November 2025 is about to get bigger: California is set to join NJ, PA, and VA in the group of states with consequential statewide elections less than 3 months from today
Voter registration is a critical tool in the fight authoritarianism, but hundreds of thousands of young, first-time voters will be disenfranchised absent a major push. It needs to start immediately.
The common rap is that odd-numbered years are “off years”: nothing much of consequence happens in elections. Sure, there are exceptions. We know about odd-year statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia and thousands of local elections all over the map. This year, Pennsylvania is in the mix as well with three Justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court facing a retention election.
But these are exceptions that prove the rule under which many people assume there is no meaningful way to make a difference and take action to support democracy except in even-numbered years. That assumption has never been healthy for democracy, and this November proves the point.
California is on track for its own big statewide elections in 2025. Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced the Election Rigging Response Act, and he is calling for a special statewide election for voters to approve new congressional maps for California. The move is a response to proposed mid-decade redistricting in Texas.
Key to the effort is that California’s new maps will go into effect only if Texas or other states engage in mid-decade partisan gerrymandering of their congressional districts. In addition, the new California maps will stay in place only through 2030, and the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission will be responsible again after that.
The announcement and upcoming popular vote in November means the national spotlight will be on California voters across the state who have the ultimate power to determine whether the new framework is adopted.
It’s a big change for voters in a big state. Except for residents of the state’s competitive congressional districts, most California voters are used to feeling as if our votes don’t count for much on the national stage. They will this time.
So, now is a crucial time to assess the potential impact of our youngest voters, and to make sure they will have a voice.
More than a million young Californians are set to be disenfranchised in the November 2025 redistricting special election absent real investment.
According to the US Census, of the 3,054,000 young citizens in the state, ages 18-24, only 62% are registered to vote. That means 1,174,000 young, otherwise eligible Californians, are missing from the voter files. They will not receive ballot materials, mail-in ballots, or campaign mailers directed to registered voters to ensure they know about the stakes of this election.
The Californians who were 17 in 2024, and there are about 516,000 of them, are the same young potential voters who will be 18 in November 2025. 43,000 are turning 18 every month, 9,900 every week, 1,400 every day. Their disenfranchisement is even more extreme than youth as a whole.
As of October 2024, just before the Presidential election, only 14% (140,535) of the state’s 16- and 17-year-olds (1+ million combined) were preregistered to vote. Registration for the youngest has only fallen since the November 2024 election, as California’s state systems continue to fail to register our youngest voters at massive rates. As of February 2025, only 12% (126,087) of California 16- and 17-year-olds were preregistered.
Based on the preregistration data, historical trends, and the absence of resources to significantly ramp up voter registration in California in “off-years,” we estimate, conservatively, that at least 300,000 Californians who will be 18 in November 2025 are not yet registered. To put the matter in perspective, that’s more unregistered 18-year-olds in California than the entire populations of St. Louis, St. Petersburg, Winston-Salem, and dozens more major cities.
The extent to which young Californians are falling through the cracks may feel counterintuitive. After all, we believe in democracy here, and we believe in youth. But every day, our systems fail them. As one example, voter registration at the DMV is so poorly designed that a full 45% of otherwise eligible California teens opt out of preregistering to vote when they go to get a driver’s license.
Online voter registration is not a complete answer because the state’s online voter registration system requires a driver’s license or state ID. Roughly half of California 18-year-olds who do not have driver’s licenses.
College programs can solve part of the problem, but only 62% of California high school students go on to college the year after graduation. And to be maximally effective, college programs would have needed to start ramping up well before now. If that’s been happening on the scale ready to meet the moment, I certainly haven’t seen it.
Innovative digital and social media programs are also part of the answer. Their registration impacts will be limited, as well, however, unless they are tied into IRL organizing and leadership programs and include goals of getting entire communities registered. Otherwise, no matter how innovative they may be, digital-only and media-only efforts will brush up against the limitations of state registration systems, will only register those with driver’s licenses, and will stop short of achieving broader and more equitable impacts on the ground.
All of this is why The Civics Center exists. It’s why we say voter registration isn’t just a matter of party politics or money-ball approaches. It shouldn’t mean throwing resources at the last minute, every other year, to a small percentage of young people, only in states that “matter,” and relying on systems that are not actually designed to work.
Right now, California matters. Reaching young people where they are matters. Civic engagement should be for every high school, every student, every year. The knowledge, skills, and dispositions for civic participation need to develop within communities in real life, as well as on our phones. And voter registration should be part of it.
What can we do right now to ensure young people are voting in 2025?
Organizing is not simply a matter of sending messages to people we don’t know or funding efforts outside our own communities and networks.
Virtually everyone reading this knows someone in California – and also someone in PA, NJ, and VA, each of which has huge elections in November.
We can accomplish great things by raising awareness and pointing out possibilities to people who already know us, who care about what we think, and who have networks of their own. Trusted messengers matter, and we are all trusted messengers to those we already know. Imagine the impact of engaging your own network and asking them to do likewise.
Here’s what that can look like, and it can start with just 5 minutes. It’s a substitute for doom-scrolling. You can do it on your own or in a group. It works before your next round of postcarding, texting, after your next protest, and instead of giving up.
Like, share, and forward this post to your network. Let them know what is happening. Add a comment of your own.
Encourage the teens in your life to get registered, and encourage them to get trained to hold a voter registration drive in their high school as part of High School Voter Registration Weeks in September and October. Do the same for educators. Our 1-hour training is free, and students and educators receive everything they need to hold a nonpartisan voter registration drive in their high school.
Visit the Volunteer page on our website to learn about resources you can distribute to others to motivate your community. Scroll down for model emails you can customize and forward to people you know. Encourage high school educators you know to check out our Educator Toolkits. Share our Sharable Graphics.
If you are part of a nonpartisan organization serving high school students or educators and have a passion for making democracy work, contact us to set up a special training for the students and educators in your group and encourage your organization to become an Organizing Partner.
Donate today so we can meet the moment. Donations support our ability to train and recruit students and educators, to send them our Democracy in a Box toolkit and other resources, and to get the word out through this Substack, data research, and analysis. The Civics Center has sparked and supported hundreds of student-led high school voter registration drives in California (and we’re set for hundreds more every year throughout the country including drives in PA, NJ, and VA).
My hope is that you will make a decision to include voter registration as part of your pro-democracy portfolio. Protests are important. Interrupting the rise of authoritarianism is important. Lawsuits are important. Election protection and poll workers are important. We are not in an either/or moment and never have been. It’s both/and 100%.
At the end of the day, democracy depends on elections, and elections depend on voters, and turning someone into a voter depends on getting them motivated, registered, and ready to vote.
Whether we will have voters in massive numbers in 2025, 2026, and beyond, including young voters – our future – depends on us.