They're counting on you staying home
You may have seen The Atlantic cover story last month about the growing movement to disenfranchise the majority of Americans by repealing the 19th Amendment. Prominent pastors are saying it out loud, a tech billionaire wrote that extending the vote to women made democracy unworkable, and a Cabinet member shared the video approvingly.
Repealing a constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures, so this isn’t going to happen. But it doesn’t have to.
You don’t need to repeal the 19th Amendment if more than half of young people simply don’t vote. That’s what happened in 2024, and we can do something about that in 2026.
This is not apathy. Many young people who didn’t vote say they missed a deadline, were registered at the wrong address, or didn’t know where to go. These are informational problems, and with your support, they are solvable.
VoteAmerica is currently registering voters for under $1 per completed registration. The political establishment routinely pays $5, $10, $15 and calls it a win. Every wasted dollar is a dollar that didn’t go toward actually turning someone out to vote.
16.4 million high school students will be eligible to vote by 2028, but only 12% are pre-registered because most don’t know it’s an option. Pre-registration is available in 49 states and DC, and increases turnout 6-13 points among the youngest voters.
15.4 million college students are enrolled right now. In 2020, VoteAmerica ran the largest campus mobilization program in the country, reaching 3 million students across 241 campuses, including 94 of 107 HBCUs. Our randomized control trials show a 2 to 8 point turnout boost.
In 10 states plus DC, voters can sign up to automatically receive a ballot for every future election. The turnout lift is roughly 13 percentage points, and it’s the single highest-impact tactic we’ve identified for midterms.
The people campaigning to take away women’s right to vote are counting on those women not to use it. They are counting on the system being confusing enough that millions of eligible voters will sit out another election. That is a bet we can make them lose.
