City Amps Up Student Voter Registration Day

New York City is pumping up the size of its voter registration efforts for high-schoolers. For the first time ever, the city will hold its annual Student Voter Registration Day at every public high school citywide — making it nearly ten times the size of earlier efforts.

On Monday, May 21, every public high school in the city — all 585 of them, including special programs — will be registering students to vote. That’s up from the roughly 60 schools that have conducted the program in previous years. Forms will be available to every 18-year-old, or any student who will be 18 by Election Day. The city estimates that’s about 110,000 students they aim to register. If they're of voting age and get their forms in on time, they'll be eligible to vote in federal primaries in June, in state primaries in September, and in the general election, which is November 6.

Forms will be available in five languages — including English, Spanish, Chinese, Bengali and Korean, with additional languages available in forms online. The goal of the event is to register students to vote as early as possible and ensure they learn how to become active citizens. The city is also distributing a guide for educators to help facilitate the registration process, while also teaching students about which elected official to turn to if they have an issue in their community.

"Our goal as educators is to help our kids become active, knowledgeable, and engaged citizens," Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement. "Expanding Student Voter Registration Day to every high school citywide is an important step towards that goal."

The initiative is part of city’s DemocracyNYC agenda announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio during his State of the City address earlier this year. On the education front, it also includes increased training for teachers in civic education and specific funding for high school students to help decide how to spend, similar to the city’s participatory budget process, in which people in the community help their respective City Council members allocate funding.

Another central piece of it is the mayor's new Charter Revision Commission, with a specific charge to tackle reform of the city’s election and campaign finance systems. The mayor appointed members to his commission who met for the first time last week.

The City Council also passed legislation earlier this month to form its own Charter Revision Commission, with a broader mandate not limited to election-related issues.  That means the entire City Charter would be up for review under the Council’s commission. It’s unclear how the dueling commissions would work together — or against — each other.