Young Michiganders led the nation in voter turnout in 2022, but barriers remain in 2024

A greater percentage of young voters in Michigan came out to cast ballots in the 2022 midterm election than anywhere else in the country, but state data shows there’s more work to be done to engage young adult voters. 

A Michigan Department of State analysis of the last two election cycles showed that there was a significant gap between the number of young people aged 18-29 who were registered to vote and the number who actually voted. In 2022 and 2020, 59.2% and 38.3%, respectively, of Michigan young adults who were registered did not vote.

In 2022, state data shows that the percentage of young adult voter participation lagged behind the overall state turnout rate by 17%.

A total of 40.8 million people aged 18-27 across the country will be eligible to vote in the November 2024 election. Roughly 1.3 million Michiganders aged 18-29 are currently registered voters, according to the Department of State.

In June, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson hosted a roundtable discussion in Detroit with nonpartisan advocacy organizations to get a better understanding of what barriers may be preventing young people from voting.

Feedback from these groups, according to a Department of State press release, suggest that some younger voters may still struggle to access voting information and feel intimidated by the process.

“In 2022, Michigan led the nation in youth voter turnout, and what this new report makes clear is we’ve still got work to do,” Benson said. “There are still too many young people in Michigan whose voices are not being heard at the ballot box.”

Studies show that young people tend to be inconsistent voters, although voting numbers overall seem to spike during a presidential election. These days, young people’s increased civic engagement and social activism has made them more likely to vote than past generations.

East Lansing native Lawrence Kestenbaum became involved in politics when he first started registering voters at Michigan State University in the 1970s. Now, as the clerk of Washtenaw County, home of the University of Michigan, Kestenbaum said he’s seen young people’s attitudes toward voting change greatly following the 2016 presidential election in which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.

“Ever since Trump was elected, I think there was an increased awareness of the importance of voting,” Kestenbaum told the Michigan Independent. “And so ever since then, in every kind of election that we’ve had here in Washtenaw County, the voter turnout has been higher than it would have been before.”

The report’s county-by-county look at Michigan’s young adult voter turnout also revealed that young voters without any college education are much less likely to vote.

Places with a larger college-educated population — including Washtenaw County, which had the smallest gap in young voter turnout of any Michigan county in the 2022 election and was among the top 10 counties with the smallest gap in the 2020 election — tend to have more active young voters than areas with fewer college-educated residents.

“The thing about college students is that they’re easier to target because they’re all in one place together, typically, and young adults who are not in college, they’re kind of sprinkled into the regular population, so they’re not as easy to get to,” Kestenbaum said of his team’s voter education efforts.

Many of Michigan’s rural areas were reported as having lower young adult voter turnout, too.

When Lake County Clerk Patti Pacola heard that her northern Michigan community had the largest gaps in young voter turnout in 2020 and again in 2022, she said she wasn’t surprised.

“We are a small community and we’re also a retirement community,” she said. “A lot of our population goes to Florida in the wintertime. We have a lot of weekend homes, so it kind of takes away from our local base.”

Pacola said that although her office utilizes various voter education strategies such as in-person discussions with high school students and social media posts, Lake County doesn’t have the type of work opportunities that keep young people engaged in their community.

In addition to leading the nation in young adult voter turnout, Michigan has increased the number of young people who are registered to vote between 2018 and 2022. This is partly due to a change in the state’s voting laws that allows people to register to vote the same day they cast their ballot as well as when obtaining a driver’s license or state ID at a Secretary of State branch.

Some of the solutions the department is looking into to draw these voters to the ballot box include conducting mock elections in high schools to make students feel comfortable with voting and partnering with programs outside of universities to reach people who don’t attend college.

“Voting is more accessible in Michigan than ever before, and it’s on all of us to meet young people where they are so they know all of the ways they can make their voice heard,” Lisa Wozniak, executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement regarding the state’s young voter outreach efforts. “This portion of the electorate is civically engaged and will be key to defining the future of our democracy.”