It’s a shame when a pop superstar has to take over the duty to promote the youth vote in Texas because some schools and the Secretary of State are violating their duty under the law to do so.
So thank heaven for Taylor Swift.
As USA Today reported last September, her Instagram on National Voter Registration Day got more than 30,000 young people in 6 states to sign up to vote. Texas was one of them.
In the 1980s, Texas passed a law requiring high schools to give voter registration forms to students at or near the age of voting eligibility.
It orders the Secretary of State to write instructions for the high schools about how to comply.
But Texas’ Secretary of State isn’t checking compliance. So high schools that don’t follow the law aren’t penalized.
And, according to The Texas Tribune, some school administrators don’t even know about the law. Since 2010, Texas has had the highest growth rate of people under 18, among six of the most populous states in the U.S., and the second highest rate of that growth rate in the nation. I n 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, “one of every 10” people under the age of 18 in the U.S. lived in Texas.
In 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau counted more than 400,000 18-year-olds in Texas. Many still aren’t voting.
In April, The Texas Tribune reported that “…in the past four election cycles…” Texas voters between 18 and 24 had the lowest voter registration rate “compared to other age groups” able to vote.
The Tribune also noted “…only 49% of registered Texas voters between 18 and 24…” voted in the 2022 midterm elections “compared to 86% of voters 65 and older.”
That means Texas’ “diverse, dynamic,” growing population isn’t accurately represented. Texas has 3,240 high schools - “2,813 are public schools and 427 are private schools.”
The San Antonio Express-News reported in July 2023, “only 18 percent of Texas high school administrators in the 2020-21 school year requested voter registration forms for students as “required by the 1980s law.”
The year before, according to the newspaper, “37 percent of Texas high schools “did comply. But those numbers still fall far short of even 50%. Additionally, Texas schools don’t teach students the importance of voting.”
As Maggie Stern, the Youth Civic Education and Engagement Coordinator of the non-profit Children’s Defense Fund in Texas, told The Texas Tribune this month: “Young people are motivated by the issues affecting their community, so as they understand the ways elected officials have power over those issues, they are more motivated to vote – that piece of civics education is really lacking in Texas.”
So Taylor Swift will have to post a National Voting Registration Day Instagram message this September, if some Texas high schools and the Secretary of State keep on violating this important state law to help young voters.
FOOTNOTE: BANDERA HIGH SCHOOL COMPLIES WITH THE LAW. It passes out voter registration packets to eligible students.
Jodie Sinclair is an award-winning writer who holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and resides in Bandera, Texas.
