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More 16- and 17-year-olds are gaining the right to vote. Could this become the norm?

Amid all the worries about the perennially elusive youth vote, there鈥檚 a promising trend to talk about: In a of towns and cities across the U.S., 16- and 17-year-olds are gaining the right to vote. The numbers are still small, but the momentum is real. Advocates say it鈥檚 about nurturing lifelong voters. looks at the growing trend of youth voting.

Take Newark, New Jersey, which allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in its school board election in April. Teen turnout was . But that was better than the adults managed. Besides, as Sam Novey from the University of Maryland鈥檚 Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement puts it, the city 鈥渟tarted from .鈥�

Indeed, adding younger teens to the voter rolls involves building a lot of things from scratch. After Newark passed its ordinance last year allowing youth voting, officials had to rewire voter registration systems and launch a full-scale education campaign. It was about 14 months before 16- and 17-year-olds could cast their first ballots.

鈥淐omparatively lightning fast,鈥� Novey said.

And there鈥檚 a payoff to look forward to.

鈥� that those who are allowed to register and begin voting at 16 are more likely to vote later in life than their peers,鈥� said Joshua Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an important way to increase participation.鈥�

In short: Get 鈥檈m young, and they鈥檒l keep coming back. The act of voting becomes normal, even expected. And school, Douglas said, is an ideal environment for that first civic nudge 鈥� with teachers and peers available to discuss the issues.

The research Douglas cited looked at Scotland, which allowed 16-year-olds to vote in its The decision was initially controversial, but 鈥渘othing bad happened,鈥� said Jan Eichhorn, a political science professor at the University of Edinburgh who studies youth participation and cowrote the study. 鈥淎dults realized teenagers were paying attention, often more than adults.鈥�

Public support for youth voting soared in Scotland after that.

The U.S. has been slower to move. The U.S. Constitution guarantees voting rights only for people 18 and older. But at the local level, things are heating up.

Right now, . Several municipalities there have already lowered the voting age for local races, taking advantage of state law that makes it easy for municipalities to accommodate registration and ballots for 16- and 17-year olds. A local council vote is enough to change quite a lot of election rules, including, for example, to cast ballots.

Compare that with Oakland, California, where back in 2020 鈥� only to have to for Alameda County to get around to updating its registration systems, a much longer delay than Newark.

In other words, even when the people say yes, the bureaucracy can say, 鈥淲e鈥檒l get to it eventually.鈥�

That鈥檚 what Novey wants everyone to know: that lowering the voting age isn鈥檛 just a matter of changing policy. 鈥淚t touches on a lot of different systems and issues,鈥� he said. Some cities might be able to handle the transition in-house, but others may need new tech, new training, and a lot of patience and support.

In Newark, one of the behind the policy was the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. Attorney Micauri Vargas, the associate counsel for the institute鈥檚 Democracy & Justice program, who drafted the ordinance, said supporters 鈥渒new it wasn鈥檛 going to get done statewide,鈥� despite Gov. Phil Murphy mentioning it in his last two State of the State speeches. So they went local, to the state鈥檚 largest city, where the mayor and City Council were supportive 鈥� and, notably, where the movement had been 鈥渟tarted by the students.鈥�

Not everyone was cheering. 鈥淧eople still just don鈥檛 feel comfortable with young people having a say in what they think are only money matters, but they aren鈥檛,鈥� Vargas said.

Even some teenagers were skeptical. 鈥淏ut then other young people would ask them if they trusted themselves, and they always said they did,鈥� Vargas said. 鈥淭hey changed their minds.鈥�

This question is about more than voting rules. It鈥檚 about trust 鈥� not just in systems, but in young people鈥檚 ability to shape them. And like Eichhorn said, some adults might just need to spend more time with teenagers to see what they鈥檙e capable of.

Of course, there are critics of expanding the franchise this way. Some argue that it鈥檚 a slippery slope, or that teenagers are too immature or uninformed to handle voting responsibly. But Douglas points out that we don鈥檛 typically take voting rights away from adults on that basis 鈥� 鈥渆ven ones who may be Yet bright, informed 16-year-olds can鈥檛 vote.鈥� Fair point.

For now, youth voting in America is a patchwork, enabled by quirks in local laws, driven by ambitious students, and supported by researchers like Novey and his Vote 16 Network, which offers best practices for cities.

And it鈥檚 still far from mainstream. But so was same-day registration once. So was voting by mail. So was early voting. All of those ideas sounded radical at some point 鈥� until they didn鈥檛.

Chalkbeat Newark Bureau Chief Catherine Carrera contributed.

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