Just over a year ago, I finally wrote down my theory about why youth voting participation remains persistently low.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11MsplckerAHO_l80SUd30yE1Je-IlzfBc8Cf4FJAaRQ/edit?tab=t.0
Every election season, there’s a familiar refrain: Why don’t young people vote? Despite urgent appeals about protecting their future from older generations, turnout among voters under 40 remains stubbornly low. Even here in Washington State, where voting couldn’t be easier (ballots are mailed to every registered voter, drop boxes are everywhere, and pre-registration is available for 16- and 17-year-olds) young voters still lag far behind their older counterparts.
After years working in government, journalism, and civic life—and now running communications for a county elections office—I’ve started to wonder if we’re missing the deeper reasons why this gap persists. Recent research on brain development and voting suggests we may be looking in the wrong places for solutions.
The book “Making Young Voters” highlights a key finding: the strongest predictor of whether a young person votes isn’t just knowledge about government—it’s their level of non-cognitive skills. These are traits like grit, self-regulation, and follow-through. Unlike raw intelligence or civic knowledge, non-cognitive skills help us keep commitments, meet deadlines, and manage complex tasks like researching issues and returning a ballot on time.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/making-young-voters/D8A982E9E7C9DAAAE3DF9685F1DFC037
And here’s the thing: non-cognitive skills don’t peak at 18. They build steadily through our twenties and thirties, leveling off around 40—the same age when voting rates hit their stride. We often talk about voting as a habit, and it is. But habit formation depends on the very life skills: organization, time management, persistence—that our brains are still developing well into adulthood.
This raises uncomfortable questions for those of us in government and civic life: Is our system of voting unintentionally designed to reward people whose brains are already wired for follow-through—while sidelining those still developing those capacities? If the act of voting requires juggling deadlines, forms, and research, maybe it’s no surprise participation skews older.
This insight also challenges some well-meaning solutions. Take civic education. The common idea is that if we just teach young people more about government, they’ll show up to vote. But if voting behavior depends less on what you know and more on how you function in your daily life, maybe we’d do better investing in social and emotional learning—skills like self-regulation and planning—alongside civics.
It also reframes how we talk about political generations. When we say people “get more conservative as they age,” we’re often misreading the data. It’s not that individuals drift rightward. It’s that many non-voters from younger, more politically mixed groups eventually start voting later in life—when their non-cognitive skills have caught up. The 18-year-olds who didn’t vote in 2004 but start voting at 38 may not share the same views as the 18-year-olds who did. Generational shifts aren’t just ideological—they’re structural, tied to who’s participating at each stage of life.
So what do we do with this knowledge? Some countries sidestep these challenges by making participation mandatory, like Brazil and Greece, where young voters actually outnumber older ones. But barring a seismic shift like that in the U.S., we might explore other tools.
Deliberative processes like citizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, and local town halls offer alternative ways for people to engage in government that rely less on individual follow-through and more on collective experience.
Citizen assemblies, in particular, gather a representative group of everyday people—selected through a lottery process, to study an issue, hear from experts, deliberate together, and recommend solutions. These assemblies are structured to support participation from people of all ages and backgrounds, regardless of their experience or comfort with traditional political processes. Participants are paid for their time, provided with child care and meals, and guided by facilitators who help ensure everyone’s voice is heard.
Rather than asking individuals to navigate complex ballots on their own, citizen assemblies create shared spaces where people can slow down, learn together, and produce thoughtful, democratic outcomes.
We could even require assemblies to reflect the distribution of voting age population if their suggestions are to move forward. If the goal is to really hear every voice in the community, voting as an activity feels stacked. Things like citizen assemblies feel like natural solutions to an inherent problem.
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