Motivating young Florida voters is a priority in 2020 election. Why is it so hard?

On a recent windy, rainy day on the campus of Florida International University, a line of mostly students snaked outside the Student Academic Success Center, huddled beneath pink and black umbrellas, waiting for their turn to cast a ballot.

Closer to the parking lot, hoodie-wearing voters dodged raindrops to insert their vote-by-mail ballots into an official dropbox, shielded by a blue easy-up and watched over by a staffer of the Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections office.

Melissa Hernandez, 26, a first-year doctoral student in psychology at the school, said she considered voting by mail because of the pandemic but worried it might not get counted.

“I just wanted to come here and get it done,” she said.

Hernandez, who identifies as an independent, declined to say who she voted for, but added she wasn’t terribly pleased with her choices.

“I voted for the candidate who I disliked the least and thought would do the least amount of damage to our country in the next four years,” she said.

In a state defined by its razor-thin election margins, getting this low-turnout age group to show up to the polls in Florida has become a priority for grassroots organizers in this election. Voter turnout among voters 18 to 29 has been on an upward trajectory since at least 2012, outpacing the voting patterns of other age groups, and both non-partisan as well as left- and right-leaning groups are laser focused on continuing that trend in the Sunshine State.

“Young people are going to use their voices for Election Day,” said Isabel Muir, an organizer for the New Voter Project, part of the Florida chapter of the Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), a non-profit, non-partisan organization that mainly works on colleges and universities.

Pandemic boosts political engagement

The pandemic has made people in her generation more political, regardless of their leanings, and “more energized about politics,’’ she said. “It’s the power of being the largest group, and most diverse group, of potential voters. The potential is there, and I think that stirs people up.”

Muir, 22, who started as an intern with the group her sophomore year, graduated from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg in May and now oversees a group of interns helping students at the University of Central Florida in Orlando to register and vote.

The group has 12 organizers like her in Florida and more than 200 interns, each focused on a specific university or area.

The work involves an online student-focused voter guide, which explains the registration and vote-by-mail processes, as well as people on call to answer questions. Muir said the site also includes a pledge form, where people promise to actually vote.

“I’ve seen that the people that fill out the form are much more likely to actually go to the polls,” she said. “It also allows us to follow up with the students and make sure they understand what they need to do.”

She said their registration work, which has been all online, brought in more than 300 new voters from UCF and about 2,000 statewide. She acknowledged the work was a lot more successful in 2018, when similar work — done primarily in person — netted 10,000 new voters.

Though young people tend to vote at a lower rate compared to other age groups nationwide, it is particularly bad in Florida. Young voters rank 40th in the nation on participation at the polls, according to a U.S. Census survey on the 2018 midterms.

The state with the gold medal? Frosty Wisconsin, which had a percentage turnout nearly twice that of the Sunshine State.

Data on young voters

More than 150 interviews conducted by FIU journalism students of college-age voters throughout the two states as part of a “Renewing Democracy” grant from The Solutions Journalism Network found that many of the differences can be attributed to enthusiasm levels and familiar attitudes toward voting.

The project, funded by the non-profit that supports rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems, sought to discover why and what could be done.

Interviews revealed that while Trump supporters are generally excited to vote for the president for a second term, Biden’s support among young people is softer. Researchers found that among these young Biden voters there is a comparatively shorter history of voting among their parents and older siblings and less political activism overall.

Political scientists also note that Florida’s relatively low college graduate and income levels in that age group have a direct, and negative, impact on turnout. The state also has one of the longest gaps between its registration deadline and the election, something that has a bigger impact on young people, who tend to vote more.

What’s more, young voters consistently have their votes thrown out at a much higher rate than any other age group. In the most recent election, according to an analysis of data from the Florida Division of Elections, 1.68% of voters between 18 and 29 had their ballots rejected, nearly three times the rate of those over 65. In Miami-Dade, this jumped to 2.28%, among the highest in the state.

Dan Smith, the chair of the political science department at the University of Florida, recently served as an expert in a lawsuit that claimed the state’s vote-by-mail system was biased against young voters and people of color. His data showed that Black and Hispanic voters receive a ballot later following a request, have a ballot returned as undeliverable or have it rejected at a rate far greater than whites.

He noted that about 5% of young voters had their ballots returned to sender in the August primary, compared to the state average of 2%. He said their ballots are much more likely to be rejected because the signature doesn’t match.

That is a problem that NextGen Florida, a progressive group focused on youth turnout, has turned its attention to.

The group, founded by billionaire and one-time Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer, has endorsed Joe Biden, but organizers say they are as much concerned that young people show up to the polls, and have their ballots counted, as for whom they cast their ballot.

Florida state director Justin Atkins said his group cast a wider net for this cycle — going beyond college campuses and areas — to reach people who are turned off by the process or otherwise feel disempowered.

Before, he said, NextGen Florida focused almost solely on college students. But after Democrats Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson lost their races in 2018 for governor and senator, respectively, by the narrowest of margins, Atkins said a new strategy was needed.

“We knew we weren’t getting to the levels we needed to close that 1% gap,” he said. “We really had to expand the youth electorate.”

Using 21st century tools

Atkins said his group did this via social media, targeting groups and geographic areas where non and low-propensity young voters hung out. As an example, Atkins said they targeted a group of young Black travelers. Though not explicitly political, members talked about their jobs, personal lives and their love of seeing new places.

