Campaigns
18by Vote values youth civic action and seeks to create a culture of long-lasting, sustainable youth empowerment. This means that our Election-based programming is not simply focused on ‘get out the vote’ efforts. Instead, we cultivate leadership among underrepresented youth through paid opportunities to hold community education and registration events.
#GenZtothePolls Week of Action: From September 13th to September 20th, 18by Vote will be hosting the #GenZtothePolls Week of Action.
#GenZtothePolls Fundraising Campaign: 18by Vote has set a goal to raise $30,000 before October 11th, 2022 to allow us to reach even more youth voters prior to voter registration deadlines and the midterm elections.
In 2022, 18by Vote is registering young voters and getting out the youth vote in 6 key states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona. To increase youth voter turnout and youth engagement, we are providing leadership training, resources, and payment to young people in these states to support their relational voter registration and education efforts.
We are engaging young people in voter outreach through two programs, a Civic Leader Program and a Civic Organizer Program.
The 18by Vote Civic Leader program includes a month-long leadership training and employment for 16 weeks and has been designed for youth ages seventeen to twenty-two. Our Civic Leaders are planning and executing voter engagement events and outreach, varying from physical voter registration drives to educational canvassing events to relational voter outreach campaigns to online localized textbanking events. They are spread out across our six target states and each represents a different congressional district.
Our Civic Organizer program is a paid engagement program that offers individual shifts and training to young people ages fourteen to twenty-six who want to participate in voter outreach events.
We are currently hiring civic organizers! If you live in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, or Florida and would like to sign up, please visit our jobs page.
To catalyze youth voter turnout in a state with historically strict voter laws, 18by Vote launched a Rapid Response Taskforce geared for the Georgia Senate runoff election. Starting in December of 2020, an entirely youth-led team worked to register the 17,000 young people who turned 18 between the General Election and the Runoffs making them eligible to vote for the first time. After the registration deadline, the team quickly transitioned to Get Out the Vote efforts in partnership with a youth-led coalition called “Peaches for Progress”.
Taskforce Activities
- Collaborated with on-the-ground teams in Georgia to tailor youth voter outreach to Georgians’ specific needs
- Created interactive, informative content on the senate runoff election registration and voting specifically targeted at college students.
- Hosted textbanks that provided meaningful resources and advice on registration, early voting, absentee voting, and in-person voting for the runoff election
- Mobilized local Georgia residents for in-person canvassing activities following COVID-19 safety protocols
700 18BY VOTE VOLUNTEERS REACHED NEARLY 700,000 PEOPLE ACROSS REGISTRATION, EARLY VOTE, AND GET-OUT-THE-VOTE ACTIVATIONS.
In the two months prior to the 2021 Primary Election, 18by Vote hosted over 30 voter in-person registration and education drives across all five boroughs of New York City. We successfully connected with over 1,500 New Yorkers face to face. Honoring our belief in the value of young people, we compensated over 75 youth who have held voter registration/education drives in their communities or schools.
Acknowledging the physical barriers of COVID-19, we have also mobilized youth to connect with their peers digitally. We texted over 18,000 youth to notify them of the primary election and provide them with the resources they need to get to the polls.
