Texas has a historically low voter turnout — especially for young people. But these high school students are trying to change that.

In 2016, only 51.1% of eligible voters in Texas cast a ballot, putting it in the bottom five states for voter turnout. But in 2018, Texas had a historic increase in turnout during the midterm elections, giving it the sixth-highest increase in the nation. One major contributing factor: Young voters. In Texas, turnout for 18- to 29-year-olds nearly tripled from the 2014 midterm elections, from 8.2% to 25.8%.

With the Oct. 5 deadline to register to vote coming up, young people in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex are looking to increase that number even more for the 2020 presidential election — and beyond.

Voice of the Empowered, or VOTE, in Tarrant County and the Dallas County-based Student Voter Empowerment Coalition are student-run organizations bringing young people together, educating them and mobilizing them (sometimes even before they are eligible to vote), so they are confident at the ballot box.

“I think the pandemic really showed a lot of teenagers that you don’t need to be super involved, you don’t even need to slap a label on yourself about which ideology you believe over another,” said Tulsi Lohani, a senior at Trinity High School in Euless and the lead student coordinator of VOTE. “But a lot of young people are starting to realize that they have the power to make a change.”

Education to empower

VOTE was formed on April 1 after Athena Chavez, founder of the Tarrant County branch of March to the Polls, approached Lohani and five other students about starting an organization aimed at getting young people to the polls. March to the Polls is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Dallas with the mission to increase voter participation in historically underrepresented citizens.

Since then, the VOTE team has met several times per week to get their classmates educated and mobilized.

Usually, volunteers from March to the Polls go into schools to educate students about voting, but with the Covid-19 pandemic, that isn’t safe, Chavez said. Instead, March to the Polls has partnered with VOTE, giving it the connections and resources to make a difference. VOTE is holding its first Empowerment Week through Saturday, a social media campaign that will link viewers to registration forms and voter information, this week. More information can be found on its website, www.mttp.vote.

With this campaign, VOTE aims to take away barriers young people usually encounter when it comes to voting — mainly knowledge of the civic process and registration. They aim to increase voter turnout in young adults aged 18-24 by 25% in the presidential election.

Most of the ideas for VOTE’s initiative come from its student leaders, Chavez said. She and VOTE’s other advisers just aim to give students a framework.

“We want them to really take the initiative and feel empowered, and we have accomplished that,” Chavez said. “It’s been tricky, but the secret sauce is having the right group of students.”

VOTE is the Tarrant County offshoot of SVEC, which was founded last year as a way to educate young people and their families about important local elections, said Dani De La Cruz and Trinity Walker, SVEC’s student leaders.

In order to inform voters on important issues, SVEC holds virtual town halls via Zoom. Its next town hall, on registering to vote and what to do while at the polls, is September 25. More information can be found on the organization’s Instagram, @svecdallas.

Because high school students get a lot of their information on Instagram, Walker, who goes to the School for the Talented and Gifted, said that is where they choose to engage their audience of young voters.

“We looked into the connection between voter turnout and social media, and we saw several studies that other people had done in previous elections, and you can tell the difference of how people hear about elections. And a lot of the time it was through social media, it was either through Instagram, through Snapchat, through Twitter,” Walker said. “…We wanted to use that to our advantage especially right now, when everything is virtual.”

Educating parents, too

SVEC is not only focused on just educating young people, but making sure they bring that civic education home to their families, especially to minority communities that might feel discouraged to vote because they lack knowledge on how the process works, De La Cruz, who goes to Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School, said.

“It’s using youth as a gateway to their parents,” she said.

Most of the students in SVEC and VOTE will be ineligible to vote in the November election, including De La Cruz, Walker and Lohani, but that isn’t a big deal to them, said Desiree Rios, a former League of United Latin American Citizens tutor in Dallas and March to the Polls volunteer, who serves as an adviser to both SVEC and VOTE.

“The students really want to make Dallas the most just and equitable democracy in the U.S.,” Rios said. “…And so for 2020, it’s not just about an election. They really want to make sure that they’re starting with momentum. Something that’s going to carry on.”

For young voters, casting a ballot is more than just a vote for president, said Charlie Bonner, the communications director for MOVE Texas, a non-profit organization dedicated to getting underrepresented communities out to vote. Young voters are more focused on specific issues, which tend to be: gun violence prevention, climate change and racial injustice.

“Young people are not necessarily turning out for political parties, or whoever is at the top of the ticket,” Bonner said. “They’re showing up for their values.”

For Walker, not being able to vote yet is making her aware of the power voting provides, especially in often-overlooked local elections, which arguably can sometimes be more important than national elections.

“There are more ways you can be involved with your community when it comes to this besides just voting for your president, and I don’t think people talk enough about the little stuff,” Walker said.

“I didn’t even know we had town halls, or we could go, and about certain things that were on the agenda. I think it’s just not being able to vote in the big stuff makes me focus on the little things that also affect me as well.”