With a town election on the horizon in May, is voting on the to-do list for the 24% of Brookline residents who are between the ages of 18 and 29?
Across Massachusetts and the United States, voter turnout increases with age. On Brookline’s frequent voter list, which consists of residents who have voted in at least one local election since 2018, only 7% of people are between the ages of 18 and 29. At the same time, more than half of voters on this list were over the age of 60, despite only making up 20% of the overall town population.
For college students living in Brookline, their participation in local elections is often complicated by the fact that they might not be full-time residents and might be registered to vote somewhere else.
To Town Meeting member Amanda Zimmerman, encouraging students to vote in local elections is important even if they don’t live here long.
“Even if they are only here for a short period of time, they are likely to be replaced by people like them,” Zimmerman said. “And if no one is voicing the opinions and views of young people in Brookline, then that voice doesn’t get heard.”
Taryn Noonan, 20, lives in Coolidge Corner and attends Emerson College, but is registered to vote in her hometown of Silver Spring, Maryland. Noonan is a film student at Emerson whose busy schedule, she said, keeps her from being engaged by local politics. “Being on set, in class and having a part-time job, I don’t have time to consider myself a part of this community,” she said. “I see a lot of names in yards, but I don’t know who these people are.”
‘Duty of the community’
Voting turnout tends to be higher in national or statewide elections than in local elections, which, in Brookline, happen on a different cycle in May.
Brookline.News spoke to several young voters who were casting ballots during the presidential primary in March. Asked about the town election, some said they were not aware of the May town election and others did not know the issues at stake.
Xotchil Martinez, 28, said that she knows a local election is coming up, but, knowing little more than the lawn signs she sees, she does not plan to vote in it. “I think it’s the duty of the community [to educate its voters] because I know, as an individual, sometimes we don’t think of anything outside of our bubble,” Martinez said.
Voting alongside Martinez was Sly Yushchyshyn, 27, who did see a flier come in the mail. But “besides that, I don’t think there’s anything I know about the local elections,” he said.
The sentiment expressed by Martinez and Yushchyshyn echoes nationally. According to the Fall 2023 Harvard Youth Poll, most young Americans do not believe their high school civic education taught them enough to prepare them to engage in the political process. Students referenced inadequate education regarding voter registration, voting deadlines, requesting and submitting a mail-in ballot and knowing how to research candidates and issues.
“It’s intimidating to walk into a polling place and not know what to expect,” said Brookline Town Clerk Ben Kaufman. “We need to take these opportunities that we have to show people that voting is not only important, but easy.”
Kaufman said that the clerk’s office has tried several methods of increasing turnout among young people, including pre-registering students and having voter registration days at the town hall for Brookline students.
The League of Women Voters puts out an annual voters guide, and Brookline.News regularly publishes news articles about upcoming elections.
Should town look younger?
Some advocates think that lowering the voting age for local elections could help younger residents get accustomed to voting.
In an effort to encourage youth voting, Town Meeting passed a warrant article in 2019 that would allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in town elections, but the change never received the approval needed from the state legislature. Another similar effort failed in Town Meeting in 2022.
People below voting age have found ways to get involved in Brookline politics nonetheless.
Two high school students in Brookline have led campaigns to pass warrant articles in Town Meeting, on subjects that include banning the sale of mammals and birds in Brookline and asking the state to implement ranked-choice voting for local elections.
“People don’t feel like they’re qualified to get involved in government, but that’s what democracy is,” said Ezra Kleinbaum, 17, who led the animal welfare warrant article.
Jay Sweitzer-Shalit, also 17, helped put forward the successful ranked-choice voting proposal. “The fundamental problem is that if you don’t know you can create change, there’s no way for you to create change,” he said.
‘If you build it, they will come’
The Harvard Youth Poll showed that the majority of respondents who said there is a chance they may not vote in the 2024 presidential election also said that strategies such as deadline reminders, voting guides and opportunities to meet candidates would be helpful.
“If you build it, they will come. You have to create structures that make it easy for young people to participate and make it feel like they can make a difference,” said Alec Lebovitz, 29, a Town Meeting member and candidate for Select Board.
Anya Prussin, 26, voted in the presidential primary but did not know about the upcoming municipal election. Now that she does, she said she plans to vote in May. “The way that your city runs day to day, the things that we take for granted, a lot of that is impacted by your local elections,” she said.
Clarification: This story has been updated to add the fact that in addition to the 2019 Town Meeting vote to extend voting in municipal elections to 16-year-olds, Town Meeting voted to oppose a similar measure in 2022.