Aaron Conrad will turn 18 and become eligible to vote exactly one month after the polls close today.
He's the vice president for the Arkansas Young Democrats' high school division and has knocked on more than 1,000 doors to support Clarke Tucker for Congress. During the run-up to the national midterm and local elections, he also went as often as he could to college campuses to help students register to vote.
When Conrad becomes eligible to vote, he will join the second-largest group of registered voters in Arkansas; 18-to-34-year-olds made up 26 percent, 467,862, of the total number as of Monday. The secretary of state's office could not immediately provide comparable numbers for the 2016 or 2014 elections.
Arkansans age 51-69 comprised the largest group of registered voters as of Monday.
Throughout this election cycle, Conrad said he's seen much more involvement at high school chapters of Young Democrats. Their numbers nearly doubled in Washington County. At Benton High School, his chapter, more members have trickled in since the shootings at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in February.
"Overall, this administration has been really, really good for one thing, which is that we've had a lot more volunteers," Conrad said.
He went on to list other news events that he thinks have rallied millennial and Generation Z voters: the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the separation of migrant children from their parents.
Generation Z is generally the group of people born between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, millennials between 1981 and 1997.
A Pew Research Center study published in April projected that millennials will surpass baby boomers as the largest group of eligible voters within the next year. The center is "a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world," according to its website.
Young voters have grown more politically active since 2016, said Rey Junco, a senior researcher at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). The center is affiliated with Tufts University in Massachusetts and researches civic engagement of young people.
"One thing we know for sure is that activism is way up," Junco said. "... It's been substantial, and those youth who have engaged in at least one offline activism thing are much more likely to vote."
He added that "online activism," posting about politics on social media, often leads to "offline activism," such as participating in marches.
Blake Ross, the president of the Young Democrats of Arkansas, said the state has one of the largest memberships of high school students, and after the Parkland shootings, he had lots of high school leadership reaching out to ask him how they could help.
High schoolers began to increase calls to state legislators and organize marches and protests, he said.
The Massachusetts civic-engagement research center conducted a poll in September of just over 2,000 people between the ages of 18 to 24 and found that 81 percent of those surveyed see themselves as part of "a rising political force," and believe they have the power to enact change. The center's study attributes this in part to the post-Parkland movement against gun violence.
Josh Hale, a North Little Rock High School senior, said the threat of a school shooting is always in the back of his mind. Active shooter drills, which he's grown up doing intermittently, increased this year along with interest in politics among his peers.
"I think kids our age, most of us are not particularly interested in politics, but the one issue that kind of weighs over all kids at the school is school shootings because it affects all of us," said Hale, who has been president of his school's Young Democrats chapter for two years.
President Donald Trump's election also spurred more students to join Young Democrats because they wanted to make a change, but didn't know how, Hale said. They do voter registration drives and hand out voter forms to teachers to keep in their classrooms.
Hale voted for the first time last week after he got out of school for the day.
"I think it is something that is finally starting to resonate," Hale said. "... Voting really is important."
Remy Wells, 18, voted in Fort Smith on Saturday. He believes in the Second Amendment, worries about policy that affects education and rethought his Republican political leanings during the Kavanaugh hearings.
But ultimately, he woke up Saturday morning, did his calculus homework and voted for Republican candidates. They represent his core beliefs, he said.
He didn't think twice about registering to vote; it was easy when he got his driver's license renewed, and his family has always encouraged civic engagement.
"One vote can sway an election," Wells said.
Georgia Thomas agrees with that idea, and couldn't wait to vote now that she's 18. She watched the 2016 election unfold, wishing she could participate. This year, she went straight to the polls the first day of early voting even though she had to wait an hour and a half to vote.
Thomas has been an intern on Rep. French Hill's campaign since August and is a senior at Little Rock Christian High School. She carried a sign for the Second District congressman at a rally Saturday, and said she voted Republican because she wants taxes to be kept low.
"I will be paying taxes for the rest of my life," she said, as Republican candidates took turns at the podium calling for people to get out and vote.
Tax cuts were also an important issue for Davis Rowan, a 19-year-old student at Harding University. He thought Hill was more likely to keep taxes low and thinks he's responsive to voters.
He said he wasn't sure about who to vote for in the gubernatorial race until the Kavanaugh hearings.
"I didn't particularly like how the Democratic party handled that, so it made me want to go vote against them," Rowan said. He said his ballot was nearly all Republicans.
Lela Minor, 18, said she wasn't particularly excited about any one candidate in particular but she thinks, especially for young people, that voting is one of the most important things to do.
She spent the days leading up to early voting researching candidates, and once it began, she said she reminded her friends to vote.
She went to vote for the first time in the May primaries with her dad and again at the start of November.
"A lot of this is going to be affecting us in the future, so we need to take charge of these decisions," Minor said.
A Section on 11/06/2018