“We hopped into that group and started getting into those direct messages,” he said. “We were continually following up and telling them how to register, how to vote.”

Atkins said NexGen also recruited numerous Instagram micro-influencers, allowing them to reach small, targeted groups.

“These aren’t people with a nationwide following, but have a following in the areas they live in,” he said. “They post, ‘Hey, we need you to go out and vote,’ as well as voter education and limiting the spread of myths and the like.”

They have urged voters to submit ballots early and, because of the high error rate, help people work through how to “cure” their ballot by signing an affidavit so that it will be counted.

“We walk them through those steps,’’ Atkins said. “Young people are willing to go the extra step, just to make sure they’re ballot counts.”

But of course they have to vote in the first place.

Jessica Fernandez, the president of the Florida Federation of Young Republicans, said her group is boosting turnout via old-school door knocks as well as outreach via texting and social media. She said she has personally knocked on about 1,000 doors since June.

“I was hesitant to do it at the beginning, but after a bit I realized that people are very respectful now, even more than before,” said Fernandez, 35. “Because of the social isolation, they’re excited to talk to a human being. They’re being recognized.”

She said her group’s target age range is 18 to 40, but as to not step on the turf of college Republican clubs, they focus mainly on post-college workers and professionals. Though the outreach has had a large virtual and online component, Fernandez said nothing can beat the in-person pitch.

“I feel texting is super important, but you can’t negate the fact that talking to a voter face-to-face is the most powerful way of getting them to vote,” she said.

Student PIRGs

Dan Xie, the political director of Student PIRG, said peer-to-peer contact is by far the most effective way to get young people to come out and vote but the work is fully remote because of the pandemic, she said.

“You’re way more likely to respond to a text if it’s from your friend than a campaign you’ve never heard of,” she said.

Xie said her group encourages student clubs — as well as members of the Greek system — to understand and use their political power, and that engagement goes beyond the Democratic or Republican clubs.

Florida can be challenging, she said, because the level of activism is low.

“I live in St. Pete and I oversaw our New Jersey project and worked in California for a long time, and the difference in youth activism from campus to campus is very stark,” said Xie. “Many campuses in Florida lack the year-round infrastructure it takes to keep young people engaged in politics in between major elections.”

But she said the fact that Student PIRGs are non-partisan is extremely helpful, noting that many students are wary of the overheated rhetoric and hesitant to become involved.

“I had some students tell me, ‘Oh, you’re non-partisan! Actually I do have a lot of questions, but I’m tired of campaign people telling me to vote,’ ” she said.

Many negative factors affect young voters

Despite these efforts, political scientists say there are a number of factors, some related to the COVID-19 pandemic, that could blunt those efforts.

Because many college campuses remain empty or nearly so, thousands upon thousands of students may not be registered at their current address. The U.S. Postal Service will not forward mail ballots, and as a result many may have inadvertently disenfranchised themselves.

Kathryn DePalo-Gould, a political science professor at FIU, said the Democratic Party’s push to mail-in balloting will negatively impact the youth vote. In addition to the address issue, she said younger voters are more likely to forget to sign their ballot or use a signature that doesn’t match what’s on file.

“Or they throw it in the mailbox on Election Day, but it’s not going to get there by 7 p.m. so their vote doesn’t count,” she said.

Physical mail just isn’t part of their DNA.

“The only thing they get in the mail is a birthday card from grandma,” she said.

DePalo-Gould said turnout often is driven by voter passion about the race. Young people are not that enthusiastic about Biden and “vice presidential candidates don’t get people to come out and vote.”

“Hating Trump isn’t enough,” she said. “They have to have someone to vote for, and they’re not energized by Biden.”

There are a number of possible reasons why young Wisconsinites are showing up in record numbers, said Kenneth Mayer, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The biggest, he said, is Election Day registration, something Wisconsin has that Florida does not.

Mayer said the fact that Florida’s voting system broke down on Oct. 5, the registration deadline, might have had an outsized effect on younger voters. Though Gov. Ron DeSantis extended the deadline until the next day, many left-leaning activists complained this wasn’t enough time.

“They’re not in the habit of voting and they have less stable residences because they’re in college or living on their own for the first time,” he said.

Mayer said studies have shown that same-day registration can increase overall turnout by as much as 6% to 7%. Though it’s hard to say if different age groups would be affected differently — as there are dozens of potential factors regarding turnout in any particular election — he said it would have a higher impact for voters that traditionally don’t turn out as much, such as younger voters.

The reasons for not making it easier to vote, he said, appears to be political, as the lower turnout groups also tend to be Democratic voters.

“It is unfortunately a polarizing issue in battleground states across the country,” said Mayer. “In states with Republican legislatures you see more efforts to make voting more difficult or to impose more burdens.”

And DePalo-Gould of FIU notes that Florida’s younger population has a lower percentage of people with college degrees and a higher number of people who are poor. Both of these factors directly, and negatively, impact turnout, she said.

“If you have young kids, working and you’re not in college, voting just isn’t the first thing on your mind,” she said.

And Smith of UF noted that while young people may have a number of roadblocks to voting, they have advantages as well.

“Young people can learn, and maybe have more faculty to learn than others,” he said. “But they need some instruction, some help.”

Dan Evans is an associate professor of journalism at Florida International University and formerly worked at the Los Angeles Times.