just adapting to change, and certainly listening to the needs of our community and the counties. Our strategy is to always be poised, to be nimble enough to quickly get information out when the information is needed just in time, but being poised to do that quickly. We have an outreach team. We will continue to educate voters about mail-in voting as well as the things that they can do to stay safe even throughout the general election year.

Some new things that we’re considering is maybe adding text messaging after the primary, and we have begun to use trusted validators so that they can help get the message out and so that includes using election officials or athletes or businesses to help expand on that vote-by-mail effort. Pennsylvania’s new law allows for us to continue to know that we have to continue to get information out because there’s so many new things that are in Pennsylvania’s law for this year, and so we’ll continue to do those efforts throughout 2020.

Claire DeSoi is the communications director for the MIT Election Data + Science Lab.

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By Jennifer Gaudette, Seth Hill, Thad Kousser, Mackenzie Lockhart, and Mindy Romero

How Out For Justice Helped Expand Voting Access For ALL

Jason Moscow is a rising senior at the University of California at Berkeley.

Leading up to the November elections,  Out for Justice (OFJ) , led by Executive Director Nicole Hanson-Mundell, has successfully advocated for and facilitated a historic expansion of ballot access to eligible incarcerated voters in the state of Maryland. For the first time in the state’s history, the Maryland Board of Elections (BOE) has agreed to provide all voting-eligible incarcerated citizens with election information, voter registration applications, mail-in ballot request forms, and paid postages. This is the manifestation of  Out for Justice’s  successful “Expand the Vote, Expand the Ballot” coalition, which, along with  Common Cause Maryland  and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, lobbied the Board of Elections and put in much of the logistical legwork to see these opportunities through.

These efforts have been led by formerly and currently incarcerated citizens. Nicole Hanson-Mundell, a formerly incarcerated citizen herself, explained “These issues are being tackled by people who society does not think of as worthy.” This is a victory for American Democracy. In a time fraught with unprecedented political divisions, Hanson-Mundell insisted, “We all deserve to have a stake in our democracy.” Speaking of formerly and currently incarcerated individuals, she explained, “We are citizens. We are you. You are us.”

In 1974, the Supreme Court affirmed that jailed eligible voters have a constitutional right to keep their voting privileges while incarcerated. There are two types of eligible voters in Maryland prisons today: unconvicted citizens who are waiting in pretrial detention and citizens serving time for misdemeanors. According to Maryland’s Attorney General Brian Frosh, approximately 7,000 citizens are detained and put in pretrial detention every day in the state of Maryland. There are thousands more incarcerated for misdemeanors daily.

According to the Baltimore Sun, more than 70% of Maryland’s prison population is Black, whereas only 31% of the state population is Black. This more than doubles the national average. “By suppressing the voices of incarcerated people, the state of Maryland is unconstitutionally disenfranchising black voters,” explained Hanson Mundell.  

While there is a legal precedent in place that protects the voting rights of many incarcerated voters, there is no institutional framework that provides these eligible voters with the necessary materials like voter registration forms and ballots. Dana Paikowsky, a voting rights attorney at the Campaign Legal Center, which is OFJ’s national partner, summed up the legal predicament as follows in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review:

Registering women in 2018 at the Baltimore City Detention Center.

The heart of the issue is this: because jailed voters are incarcerated, they must rely on others to provide them with the information and materials they need to exercise their right to vote. However, these third parties—sheriffs, county clerks, and other local officials—operate largely with-out rules or oversight with respect to jail voting.

At present, in the state of Maryland, the burden of providing voter-eligible incarcerated citizens with proper access and information falls to nonprofits like  Out for Justice . Hanson-Mundell and other organizations partnered with her in the “Expand the Vote, Expand the Ballot” coalition successfully advocated for themselves to be co-opted into an advisory committee for the Maryland Board of Elections. “Every meeting, we fought tooth and nail to have incarcerated and formerly incarcerated voters considered as part of the agenda,” Hanson-Mundel explained. 

Initially, the BOE was skeptical of how to curate lists of all eligible incarcerated voters, so OFJ took it upon itself to collect lists from the wardens and sheriffs of correctional facilities in seven of Maryland’s 28 counties, demonstrating to the Board of Elections not only what was necessary but also what was possible. OFJ, with the help of  Common Cause  and the  American Civil Liberties Union , also created the packets of voter education and access forms, which are currently being printed and distributed to all 28 prisons in Maryland. 

