After a successful first year, Midtown High Votes, a club dedicated to registering student voters and raising civic engagement awareness, has returned, aiming to register 90% of all eligible students to vote. 

“Our goal is ambitious, I don’t think there are many schools around the country that are getting to 90% of their eligible students,” Chris Rhodenbaugh, one of two teacher sponsors, said. “This year though, we’ve already registered over 150 people total. At this point, we are on track.”

The club is run by teacher sponsors Rhodenbaugh and Claudia Black, senior co-presidents Imani Johnson and Courage West and sophomore vice president Tyler Austin, along with a board of club members. Last year, the club fell short of its goals for Midtown student voter registration, but with midterm elections in November, the club has implemented additional initiatives. 

On Oct. 6, the club co-organized an event with Fulton County in which a bus, equipped with practice voting materials, visited the school allowing students to register to vote while getting experience placing a ballot ahead of election day. 

“We wanted students who were 17 and 18 years old to get to actually practice with what it’s like to use the voting machines, print off a practice ballot and go through the whole process,” Rhodenbaugh said. “We hope that students seeing the whole process themselves will make it so they actually go do it for real, on Nov. 8.”

The deadline to register before the midterms in Georgia was Oct. 11. Election day this year is Nov. 8 and the governor’s race, one senate seat and several other local positions are on the ballot. Early voting opened on Oct. 17.

“We wanted to have the bus come to campus right before the deadline to register so it would be something that everyone would be talking about,” Rhondenbaugh said. “[The goal was to] make it really easy for students to just walk up, fill out the form in five minutes, and be done.”

Though she is not eligible to vote in this upcoming election, West hopes people who can and cannot vote benefit from the club’s initiatives. 

“We all have a circle of people, friends and family, who can vote and maybe choose not to because they don’t feel motivated to, and my goal is to teach people,” West said. “This is a pillar of our democracy. We have to vote; we all as Americans have to come together to learn and vote.

Senior Kaden Neighbors registered to vote at the bus event and found the process fairly easy, other than a long line. He thinks the event helped encourage him and his classmates to vote. 

“It was pretty simplified, and I don’t really expect it to be any different at the real polls,” Neighbors said. “I think it’s cool that they are trying to get as many people as possible who are eligible to try to vote because I feel like a lot of people in our generation don’t really use their vote very efficiently.”

Margaret Blackman, who was one of the volunteers helping to register students, was a superintendent for nine years in Virginia and was excited to see students participating and getting involved. 

“I have done enough of this now to see the enthusiasm and the excitement on the part of seniors here at the Atlanta high schools,” Blackman said. “I think people are tired of some of the things they are hearing about like the fact that you might not be able to read all the books you would like to because your school can’t have the books, and I just think this is an issue where young people are very much interested and very involved.”

Shantel Stephens, who works at Fulton County and travels to several communities around the county getting people registered and teaching them about voting, thinks that it’s important for people to look for resources because they are readily available. 

“Each county does have a voter registration outreach team, it’s just a matter of people knowing that there is an outreach team that exists,” Stephens said.

Stephens said that visiting schools is important because students are the next generation of voters, and she was pleased to see a high turnout of Midtown students. 

“The younger generations are the next big thing, we’re voting on stuff now but it’s going to affect them in the long run, so it’s very much important that people do their research, especially for local elections that directly affect them,” Stephens said. “It’s knowing that their voice matters, their vote matters, so we’re here to tell people to never be discouraged and to do their civic duty. Voting is free; nobody can stop you.”

Rhodenbaugh acknowledges there has been support from all around the school and district. 

“The administration at Midtown has been extremely helpful, in every way,” Rhodenbaugh said. “I have felt supported by our school administrators; the staff at our school has gotten behind this; teachers across the school were finding students, talking to students, encouraging them to go to the event, and just creating this general culture of, ‘This is something we do at Midtown, when you are getting close to graduating, we all are going to register to vote, learn about the candidates, and increase the power of our students when they graduate.’”

Principal Dr. Betsy Bockman thinks that the club’s mission is important for students and wishes that there was something like it when she was in school. 

“I think it’s a great opportunity for schools to offer this,” Dr. Bockman said. “It’s really important that people have the opportunity to vote. I think teenagers are a lot more aware of issues that affect them now or will affect them in the future: health issues, reproductive rights, money, taxes and education; so, it’s important for teenagers to know that they can change things, and they can elect people who will help change things.”

The club tried to reach as many people in as many ways possible, letting them know how, where and who they could register with. 

“We have a hypothesis that if you see an Instagram post or a flyer around your school, you’ll think about it, even if you don’t think you will, you will,” West said. “We want to get as many points of contact, whether that be flyers, social media, or word of mouth, we want to have as many points of contact so that people will be engaged.”

Rhodenbaugh agrees and thinks that the club being partially student-led is also a big factor in getting students motivated and ready to vote. 

“It’s incredibly important that it’s student-led because if we want voting and registration to be something lasting that students care about for themselves, not just because some adult told them to go do it, the students have to be the ones encouraging it,” Rhodenbaugh said. “We don’t want voting to be seen as another task or another thing that an adult is demanding of young people.”

This year, the club has registered more than 150 students, around 90 of whom were registered during the voter registration event. The club plans to hold similar events in the future and hopes to reach its 90% registration goal this year. 

“We are on social media right now,” West said. “We’re going to be holding other voter registration drives throughout the year. We have a list of students who we know are at least 17 or older, and we are trying to speak to ten of them every week and connect bases to see if we can help them, and if so, how.”

Aside from spreading awareness about voting and registration, the club wants Midtown to be somewhere that works to empower young voters. 

“The club was started by me and a small group of students to be able to make voter registration a part of the culture of our school,” Rhodenbaugh said. “There are traditions here, from yearbook to band and debate team, we wanted to make sure that Midtown High School is known as a place that empowers its students by supporting them and registering them to vote and participate in elections.”