There are 8 million teens eligible to vote. These high school students are trying to make sure more do.
Every year, Jessie Cai would shadow her mom on “take your kid to work day.”
Every year, Jessie Cai would shadow her mom on “take your kid to work day.” At the Maryland Social Security office, where her mom was a systems analyst, she was struck by the lack of Asian American faces in the room. “I walked around and got the distinct impression that not many people in public service looked like me or my mom,” said Cai, a 17-year-old rising senior.
That experience set her on a mission to understand Asian American civic engagement. In 2023, she joined New Voters, an organization that helps high schoolers host voter registration drives. A consequential Maryland primary election was on the horizon, and she wanted to make sure young people — including the Asian Americans in her community — made their voices heard. “In Maryland, you can pre-register to vote at age 16, so I knew we could cast a wider net to register younger students,” she said.
Collin Wang, right, hosted five high school voter registration drives at his high school in Pennsylvania. Courtesy Collin WangNew Voters paired Cai with a mentor, who gave her step-by-step guidance for hosting a registration drive. Cai set up meetings with school administrators, convinced her statistics teacher to sponsor her club and partnered with the National Social Studies Honor Society to set up the weeklong initiative in April. She and her friends tabled outside of the cafeteria, where they handed out donuts to students who dropped by to learn more about voting.
In the end, she managed to register 186 students. “We drove home the point that voting is the best way to hold people in power accountable,” she said. “We reminded them that we take our right to vote for granted. It’s a privilege that other teens around the world sometimes don’t get.”
This is how New Voters, a nonpartisan nonprofit, operates — by connecting high school students passionate about civic engagement to the resources they need to galvanize their peers. Founder Jahnavi Rao, 24, registered 85% of eligible voters at her high school as a senior in 2017. Soon after, high schoolers across the country were reaching out to her to ask how they can do the same.
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