Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.Pennsylvania has seen healthy turnout in recent elections, but one important segment of the electorate isn’t participating in such high numbers.According to a recent study of 30 states, Pennsylvania has the lowest rate of 18-year-olds registering to vote of any of them. Just 22% of 18-year-olds in the state are registered to vote, according to the study from The Civics Center, a nonprofit organization focused on registering high school students. That’s far below states like Oregon, which leads the pack at 86%, and even neighboring states like New Jersey and West Virginia, at 48% and 55%, respectively.But it’s not the young people’s fault, said Laura Brill, CEO and Founder of The Civics Center.“It’s not that young people in Michigan are so much more impassioned and and inherently organized than young people in Pennsylvania,” Brill said. “It’s that they’re involved in different systems and [have] different supports to help them do it.”The positive news, Brill said, is that the factors that lead to low youth registration are all changeable. She said one of the biggest things states can do is to allow people to preregister to vote — at age 16, or even earlier.“Half of U.S. teens live in states where they can preregister at age 16, and what we are definitely seeing is that states with preregistration have higher registration rates for 18-year-olds, just because there’s a bigger on-ramp for people to learn about it,” she said.The top three states in The Civics Center study all allow 16-year-olds to preregister to vote, and Colorado recently reduced that to 15 years old.Pennsylvania, on the other hand, allows people to register only if they will be 18 by the time of the next primary or general election. If they are turning 18 between the primary and general election, they have to wait until after the primary to register. That creates a barrier for on-the-ground organizations trying to register youths, particularly through school-based programs.Angelique Hinton, executive director of PA Youth Vote, said the tight window after the state’s primary — which takes place in the third week of May — and before students graduate or go on summer break makes it hard to capture those with in-between birthdays.“It’s very disjointed and it makes it unnecessarily clunky and hard to do,” she said. “We also lose a lot of students that way.”Brill said automatic voter registration is also a big factor in boosting numbers. But when Pennsylvania residents are first allowed to get their driver’s licenses at 16-and-a-half, they can’t also preregister to vote, like people 18 and older can. Although Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced bills to allow young people to preregister to vote, none of the legislative efforts have succeeded.Brill and Hinton also both separately mentioned financial factors. Brill said the data reveals that school districts in areas with higher income tend to have higher youth registration rates, and Hinton said she has noticed a problem with underfunded school civics programs.“They’re not being taught how government works,” Hinton said. “They’re not provided with the education to really help them understand how to make government work for them, and so they grow up and they don’t participate. And because they don’t participate, then they are never a priority of their elected officials, and there’s a cycle that just perpetuates itself.” Brill said, however, that another factor can overcome this: teachers. She said she has noticed that when a school district has teachers dedicated to helping students understand the importance of voting and running registration drives, more young people register. She said The Civics Center has done three separate studies showing that when students and educators run registration drives, registration rates increase by 6% — an increase anyone looking to improve voter registration rates would be “over the moon” about.One school with such a program is Franklin Towne Charter High School in Philadelphia, which received the Governor’s Civic Engagement Award earlier this year for its student registration efforts. In 2025, the school registered 86% of eligible students.Vincent Wisniewski, the school’s chief of staff, oversees its voter registration work and said he was surprised to see Pennsylvania rank so low in The Civics Center’s study. “Honestly, I was shocked,” he said. Wisniewski described a strong civic culture in Philadelphia, with organizations such as the Committee of 70, League of Women Voters, and the Office of the City Commissioners eager to help get the word out to young people. Wisniewski said the school takes advantage of every opportunity it can.He agreed that having a point person to lead these efforts in a school makes a difference, though he noted that that takes resources. He thinks the governor’s award has been a good way to promote registration and that more friendly competition between districts could also help. Brill said she hopes what people will take away from the study is that states have the power to improve their ranking.“These are systems that we can change and do better,” she said. “The most actionable pro-democracy, nonpartisan things people can be doing right now [are] to help young people register to vote and guide them through the process.” Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
