3.4 How to run a voter registration drive

A voter registration drive is a great way to support young people to take this first step and give themselves the opportunity to vote in the future.

What Makes a Voter Registration Drive Effective?
A successful drive needs to do three things:

• Why – Explain why registering to vote matters
• How – Show how the registration process works
• Opportunity – Create a clear and easy chance to register

When planning a drive, think about the needs of the students you’re working with:

• Do they have special educational needs or accessibility requirements?
• Will you or someone else lead the activity – and are they confident discussing voter registration?
• Are any participants from migrant backgrounds who may have different eligibility rules?
• If working with under-18s, do you need to inform parents or guardians?

These questions can help shape your approach and the tools you choose to use. To maximise the number of young people registering, use a combination of tools so you meet the diverse needs of your students.

Ways to support voter registration

Most effective drives use a combination of approaches, offering young people multiple chances to register and reinforcing that it's a simple but important step.

Sharing Information Online or with Posters
You can send registration info via email or platforms like Google Classroom or use posters with a link or QR code to the voter registration site are another easy way to encourage action. Posters can be placed in classrooms, or in areas where students congregate.

These tools are:

• Quick and easy to use
• Allow you to track engagement (e.g. link clicks or people using QR codes)
• Can be translated into other languages

Democracy Classroom includes template emails and a voter registration FAQ you can link to. You can find a collection of voter registration posters and flyers here.

Assembly or form time activity

A 20–30 minute presentation delivered during an assembly or form time is a quick way to make the case for registering, answer questions, and support young people to register immediately. An assembly or form time presentation:

• Reaches many young people quickly
• Are easy for one person to deliver

Our Exploring Elections slide deck gives a good overview of elections and provides a link and QR code to register to vote.

The next section goes through how to deliver these assemblies in more detail.

A lesson or workshop

A 45 to 60 minute lesson or workshop takes more time to deliver, but allow allows for a more in-depth conversation and places registration in the wider context of political participation. A lesson or workshop:

• Leads to higher registration rates than other methods
• Allows you to tailor support for young people with SEND or from migrant backgrounds

The Exploring Elections workshops can be delivered in 60 minutes and provide a good overview of why elections matter and how to register to vote. You can also find a link to these workshops in the resource roundup section of this module.