I did it. I finally registered to vote.
I turned 18 in April with every intention of registering right away. But I did not. I actually registered to vote in September. I constantly put it at the bottom of my list, until I realized that it had been five months. I am the type of person to constantly advocate for young voters and the importance of voting, but I had not followed my own advice.
Now that I’m finally on the other side, I can tell you the process was way less involved than I had anticipated. The only hard part is knowing your social security number, which you should probably memorize if you are 18 because you start to use it a lot.
Other than that, the rest of the information is very simple: your name, your address, your date of birth.
If you are like me, constantly pushing registering to vote at the bottom of your list, let me tell you why you should take a few moments to register to vote now.
Young voters like us (18-24) have historically had low turnout in elections. The 2020 presidential election saw the highest voter turnout among young voters in history, but only around 50% of all eligible young voters actually voted in that election. Previous presidential elections have had even lower turnouts. In the 2016 presidential election, only around 39% of young voters voted.
The situation is even worse in local elections. In Memphis, only 6.5% of eligible voters vote in local elections. Of those voters, 49% were over the age of 65. Only 8.4% were between the ages of 18-24. That’s not great.
Much of the real change happens within communities and starts with these local elections.
In the end, we should all register to vote. Our votes matter more than we think. We, as young people, have the ability to create real change in our communities and in our country.
Although it may be too late to register to vote in this upcoming local election, make sure that you do not miss the presidential election. So, go register if you have not already.
