All systems go for Oakland, Berkeley teens to vote in November (2024)

The wait is over.

Four years after Oakland voters approved Measure QQ—and eight years after Berkeley voters passed a similar measure—the youth vote will be a reality this fall.

Sixteen- and 17-year-olds in Oakland and Berkeley will be able to cast their votes for school board directors in November, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters announced Wednesday. The cities will be the first in California to lower the voting age in school board elections.

“I am very pleased to have the technology and processes in place to deliver youth voting, passed by the voters of Berkeley and Oakland through Measures Y1 and QQ,” Tim Dupuis, the county’s registrar and chief information officer, said in a statement on Wednesday. “This has never been done before in California and we had to make sure that it was done properly.”

The implementation process had faced some bureaucratic and technical challenges. The change required updating voting systems to recognize 16- and 17-year-olds without breaking the rest of the system. Separate ballots must also be printed for youth voters. The cities and school districts of Oakland and Berkeley, along with Alameda County, also had to sign agreements to implement the youth vote and split the costs.

Two weeks ago, Dupuis told the Alameda County Board of Supervisors that his office wasn’t yet prepared to implement youth voting.

The Oakland youth vote coalition began working on the initiative in 2019, bringing it to the City Council, which approved it for the 2020 ballot. Many of the advocates who started the youth vote campaign have since graduated high school and gone to college.

“I’m very glad to see all of our hard work has paid off,” said Allyson Chen, a second-year student at UC Davis who began working on the youth vote initiative as a freshman at Oakland High School. “I have cousins and neighbors who still go to OUSD schools. I’m excited to tell them, ‘When you go back to school you can register to vote and have a say in your education and what matters to you.’”

Since 2020, youth vote advocates have attended city and county meetings, hosted school board candidate forums, and tabled at community events to spread awareness about the initiative.

“We’ve held mock votes, we went to the City Council, we went to the OUSD school board meetings,” said Samuel Adeyeye, who just graduated from Skyline High School and is attending UCLA this fall. “The persistence of the Oakland Youth Vote coalition over years of fighting really brought this bill to fruition.”

Their work isn’t over, said organizer Ixchel Arista. Now they’ll need to help teens register and get them up to speed on the upcoming election—and teach them how to use the mail.

“Because we are one of a few cities implementing a policy like this, there’s an excitement for me about Oakland participating in something new,” said Arista, an Oakland High School graduate who is entering her second year at UC San Diego. “In terms of spreading democracy and preparing people for civil processes earlier in their educational careers, I hope we can inspire other organizations and other cities to do this.”

Sixteen- and 17-year-olds in Oakland and Berkeley can use California’s online preregistration system to register to vote in school board elections. They can also register in person at the Alameda County Registrar of Voters’ office in Oakland. Youth voters, like all voters, will be sent a mail-in ballot beginning the week of Oct. 7. Youth voters will also be able to vote in person at the registrar’s office beginning Oct. 7.

Berkeley Unified has two open seats on its school board this year, and Oakland will have four—in districts 1, 3, 5, and 7.