Credit: (Jake Hirsch/Governor’s Office/CC BY-NC 2.0)

A group of students from across New Jersey is pushing to lower the voting age to 16 in school board elections. Now, top officials including Gov. Phil Murphy are adding their voices to the fight and supporting legislation that would make it happen statewide.

If it becomes law, New Jersey would be the first state to enfranchise 16- and 17-year-olds in school board elections statewide, following in the footsteps of Newark and several other American cities.

“I know, to some, this proposal may sound unconventional. But voting is a lifelong habit,” Murphy said at Hoboken High School last week. “And studies show that, if a person votes in one election, they are more likely to turn out in the next election.”

Murphy attended a ninth period AP U.S. Government and Politics Class along with Sen. Raj Mukherji (D-Hudson) and Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker (D-Essex), who are sponsors of legislation to lower the voting age. The state officials participated in a “multiple-choice round robin challenge” with students, focused on how the ideals of democracy are reflected in the country today. At the end of the lesson, Murphy finally clued the students in to why he was spending his Tuesday afternoon answering multiple-choice questions.

“We’re here for a very specific reason — other than I just had a complete ball and I’m sure my colleagues did as well — and that is, we are espousing voting rights for 16- and 17-year-olds,” Murphy said. “Raj and Cleo are sponsoring a bill that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections, because those are elections that most directly impact you all as students.”

Newark leads

Murphy said Newark is leading the country by allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections beginning in April.

“We, the three of us and our colleagues, would like to make that state law. Not just allowing Newark to do what they’re doing — and God bless Newark for doing it — but every community, Hoboken, and every other in the state to be able to do that, not just be able to do it, in fact to be mandated to do it,” Murphy said.

The bill has not come up for a vote in committee in either house after being introduced in May.

“It’s the first step for 16- and 17-year-olds participating into the broader participation in ultimately all of our elections,” Murphy said.

Credit: (Jake Hirsch/Governor’s Office/CC BY-NC 2.0)

Andrew Wilkes of the Vote16USA group said 12 jurisdictions across the country have lowered the voting age for certain local and school elections. New Jersey, according to Wilkes, is the first state where a sitting governor has lifted the issue, beginning with inviting the movement’s student leaders to his most recent State of the State address.

“New Jersey in many ways is leading the way,” Wilkes said.

The students, who belong to a group called Vote16NJ, hosted a summit at Rutgers University – Newark on Saturday with more than 150 young people in partnership with the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

Surge of support

Since Newark City Council gave 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in January, Vote16NJ co-founder Anjali Krishnamurti said the organization has grown to include students from more than 25 towns across New Jersey.

Many of the students who attended the summit are from Newark, including Science Park High School seniors Breanna Campbell and Nathaniel Esubonteng, who advocated for the voting age to be lowered in Newark. The seniors spoke on a panel at the Vote16 Summit about how they successfully campaigned for policy changes in their city.

‘We’re not asking for them to vote at 16 in the presidential election, especially in a time of polarization. We’re asking for a 16-year-old to be able to vote in school board elections that directly affect them.’ — Matthew Bassily, a senior at Monroe Township High School

The students who attended the summit said it was great to meet in person the people they had been working with online and to hear from supportive elected officials, including Murphy, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-10th), who served as Newark City Council president when the voting age was lowered.

“Our generation of young people has been forced to assume a lot of responsibilities in advocating for themselves for issues that directly affect them and disproportionately affect them, like gun violence or climate change. We have assumed so much more responsibility, and we deserve to use that power that we’ve generated to tangibly make an impact in our society,” Krishnamurti said. “The only way that I can see that happen is through the vote.”

Demanding a say

Students are directly affected by decisions made on local school boards, Krishnamurti said, and they bring a unique perspective to the ballot box as students. Students named school violence, climate change and the need for heat and air-conditioning as top issues in upcoming school board elections.

Krishnamurti said many of the attendees did not know a lot about the movement to lower the voting age before attending the summit, but they ended the day eager to expand voting access in their own communities.

Matthew Bassily, a senior at Monroe Township High School, said he left the summit inspired to bring the fight to lower the voting age to Monroe. He recalled attending a board of education meeting in his town and looking around to realize he was the only student in a room of people at least twice his age.

“It was just really shocking to see that everyone that is attending these meetings and using their voice doesn’t actually have a stake in the decisions of the board of education,” Bassily said.

The summit gave him the skills he needs to bring the movement to Monroe, he said. Bassily said he has already set up a meeting for this week with one of the lawyers from the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice who is working on voting issues.

“We’re not asking for them to vote at 16 in the presidential election, especially in a time of polarization. We’re asking for a 16-year-old to be able to vote in school board elections that directly affect them,” Bassily said. “I should be the one that has a say and can actually impact what happens in my school.”