register to vote.
State by state information can be found HERE
and check out The League of Young Voters - they'll help you brush up on the issues and they've got their own site for registering - Vote4Urself.org
The League of Young Voters empowers young people nationwide to participate in the democratic process and create progressive political change on the local, state and national level – with a focus on non-college youth and youth from low-income communities and communities of color. The League makes political engagement relevant by meeting young people where they are, working on issues that affect their lives, and providing them with tools, training, and support to become serious catalysts for change in their communities. Founded in 2003, the League has become one of the strongest youth organizations in the country fighting for progressive change.
Our long term strategy is to build an inspired, engaged and effective culture and community around youth participation. We're building permanent progressive youth-driven field and issue based campaigns that will build power to significantly impact local, state, and federal policy and elections nationwide. We expect it will take decades to achieve this scale, but we're in it for the long haul.
So what do we do?
No, we don't just register voters.
Here's the five-bullet-point version of what we do:
- Engage young people who have been shut out of the political process.
- Train them to be sophisticated organizers in their own communities.
- Build multi-racial, multi-issue alliances.
- Lobby at the local, state, and national level.
- Organize voters to hold elected officials accountable once they're in office.
Our integrated youth civic engagement model combines best practices from community, campus and cultural organizing with sophisticated voter engagement techniques. During election cycles, we run targeted data-driven, precinct-based voter contact and turnout programs. The rest of the year we organize our constituents around issues that make sense to young people. By focusing on relevant local issues like inner city violence, the rising cost of college tuition and improving public transportation we are engaging and mobilizing new and drop off voters who would otherwise not be active in off election years.
We believe that our permanent campaign approach (year round, long-term, locally-driven) is key to building the trust, skills, and power necessary to not only increase young voter turnout in the short term, but to leverage long-term change and form a generation of engaged and active young leaders.
In just three years, local Leagues have become "household names" in their communities. They are respected as serious players on the political scene who are able to move large numbers of young people (especially low-income youth and people of color), organize diverse coalitions, swing elections, attract media attention, and both lobby for and pass legislation. The League is known for meeting young people where they are, with creativity and edgy humor as well as effectiveness at pushing issues and supporting allies' campaigns.