Spotlight on California: Fewer than half of the state’s 18-year-olds are registered to vote. Many states with similar laws do far better.

Written By Laura Brill

Executive Summary

This data report is the latest in a series of reports issued by The Civics Center to draw attention to barriers to equal participation that young people face as they come of age.

New data from The Civics Center show that just 43% of California’s 18-year-olds are registered to vote ahead of November’s midterm elections, compared to 76% of Californians ages 45 and above. That gap represents nearly 300,000 of the state’s 18-year-old voters who are absent from the voter rolls.

The state offers preregistration for 16-year-olds, online registration, automatic registration at the DMV, and mail-in voting as a default. Yet California's registration rate for 18-year-olds lags far behind the rates in many states The Civics Center is tracking, including at the high end, Oregon, Michigan, Colorado, Nevada, all with rates at 70% or above, as well as many other states that, like California, allow preregistration at age 16, including Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Florida.

Registration rates vary significantly within the state, with northern California counties significantly outpacing those in the south.

Process and Findings

The Civics Center tracks voting participation rates for 18-year-olds.

We launched a visualization portal showing rates in 6 states and the counties of these states in October 2025. We expanded to 30 states in June 2026 and added California in July 2026.

The Civics Center tracks voter registration rates for 18-year-olds using voter file data and data from the American Community Survey.

This report focuses on California’s 18-year-old registration rates as of April 2026 in the context of the upcoming November 2026 midterm elections, with national and regional comparisons drawn from our full dataset. Additional visualizations are available at thecivicscenter.org/data-portal. Data on that site will be updated as new voter files become available.

The comparison group used throughout this report is Californians age 45 and older, who register at high rates and serve as a practical benchmark for achieving parity in participation for younger voters.

Key findings are as follows:

  • Just 43% of California’s 18-year-olds are registered to vote, compared to 76 percent of those over 45 — a gap of more than 30 percentage points.

  • Nearly 300,000 of California’s youngest eligible voters are absent from the state’s voter rolls.

  • Many other states substantially outperform California, including in the western US, Oregon (86%), Colorado (70%), and Nevada (65%), and including states with diverse populations, like Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Florida.

  • Regional variation within California is significant. Among Southern California’s 10 counties (Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Imperial), three counties (San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo) are below 40%, and only Ventura County reaches a registration rate above 50%. In Northern California, none of the Bay Area counties falls below 40%, and Marin, Contra Costa, and Alameda are all at 50% or above.

  • Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, has 43 percent of its 18-year-olds registered, leaving more than 70,000 young Angelenos unregistered ahead of November's upcoming mayoral and gubernatorial races.

  • In California’s 22nd Congressional District, which Cook Political Report ranks as one of the most competitive in the country in the upcoming midterms, none of the counties with territory in the district (Kern, Tulare, Fresno, Merced, and Kings) have registration rates for 18-year-olds at or above 50%.

California's uneven performance suggests that the implementation of its policy innovations has not kept pace with the promise of these reforms. Although the state offers preregistration for 16-year-olds, online registration, automatic registration at the DMV, and mail-in voting as a default, efforts to require implementation of high school voter registration have failed.

The state legislature has twice passed legislation that would require high schools to actively help students register to vote. Both times, Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bills. California law also provides for automatic registration at the DMV, but the system is so poorly implemented that approximately 100,000 eligible teens opt out each year. Governor Newsom likewise vetoed legislation that would have authorized the Secretary of State to create a “Secure AVR” system that would have fixed the problem.

Analysis and Recommendations for the Field

There are numerous policy and programmatic interventions that can make a real difference. California has adopted laws that on their face make registration easy, but implementation has fallen behind. Renewed legislation to create an improved Secure AVR system at the DMV and to implement voter registration in high schools would go a long way to increasing voter registration rates for the youngest voters in the state.

Achieving these policy and technological solutions will take time and resources.

The intervention that does not require new legislation and that is ready for implementation today is found in the teens themselves. It means an educational, communications, and leadership development effort to help students understand the importance of registering to vote, the power and impact of voting, and their own capacity to make a difference by registering to vote themselves and helping their peers to overcome the barriers and do the same. That is a culture shift more than a policy or technology shift. It means deciding to do what is possible now, with an understanding that policy and technological solutions will be easier to pass and implement once there is greater awareness of the need and people and traditions in place to implement and sustain the effort.

California communities that want to improve the state’s youth registration rates can take the following steps:

Laura Brill
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New findings from The Civics Center show 18-year-olds are massively under-registered heading into the midterms. Wide disparities exist among states