1 week Ago By Amy Bounds
Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley high schools, with help from Boulder County Elections, held voter registration drives this week as part of the county’s sixth annual “High School Student Voter Registration Awareness Week.”Molly Fitzpatrick, Boulder County’s clerk, or top election official, said her office created the awareness week in 2020 as part of a push to raise awareness before the March presidential primary election that eligible 17-year-olds could vote in the primary — a right later revoked by a state ballot measure.
That partnership with local schools helped lead to a 61% turnout in the March primary among 17-year-olds in Boulder County.Regardless of primaries, though, high school students as young as 15 can preregister to vote, a change this year from the previous requirement that students be 16 to preregister. For students who are already registered, election staff members suggested they provide an additional signature to help with ballot verification.
In 2021, the week was moved to early April to better equip graduating seniors with the information they need to know about their voter registration and voting options if leaving home for college or elsewhere.This year, multiple counties have joined the high school awareness week efforts, including Broomfield, Denver and Jefferson counties. In the future, Fitzpatrick said, she wants to see the event happen statewide.
“We want to create a pipeline of civic engagement for young people,” she said.Most Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley high schools have a staff member who serves as a resource to help students register to vote.
Multiple high schools this week also invited elections staff members to host a voter registration table.With the voter awareness week well established in Boulder County, the goal now is to train more high school students so they can lead their own events, Fitzpatrick said. One high school that already runs its own voter registration drives is Boulder’s Fairview High, which also recently received its third state Eliza Pickrell Routt Award.
The award recognizes Colorado high schools where 85% or more of eligible seniors are registered to vote.“We’ve gone from we want to register you to vote to we want you to register your peers,” Fitzpatrick said. “We want this to be a space where you feel comfortable and it can be fun.
”Another way the Boulder County Clerk’s Office encourages students to get involved is as student election judges. The student judges greet voters, pass out “I voted” stickers and track wait times.“Our student election judges are amazing,” Fitzpatrick said.
At Boulder’s Arapahoe Campus on Thursday, election office staff members helped students fill out registration paperwork during lunch and passing periods and offered sunglasses, buttons and other election-themed items. Mircalla Wozniak, Boulder County Elections Division communications manager, also told one student: “Remember, if you don’t vote, you can’t complain.”Arapahoe Ridge High School junior Kaylynne Wheeler said her teacher convinced her that preregistering was a good idea so it would be done before she turned 18.
She added it’s important for young people to vote.“The younger we are, the more impact we will eventually have,” she said.Classmate Aspen Allman, another junior, said she probably wouldn’t have preregistered on her own, but the school made it easy by hosting the event.
She plans to vote when she turns 18.“It’s important,” she said. “You feel more included with how life goes.
People say, ‘my vote doesn’t count,’ but each vote adds up. One vote can change everything.”For more information and to find registration documents and other supporting materials for schools, the public can go to boco.
org/HSRegInfo..
