According to the organization’s Twitter account, this initiative is focused on minorities who face up disproportionate barriers to vote ahead of the midterm elections that will redefine Congress, governors of 36 of the 50 states and other public posts.
The campaign effort, called Vote Ready, seeks to reach out to 4 million voters ages 18 to 30 and register over 1 million young Americans by Nov. 8, according to a press release to be published later Tuesday. Vote.org will use social media and other online resources to inform people how to register, fill out an absentee ballot or navigate election laws ahead of election day.
This year, Vote.org is concentrating its efforts on boosting young voter turnout in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania, which the organization estimates to be key states pivotal to increasing youth turnout.
According to Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey, the goal is to not only register new voters, but ensure that those who voted in 2020 come back because once a voter participates in two elections, voting is more likely to become a lifelong practice.
Vote.org led its largest voter turnout campaign ever in 2020, when it registered more than four million voters.
At least 17 million young people turned or are about to turn 18 between 2020 and 2022 elections.
The 2022 election cycle is also the first in which members of Gen Z can run for federal office. The most prominent success story so far is Maxwell Frost, the Democrat running who won his party’s nomination last month in Florida’s 10th Congressional District. The seat is heavily Democratic, setting Frost up to be the first Gen Z member of Congress barring a general election surprise.
An April Harvard Institute of Politics poll shows youth turnout is on track to match a record youth turnout for a midterm election in 2018, but 42 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds also said they don’t feel like their vote matters and expressed other discontentment with the political system.
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