Rock the Vote Statement on the 2024 Election
Thank you to our incredible team, to our supporters and volunteers, to our collaborators and partners, and to young voters across the country.
At this moment, as many young people struggle to find their place in a world that may seem to deny their worth, we want to send a message:
- To Black and Brown youth: Your lives matter. You are beautiful.
- To Young Women: We believe you and we will stand with you. It’s your body.
- To Young People with Disabilities: You are valued, integral members of our society.
- To Queer Youth: Your identities and love are real, seen and celebrated.
Your voice matters. You matter. We are in this together.
Election officials and thousands of volunteers again dedicated their time to oversee and administer our elections. They carried out their duties with transparency and integrity – just as they did in 2020 and elections prior.
Early estimates put the overall 2024 youth voter turnout around 42%, on par with 2016 with much higher turnout in battleground states estimated at 50%. That means over 20 million young people either could not vote or believed the false narrative that their voice didn’t matter.
Young people broke voter turnout records in 2018, 2020 and 2022. In response, many states made it harder for them to vote. Gen Z is the most diverse generation in American history and will soon become the last white-majority generation for the foreseeable future. Yet, as the political power of this diverse electorate grows, so too have efforts to establish white-minority rule, especially in states experiencing rapid demographic shifts. We must fight to ensure that our democracy reflects the will of all its people.
Young voters are not a monolith; however, emerging trends of deepening gender and racial divides among youth voters in this election signal a troubling regression and the entrenchment of traditional power structures. Young women overwhelmingly supported Harris. Young men overwhelmingly supported Trump. Black, Latinx, and Asian youth overwhelmingly supported Harris. White youth clearly supported Trump. For over one and a half centuries, our country’s arc has bent toward becoming a more blended and representative, though imperfect, democracy. In 2024, it has become clear that the arc has become more rigid.
It is unacceptable that students must wait six hours to vote. We have the technology to send robots to Mars; voting should not consume the majority of a weekday for young people. Young voters deserve better. Moreover, it is unacceptable to expect 18-year-olds to adopt antiquated practices like standardizing their signature to ensure their votes count. This is not democracy; it is political gamesmanship. We must take steps toward a modern democracy. Elections must be adequately funded. And every voter deserves an equal opportunity to vote, no matter their zip code.
We know young people are deeply committed to the future of our country. Despite all the barriers erected to suppress youth voter turnout, we also know we must continue to fight to protect our democracy. Young voices must help shape what comes next as we have the most at stake. But this is a fight on many fronts.
Social media is the first front. Today, disparate information ecosystems have shaped different “realities” – one rooted in fact and the other in perception – eroding a foundation of shared facts and stunting rational discourse. Unchecked, social media has accelerated and deepened the dangers of misinformation. There are still voters who believe baseless, fabricated claims about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Unchecked, social media companies profit from spreading misinformation that feeds users’ bias, reinforcing false narratives and constructing alternate “realities”. Democracy has paid the price.
The next front is the Court. The U.S. Supreme Court has become overtly politicized, and justices’ conflicts of interest go unchecked. Today, we have a president-elect who incited an anti-democratic insurrection and is the first convicted felon elected into our nation’s highest office. At the same time, the Supreme Court has effectively granted him immunity for inciting an insurrection and undefined actions in his future role as president – paving the way for an authoritarian government. Our system of checks and balances now relies solely on the legislative body, which has repeatedly demonstrated its cowardice toward holding the President-elect accountable for his dangerous, false, and baseless claims that aggressively undermine our democracy.
Voting rights are yet another front. There has been a systematic weakening of voting rights with the Court’s 2013 Shelby v Holder decision. Congress has failed to do its duty and restore The Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a result, state and local governments with long histories of discrimination are exploiting the lack of protections. Restrictive ID laws, voter roll purging, reducing access to polling locations are just some of modern-day efforts to suppress voters. Voter suppression chips away at the margins to determine who can vote to ultimately determine who wins an election. This is not a healthy democracy.
There are many more fronts upon which the next generation will need to fight to preserve democracy during our time. Our founders created a democratic republic and challenged us to keep it. America’s democracy has outlasted most others, perhaps precisely because, for its first two centuries, it was a democracy only in name, but not in practice. Today, American democracy is facing some of its greatest threats.
But, democracy is an active state. It relies on its citizens deciding to show up. It is built upon the faith that we can continually do better to create a more perfect union. The issues we face – from misinformation to the erosion of institutions – will not be solved overnight. They will join climate change, gun violence and other existential threats that the next generation will ultimately face.
The work must continue, as it will for every generation to come, to bend the arc of our history back toward justice. This is the same country today as it was yesterday and the day before that.
Today marks 725 days from the 2026 Midterms, the next major opportunity for young voters to make their voices heard. By then, 49 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote.
Until then, we will be organizing. We will be showing up in local, state and special elections. We will be holding elected leaders accountable. We will be empowering young people to understand the power of their vote and we will be pre-registering 16 and 17-year-olds. We will be defending democracy at every turn. We will not stop working toward a more perfect union.
Sign up to organize. Support us if you can. Take a minute if you need – but please join us when you are ready. We need everyone involved – now more than ever.