DENVER — Young voters, between the ages of 18 and 34, made up the biggest voting bloc in Colorado in the 2020 elections. And this time around, with more options to vote from where they are and encouragement from organizers, it appears likely young voter turnout will be high again.
Colorado is adding new voting centers and drop boxes at more college campuses, following state lawmakers’ expansion of the Colorado Votes Act, which is making smaller campuses eligible to participate and allowing young people to use their student identification cards to vote.
“Young people make up one of every three eligible voters here in Colorado,” said Nicole Hensel, who directs New Era Colorado, a nonpartisan nonprofit that helps build political power among young people by helping them get registered, understand the issues and turnout to vote.
“In the 2020 elections, Colorado's young people turned out at 71%. We were in the top five in the entire country for youth turnout,” she said.
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But young voters don’t fill out their ballots out of a sense of civic duty alone, Hensel said.
“A lot of them feel like their futures are at stake,” she said. “We want affordable housing. We want our cost of living to go down. We want to have abortion rights protected in perpetuity, and we want to have debt-free college.”
While some young voters worry their ballot won’t matter as much because Colorado isn’t a battleground state in the presidential race, Hensel said they can make their voices heard locally.
“We really focus on ballot measures and local races. These are areas where young people's vote can have a direct difference,” she said.
The Colorado constitutional amendments 79 and J, which would enshrine the rights to abortion and gay marriage respectively, are at the top of the list for many young voters, Hensel said.
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“Young people are the most progressive and most diverse generation that's ever existed, and so we're critical to any movement for justice,” she said.
Nationwide, young Americans strongly support progressive policies and a majority say they “definitely” plan to vote, according to a recent poll of 18- to 29-year-olds by the Harvard Public Opinion Project.
New Era Colorado hopes to make it easier for young voters to engage in politics.
“We were founded back in 2006 by a group of CU Boulder students who are now pretty influential politicians in Colorado politics,” Hensel said.
The group included current U.S. Congressman Joe Neguse, Colorado Senate President Steve Fenberg, Colorado Representative Leslie Herod and Lisa Kaufman, who was chief of staff to Colorado Governor Jared Polis.
“Democracy works best when we all show up, and that means reducing barriers to young people accessing our democracy,” Hensel said.
Research shows that people who vote in the first three elections they’re eligible to vote in will likely vote for the rest of their lives.
Hannah Schultz, a high school senior who recently turned 18, said she felt empowered casting her first ballot, which she received and turned in by mail.
“Even just filling in the bubble was like, so cool, just to be able to know my voice has a say and I'm making a difference,” she said.
To make sure young people are aware of their options for voting, New Era Colorado organizers like Jorge Hernandez are setting up informational tables on college campuses.
At Denver’s Auraria campus, Hernandez passed out voter guides and showed students where to find the polling center and drop box located at the main student union.
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Hernandez first got involved with New Era Colorado in the 2016 elections, when he was a high school student. His parents are immigrants who aren’t yet eligible to vote.
“I do this work precisely because my parents can't vote, and so I'm the only one that can,” he said. “I owe it to them, and for thousands of people that have that same desire to vote and they can't.”
While giving out voting information to young people on the Auraria campus, Hernandez talked with Alex Kimoni, an immigrant student who is eligible to vote.
Kimoni hopes the next U.S. president will “make decisions that won't just benefit a select few, but they'll try to cover as many people as possible.”
He prefers to wait until election day, Nov. 5, to cast his vote.
“Since I'm going to be on campus, I'll probably end up voting here,” Kimoni said. “The more available the options are, the better for everyone.”
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