Vote like you care

In San Mateo County’s first week of returns, voters 65 and older returned ballots at nearly seven times the rate of voters between 18 and 34, with 4.9% turnout among the older cohort and 0.7% among the younger one. The gap here compounds in a way that it does not statewide. California has more 18-34 registered voters than 65+, while in San Mateo County, the 65+ group is the largest registered cohort and the 18-34 group is the smallest. And on top of that, older voters here return ballots at almost three times the rate of older voters statewide. A young voter in San Mateo County is starting from a smaller share of the room with an older electorate that shows up at a higher rate than anywhere else in California.

Some of this gap may be deliberate. Carl DeMaio’s Reform California is running an organized push telling Republican voters to wait, watch the polling, and consolidate behind whichever Republican has the best shot at the second top-two slot to avoid an all-Democrat November runoff. There is a similar grassroots conversation circulating on the Democratic side with the logic flipped — wait, see who is polling strongest against the eventual Republican, then pile on. Both moves are rational on their own terms, and at the same time, both can also be a distraction.

Regardless of which day you mail your ballot, the goal is the same: Get it in on or before June 2.

Even when young voters catch up at the polls in the final 72 hours, they have never really closed the gap. The Public Policy Institute of California found that in the 2022 primary, 16% of registered Californians under 35 voted while 60% of those 65 and older did. That 44-point gap meant the under-35 cohort was 28% of registered voters but only 12% of the actual electorate. In the 2024 primary, voters 50 and older were 67% of participants while making up 51% of eligible voters. PPIC’s likely-voter research puts the under-35 cohort at roughly 30% of California’s adult population and roughly 21% of likely voters. The pattern holds across every modern California primary and most general elections.

This is the baseline. Again, and again and again.

Policy follows participation. Housing rules historically have tended to protect existing owners over future renters, school funding gets debated on certain lines and not others, long-horizon issues like climate or pension reform keep getting pushed into someone else’s term, and all of it is downstream of who actually shows up. Does anyone under 40 know what the pension liability is for their city, county and state … or know what that even means? I would bet less than 1%, and this is the single largest unfunded liability, the fastest growing line item, and one of the largest fixed long-term obligations on every public agency’s books.

Representation in a democracy is volunteer work, and too often it gets divvied out to whoever raises their hand. When voters 65 and older make up roughly half of the actual electorate and voters 18 to 34 make up about a fifth of it, the policies reflect what the room brings up. This is not a moral failing on the part of older voters, they are doing exactly what we ask of them. But it is high time that younger voters represent in the electorate as they do everywhere else — in culture, markets, online discourse and workforce.

What is on the ballot due in 21 days is going to set up the next several decades for the people who are voting at 0.7% as of this past Saturday. A governor’s race, congressional primaries, county supervisors, local school funding decisions — all of these compound in ways the youngest cohort will live with longer than any other, and the people most affected by long-horizon policy are the ones least represented in the choices that produce it. Whether you mail your ballot early like I did or hold it until June 2 to see how the polls move, what matters is that the envelope ends up in the official drop box with the correct timestamp.

Show up like you care, everyone, because what you vote on today impacts you for decades to come.