Kids Gotta Vote!
Dear Leading Ladies,
We heard the call last week. Again and again. “Do something.”
And we are trying to.
You have all stepped up and ordered postcards, written until your hands cramped, encouraging people in battleground states to register, to vote by mail, to recognize that their votes count.
We are organizing a kick-ass event for October 9 at The Cabot about the importance of the youth vote. We have a researcher from CIRCLE at the Tisch College of Tufts University and a student leader from Beverly High School for the panel, and tomorrow we are meeting with someone from Mass Vote who is interested in joining us that night. There are other irons in the fire that are not ready for public discussion yet, but if even one of them pans out, we will be very excited!
And we have two digital billboard companies that are in the mix to give us estimates on posting a message on boards on interstate highways in battleground states in the next 70 days. This may require a little fundraising, but will be well worth it to encourage voting, especially among young folks.
Courtesy of The Civics Center
Last week, we learned from one of our supporters about a group called The Civics Center. Their mission is to make voter registration part of every high school in America. Towards that end, they have proclaimed September 23-27 HIgh School Voter Registration Week. The Civics Center points to some of the facts we have referenced before: most students are not asked to register in school; candidates don’t usually reach out to those who are not registered to vote; only 30% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote; when young people are registered, they do vote. The Civics Center goes further and posits that high schools are the most efficient place to register teen voters, especially the 40% who are not going on to college. Voting, then, becomes an equity issue, as college students have a louder voice than their colleagues who don’t continue their schooling.
The founder of The Civics Center, Laura Brill, is an attorney who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She has worked for more than 20 years as an advocate for voting rights, LGBTQ+ issues, and other complex legal matters. Brill founded The Civics Center in 2018.
The Civics Center provides toolkits and short online training sessions on how to run a registration drive. We know that many of you are educators or retired educators or have children in area secondary schools. We encourage you to look over the materials at thecivicscenter.org and then approach the leadership in the schools where you have relationships. See what you can make happen. And send the information and link to friends, relatives, and colleagues in other states. Perhaps they can start a drive where they live. We were reminded by a young activist who follows us that every effort counts.
In the meantime, we plan to go into Pingree, Penguin Hall, The Governor’s Academy and, perhaps, Beverly High School, where we have relationships, to offer voter registration to students next month. Perhaps some of you would like to join us.
We have all been wowed by the work of one young guy, David Hogg of March for Our Lives and Leaders We Deserve. Well, the new kid to watch is Parker Short, president of the Young Democrats of Georgia. A 2024 grad of U of Michigan in public policy, now a grad student at Duke in public policy, this kid is the face of tomorrow. Google him. He’s even got some mad dance moves.
En-joy!
Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team