Over the past few wks, I received a Q that left me reflecting: "Could this be the year?" As I do w/most press Qs, I ask clarifying Qs to understand what they really want to get at. The reporter said, "Could this be the year that youth voter turnout equals turnout for those 30+?"

I'm not saying that this level of turnout is out of the question, given the levels of engagement we've seen, but I had to ask myself in that moment: does the US really have the civic and election infrastructure to support that?

I've been following this for 15 years and these are some of what I'm thinking about to answer that question:
-Local election offices are low capacity,
-K12 schools do not have models or systematic integration of learning about elections and voting (working on it!)
-Cont'd...

(Cont'd)...
-The incredibly important political homes that local youth orgs provide are chronically underfunded,
-The biggest investment into youth voter turnout comes from presidential campaigns, who have incentives to only reach some youth (i.e. who have voted)
-Cont'd...

(Cont'd...)
-Very few communities have figured out how to reach young people not on college campuses (which is why k12 is so critical)
-AND, some now see youth voting as a partisan issue (which it is NOT)

We need all these and more stakeholders on this to integrate youth into democratic participation, AND we need to stop the pejorative, outright racist and stereotypical media coverage of young people.

So, maybe a better question is: why do we put such a high expectation on young people with episodic support?