UC Berkeley

Young Americans consistently vote at lower rates than older Americans, particularly seniors. What explains this age-turnout gap, and which interventions, if any, can help reduce it?

My dissertation argues that voting costs are distributed unequally across age groups, and that this unequal distribution plays a central role in explaining the age-turnout gap. I present empirical evidence that when certain voting costs are alleviated via the introduction of voter registration reforms, youth voting rates disproportionately increase: same-day registration laws boost youth turnout by 3.2 to 7.3 percentage points, and automatic voter registration is associated with a 6.3 percentage-point increase in youth turnout. Older age groups see much smaller effects.

Using data from an original, nationally representative survey, I show that young Americans face higher voting costs than older age groups. In turn, these higher costs predict lower registration and turnout rates. Compared to seniors, today’s youth are less informed about the voting process and how to research candidates and issues; struggle more to find the time to vote, to plan ahead to vote, and to balance voting with other life tasks; face greater transportation issues and tradeoffs between voting and earning money; have greater difficulty with the parts of voting that cannot be done online; disproportionately think mail voting is a hassle; and are less likely to own the documentation they need to register and vote. When asked directly, youth are significantly more likely than older Americans to say that registration and voting are difficult. After adjusting for race and ethnicity, gender, education, and family income, being young (relative to being a senior) is a large and statistically significant predictor of facing voting costs. I also find that young people are the least-informed of any age group about their state’s policies on same-day registration, early voting, mail voting, and policies around updating voter registration.

Considering the recent rise in youth-targeted voter suppression, I present data from a randomized controlled survey experiment, which finds that informing young people about efforts to limit their ability to vote does not significantly increase their voting intentions. Notably, it does among youth with a strong sense of age identity—but most young people do not identify especially strongly with their age group. Previously documented backlashes to voter suppression may have been larger because they targeted more cohesive or “important” identity groups. Unless young people begin seeing their age as a more important aspect of their identity, we should not expect youth-targeted suppression to spark the same countermobilization.