“For the past 3 federal elections, young people have consistently made up 12-13% of all voters, bucking previous trends….27% of 18-29 year-olds cast a ballot in the 2022 midterms making it the second-highest midterm turnout in almost three decades.” RocktheVote.org
As young people have continued to demonstrate their power, we’ve seen efforts to suppress their votes. That still won’t stop us….The young people have spoken and we demand to be included! #RockTheVote on Instagram
Three Lessons from the Midterms about Voter ID Laws (on their website)
- Voter ID laws are causing exactly the confusion and disenfranchisement we feared they would. …We know that voter ID laws have a deeply disproportionate impact on voters of color, young voters, people with disabilities, and low-income voters, and when we look at turnout figures, we need to keep those barriers in mind.
- There are no shortcuts. We need to do the work to meet voters where they are with the ID information and free help they might not otherwise have access to or seek out. That’s why we hired new organizers on the ground in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas in 2022. We put up billboards at public transit hubs and bus stations, ran radio ads in strict voter ID states, and used new platforms like Snapchat to create in-app resources to reach young and student voters who have a particularly hard time with voter ID laws.
3. We can’t wait for election years to ramp up if we want to be as effective as we need to be…tt can take weeks — sometimes months — to get an ID, especially when a voter needs to get underlying documents like a birth certificate or Social Security card.
Kathleen Unger, Founder, Chair of the Board and President of VoteRiders, shared some statistics in a Thanksgiving email on Thursday Nov. 24, 2022:
- “4.5 million+ voters reached with ID information and help
- 1 million+ voter ID information wallet cards distributed
- 2.5 million+ text messages sent
- 135,000+ letters sent to voters
- 15,000+ voters individually assisted with ID questions or documents
Together, we’ve made a real difference for our democracy. Our work reached new heights this election cycle, delivering critical voter ID information and assistance to over 4.5 million voters nationwide! And we’re not done yet! We are still hard at work ensuring every Georgia voter knows what ID they need to cast a ballot that counts in the runoff election!”