Where It All Began

In 2003 League member Carmen Hurd and her husband Henry “Mike” Hurd, a retired teacher and administrator, visited one high school in Oxnard to help eligible students register to vote. Her vision was to encourage and help seniors who were 18 years old to register and then vote. One high school led to several more Oxnard high schools.

Building Momentum

In 2013-14 Pat Essick and her team began working with Govt and Econ teachers at Nordhoff High School in Ojai to register students in their classes.

In 2016, in California, 16-17 year olds were permitted to “pre-register to vote” and a year later online voter registration became available.

A Breakthrough Partnership

In 2018 the Ventura Unified School District became a League partner. Assistant Superintendent Greg Bayless was an enthusiastic supporter, encouraging ALL Ventura USD Govt & Econ teachers to invite us into their classrooms to register students to vote. Some teachers were receptive; others less so. It was not mandated, just offered.

Scaling Up

With the program expanding into more schools and more school districts, we needed volunteers. In 2021 we offered optional volunteer trainings and expanded our focus to help students think about why voting might be important. We developed a script for volunteers to use as a guide in the classroom and used “Sign Up Genius” to help volunteers sign up for classrooms across the county. Each year our training includes updates to improve our presentation.

Where We Are Today

In 2025 we had 11 volunteer coordinators overseeing 8 school districts. We have been developing our student-led voter registration events and we provide support and guidance for these peer-to-peer events.

In the Fall of 2025 we trained or updated 75 volunteers plus our coordinators. Our presentation has expanded to include newer videos with young people engaged in thinking about justice and using their voices to speak out as well as talking about why voting is important. We ask students to talk with students around them about what issues might motivate them to vote (without discussing their personal beliefs) and we write their ideas on the board. We demonstrate voter turnout for the 18-24 year old age group in recent elections and use a fictional ballot measure to show that NOT voting has consequences too. We guide them through the voter registration form, encouraging those who do not want to register or are not eligible to register to follow along with us because someday we hope they will want to register or be eligible to register.

Our Promise

We want everyone to feel included in our presentation.

Join Us

We welcome volunteers to join us in reaching out and inspiring the next generation of voters.

LWVVC Voter Registration Committee Chair