There’s a lot of attention this election year on young voters.
Many wonder what the turnout will be by a demographic that typically makes a lot of noise, but then fails to show up at the polls. Bay Area registrars are trying to change that one teenager at a time.
Mia Regua Jimenez celebrated her 18th birthday Friday by going to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters to register to vote.
On the very day she legally became an adult, Jimenez felt that was the place where she needed to be.
"I wanted to come register today because it's important for the younger generation getting out there to vote," she said.
Registrars across the Bay Area report, while the number of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 25 is still lower than other age groups, it has increased over the last couple of years.
Roughly 44,000 of them live in San Francisco County, according to the registrar. Santa Clara County said it has 6,000 16 and 17 year olds who are pre-registered, meaning once they hit 18, they will already be on the rolls.
"It's great," Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters spokesperson Michael Borja said. "It’s showing our youth is educated on voting and excited to be a part of democracy."
The Santa Clara County Registrar was at Notre Dame High School Friday, training the student group League of Young Women Voters how to register and pre-register their classmates.
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"Registering, pre-registering, making sure everyone is well informed about what they’re doing with their vote, how they can vote," Guadalupe Castañeda Liles said.
The league said the Taylor Swift voting effect – when she called on her fans to register to vote – is big on campus.
"I do see that," Liles said. "So many people are talking about it in class. I hear all my classmates talking about, 'Oh, we need to use our vote.'"
