OAKLAND, Calif. — If all had gone as planned, thousands of high-schoolers in Oakland would have cast their ballots for the first time on Election Day. Many of them had worked since their freshman year to lower the voting age to 16 for school board races, arguing that no one had a higher stake in who led their district. And they won, persuading a supermajority of the electorate in 2020 to expand voting rights to younger teens.
These teens won the right to vote. Their county disenfranchised them.
High school activists in California fought hard to lower the voter age only to be ignored.
Updated November 30, 2022 at 9:39 p.m. EST|Published November 30, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST