For Immediate Release:
September 15, 2026
Press Contact:
Selasi Tagbor Morales
press@allianceforyouthaction.org
The Alliance for Youth Action Celebrates National Voter Registration Day, Calling on Young People to Take Action
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Alliance for Youth Action (AYA) and its affiliates across 19 states are celebrating National Voter Registration Day. Nearly 50 million young people ages 18 to 29 are eligible to vote in the 2026 midterms, including roughly 8.5 million who have aged into the electorate since the last presidential election, and close to half of them are young people of color.
Dakota Hall, Executive Director for The Alliance for Youth Action released the following statement:
“Every cycle, someone tells us young people don’t care. I’ve knocked tens of thousands of doors, and I’ve never met a young person who doesn’t care — I’ve met young people nobody ever bothered to engage. That’s the work our network does across the country, and that’s what National Voter Registration Day is: the ask. But registering is not the finish line. It’s the door. Between today and Election Day, we’re going to knock it down — and the leaders elected in 2026 are going to answer to the generation that did it.”
A July analysis by CIRCLE at Tufts University found that youth registration is up just 1% over 2022 across the 42 states with reliable data — with registration among young Black voters down 10% and among newly eligible 18- and 19-year-olds down 2% — even as 56% of young people say they are extremely likely to cast a ballot. That gap between who is eligible and who is actually on the rolls is the gap Alliance affiliates spend all year closing, in states like Michigan, Georgia, Maine, and Wisconsin, where CIRCLE ranks young voters among those most likely to decide top-of-the-ticket races.
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The Alliance for Youth Action grows progressive people power across America by empowering local young people’s organizations to strengthen our democracy, fix our economy, and correct injustices through on-the-ground organizing.