Nicole Hanson-Mundell explained, “Voting is a part of the fabric of my family. I grew up understanding very early that voting was my voice.” She has extended that lesson to her two daughters, creating a tradition of taking them with her to the polls every election cycle. “When I was incarcerated and had to leave my family, I couldn’t take my daughters to vote for Obama,” remembered Hanson-Mundell. That experience did, however, empower her to become a leader in the advocacy work to ensure voting rights for incarcerated voters. 

Voter registration at Marian House in 2018. In October of 2016, Out for Justice began going into drug treatment and transitional houses to register formerly incarcerated people to vote. Visit ValueMyVote.today website for more information about the OFJ voter education campaign and the out4justice.org for overall organizational programs and initiatives

“Individuals who are directly impacted by this criminal system must be at the forefront of policy reform. Our voices and lived experience must be center in this work,” explained Hanson-Mundell.  Out for Justice  is a policy-oriented organization. In 2016, they co-led the  “Unlock the Vote”  coalition, which successfully introduced and lobbied for legislation that restored voting rights for 40,000 Marylanders who had been previously convicted of felonies but were still on probation. 

This past legislative session,  Out for Justice , along with its partners, crafted the language that became the HB 568/ SB 372 bill, which would hold the state accountable for providing access to voter registration materials and absentee ballots every election cycle. Dana Paikowsky, a voting rights attorney at the Campaign Legal Center explained, “The state knows that it will have eligible voters in its custody, and yet, there is no infrastructure to serve this group of voters that you know will be there...This is a group of voters who the state is physically holding captive and preventing from voting. They should take the steps that they need to take to ensure that they are able to exercise their constitutional rights anyways.”  

That legislation made it through one house of the Maryland State Assembly, but COVOID19 prevented its potential passing through the second house. Hanson-Mundell says the bill will be considered in the next legislative session. This bill would, among other things, create an institutional protocol to properly provide voter registration and ballot access to eligible incarcerated voters in every election cycle. This would, in many ways, legislatively cement the precedent that  Out for Justice  and so many others are setting in this election cycle.

Civics Education Helps Create Young Voters and Activists

Youth voter turnout is notoriously low in the U.S., especially when social-studies classes are notably absent.

It’s widely known that young adults in the United States tend to vote at lower rates than older Americans, but it’s easy to gloss over just how stunning the numbers really are—especially at a time of such intense political polarization and divisiveness. Only half of eligible adults between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in the 2016 presidential election that sent Donald Trump to the White House. During the 2014 midterm elections two years earlier, the youth-voter-turnout rate was just 20 percent, the lowest ever recorded in history, according to an analysis of Census data .

These troubling voting rates follow decades of declining civics education. Starting in the 1960s, robust civics instruction , which usually took place through three standard high-school courses, started to atrophy. It’s likely not a coincidence, then, given evidence suggesting a link between civics education and voter participation, that the 1960s coincided with a slump in the rate of young adults who cast ballots.

The history of young people and voter turnout in America

A newly released survey by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation illustrates the sorry state of civics education today: Just one in three Americans would pass the U.S. citizenship test. It’s not a test known for its difficulty: The vast majority of citizenship-seeking immigrants pass easily. (A real question on the test: “Identify whether Rhode Island, Oregon, Maine, or South Dakota is a state that borders Canada.”) Only 13 percent of the 1,000 survey respondents, nearly all American-born, could say when the Constitution was ratified (1788, if you were wondering), and fewer than half could identify which countries the U.S. fought against in World War II. Among the most egregious examples from the survey: Two percent of respondents identified climate change as the cause of the Cold War.

According to a report published earlier this year, just nine states and the District of Columbia require one year of government or civics classes in high school. But beyond that, most existing civics-education efforts focus on kids in high school and college who are of voting age or close to it—not younger children. For example, one of the most high-profile national initiatives to improve civics education in recent years has homed in on the tail end of the K–12 trajectory, seeking to make passage of the U.S.-citizenship test a graduation requirement nationwide . Today, 29 states have some kind of citizenship-test law on the books, according to Lucian Spataro, the CEO of the group Civics Education Initiative.

Some observers emphasize that to really ensure that kids learn the importance of civics, schools should start lessons much earlier. Ideally, says Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg of Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, civic engagement should inspire students to translate knowledge about government and policy making into action—from volunteering and community organizing to lobbying and voting. For kids to really understand that connection, advocates say civics learning should start at a young age.

Only a couple of states, such as Florida , have civics-education requirements for middle schoolers, even though that’s when students nationwide take a standardized civics test as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Middle school is also a time in students’ educational trajectory that is better structured for such education than later stages, when school becomes broken down into more distinct disciplines that make it difficult to integrate this kind of instruction seamlessly, says Kawashima-Ginsberg. And kids at this age undergo dramatic developmental and intellectual changes that render them particularly ripe for understanding the importance of civics. Likewise, if high school is the first time kids get exposure to the subject matter, teachers may struggle to motivate them. Other advocates go even farther, saying that civics lessons should start as early as kindergarten , when kids begin to read and discuss identity.

This type of early civics education might connect with students more easily if it’s woven into the existing fabric of everyday schooling—for example, into a science lesson on pollution, or a history class where students are learning about Native Americans. Civics shouldn’t just be taught in one separate class; it should be a staple of education, “the lima beans on the curricular plate of the elementary student’s day,” as Paul Fitchett, an education professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, put it in a interview with the education-news outlet Chalkbeat .

That Florida requires schools to introduce civics in elementary school may help to explain why the state has seen steady improvement in students’ civics proficiency: In 2017, 70 percent of seventh-graders passed the state exam, up from 61 percent in 2014. And a Washington Monthly article even attributed the activism of teens at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School—where 17 students were shot and killed in February— to the state’s early civics requirement. In launching a nationwide movement for stronger gun control, wrote the authors Frank Islam and Ed Crego, the students have “been the beneficiaries of what is arguably one of the nation’s most comprehensive and successful efforts to teach civic knowledge and engagement.”

Besides the Parkland teens, young people have been especially enthusiastic about politics of late, but it means little unless they translate it into a trip to the ballot box in November. And the early signs aren’t promising: A recent poll from Gallup indicates that just 26 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds say they intend to vote in the November midterms, compared to 82 percent of Americans 65 and older.

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Voter Education Project (VEP)

April 1, 1962 to January 31, 1992

The Voter Education Project (VEP) coordinated the voter registration campaigns of five civil rights groups—the  Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee , the  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , the  Congress of Racial Equality , and the  National Urban League —under the auspices of the Southern Regional Council (SRC), a non-profit research organization. The creation of the VEP enabled foundations to make tax-free donations directly to voter registration efforts, which were then coordinated by SRC to prevent duplicate coverage areas. Martin Luther King believed the VEP to be a success, pledging to “continue to participate personally” in its registration efforts (King, 5 April 1962).

Established in April 1962, the VEP originated in discussions between U.S. Attorney General Robert F.  Kennedy , Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Burke  Marshall , the SRC’s Harold C. Fleming, and philanthropist Stephen R. Currier. They believed that the creation of a nonpartisan, tax-exempt, and centrally organized agency would attract private contributions to the civil rights struggle and improve the efficiency of voter registration efforts already underway. In addition, they hoped the VEP would shift the efforts of civil rights groups away from confrontational direct action methods toward less controversial voter registration drives. Although civil rights groups were well aware of this motivation for advocating the VEP, they welcomed the additional funding and viewed participation in the project as a way to continue their work with increased federal protection.

VEP-funded projects had early successes in communities such as Albany, Georgia, where a VEP grant helped the  Albany Movement  register more than 500 new voters in two weeks during 1962. However, in early 1963 the VEP threatened to suspend SCLC from the program because of inadequate reporting on the use of grant funds. King hastily called a conference between VEP leadership and SCLC, during which he acknowledged that SCLC had to work harder to reach its reporting obligations and asked the VEP to renew its support. The VEP agreed, and SCLC continued its VEP-sponsored projects.

Although many registration campaigns achieved success, in some areas, notably Mississippi, the VEP concluded that discrimination was so entrenched that only federal intervention could significantly increase the number of black voters. By the end of 1964 VEP grants totaled almost $900,000, and nearly 800,000 new black southern voters had been added to the rolls since the VEP began. In October 1965, a few months after the passage of the  Voting Rights Act of 1965 , King told an SCLC administrative committee that more than 175,000 new black voters had been registered since the act passed, and that SCLC registration and canvassing was responsible for more than half of that increase.

In 1967 the VEP began a third operational phase that focused on channeling grants to local voter leagues. The VEP separated from the SRC in 1970, but continued voter education and registration work until it closed in 1992. 

Fairclough,  Race and Democracy , 1995.

King, Press conference after meeting with Lyndon B. Johnson, 5 August 1965,  MLKJP-GAMK .

King, “Statement on intensified voter registration drive,” 5 April 1962,  MLKJP-GAMK .

Navasky,  Kennedy Justice , 1971.

Parker,  Black Votes Count , 1990.

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