Festival Fellow Spotlight: Jahnavi Rao

Tell us about your big idea!

Four million students graduate from U.S. high schools each year, 90% of whom are eligible to register to vote. And yet, less than half of 18 to 24-year-olds are registered nationwide, with even fewer 18-year-olds registered in major cities. According to the latest Harvard Youth Poll, Black and Hispanic Gen-Z in particular may not engage in the 2024 election, amplifying existing inequities in our country.

High schools provide an opportune place to reinvigorate all young voters. High schools are the last universal touchpoint for students across socioeconomic and racial groups, as 38% of high school students, disproportionately from Black and Brown communities, do not continue to post-secondary education.

A movement to activate and engage the high school population requires a youth-led, intentional, and organized movement, coupled with mentorship and civic education. That’s why I founded New Voters, established to create healthier communities through high school voter registration and empowerment. Our vision is that every high school student votes in their first election and becomes a lifelong civic participant, ultimately building a democracy where those in power prioritize youth input and issues.

You’ve been involved with this issue since you were a teenager. How did New Voters come to be?

At 16, every issue I cared about was threatened by a president I had no say in electing. After the 2016 election, decisions were made that affected my generation more than any other, and I felt helpless and unheard.

After seeing my peers on both sides frustrated at our apparent lack of importance to politicians, I started a school club called 2018 New Voters, and when I was 17 and unable to vote myself, we registered 85% of our senior class to vote.

Fast forward seven years, and New Voters has grown to a national, youth-led nonpartisan 501(c)3, with 400+ high school chapters, 80,000+ students activated to vote, 300+ interns, and 350 voting drives across 39 states. This year, we plan to register 40,000 high school students and activate 150,000 community members to vote across 400 high schools, focused on Pennsylvania and Arizona, states with high youth electoral significance.

I remember feeling helpless. I remember looking at numbers on the election screen and knowing I was not among them. But each year I see countless students join our internship or run a drive at their school when they cannot vote themselves. While their individual number is not on the screen, their influence is, alongside the students they activated to vote.

Our students feel empowered and heard. They do not feel helpless. That is why I still lead New Voters seven years later as the full-time president, dedicating my life to activating and empowering youth voters.

How do you manage such a large, distributed network of schools and volunteers?

Throughout my seven years at New Voters I have been lucky to work with the most talented, passionate and competent young people in the country. These students, some who have been with us for over four years, are motivated almost exclusively by the mission: ensuring their peers are ready to vote. On top of their already demanding schedules of sports, music lessons, homework, and the school day, many of our volunteers regularly put in 20 hours of work a week.

I remember Abi, a junior in high school, coordinated a national youth vaccination campaign called “Teens Get The Vaccine” where she executed a student Q&A with the former director of the CDC, hosted celebrity interviews, and collected over 100 student videos testimonials about getting vaccinated. High school and college students are more capable than people expect, and are themselves able to manage distributed networks of interns and drive leaders.

New Voters centers community building, where we collaboratively set goals and ensure our team has the skills required to achieve those goals. Internally, this might mean our communications team setting the goal of increasing our social media following by 100 people in a week. Since they created the goal, the number is not so daunting and there is a personal investment in achieving it. Then, myself or another director would bring in a seasoned social media veteran — whether that be a professional with 30 years of experience or a high school student who grew a fan account to 30,000 followers — to provide guidance and feedback on the plan. Externally, our primary role is to support students in running a voter registration drive at their school. We work with the student to set a goal of how many students they want to register or where they want their drive to be held, and then provide them with a personal mentor, state-specific toolkits, merchandise and technology to make that happen.

Youth leadership makes us more effective. We believe youth must always be in the decision-making room. That is why at 23, I am the oldest person at New Voters. Our curriculum, mentorship, and research are led by those as young as 14. While older collaborators ensure appropriate levels of rigor and governance, we invest in the agency of our youth leaders, and it has paid off through relatable mentors for our drive leaders, lifelong skills in and passion for public service established, and voter registration drives personalized to the current high school experience.

Voting itself has become a politicized issue. At NewVoters, you’re dedicated to nonpartisan voter engagement. What have you learned from working with high schoolers across the country? What shifts need to happen in our civic culture?

New Voters is a nonpartisan organization, meaning our goal is to ensure students are registered and ready to vote regardless of their political affiliation or lack thereof. As somebody with very strong political opinions, I often get the question: “How do you balance your own political beliefs and the nonpartisan mission of New Voters?” It is actually quite simple. I believe that the interest of young people as a whole and a young person individually are paramount, and the reason New Voters exists. The Republican party should look like what young Republicans want it to look like, and the Democratic party should look like what young Democrats want it to look like.

Through working with thousands of high school students across the country, it's obvious to me that young people are uniquely able to have difficult conversations with patience, empathy, and facts. This is not often replicated by older adults. We encourage our schools to host their drive-in collaboration with the High School Democrats and High School Republicans, both because it gives the drive more legitimacy among students and staff of all political affiliations, and because it enables civil discourse and collaboration when these two groups are united in a common nonpartisan goal: youth voter registration.

Our society would greatly improve if we prioritized greater youth civic engagement. That means parents having conversations with their children at a young age about elections, and teachers talking to their students about civic duty. This also means children talking to their parents about difficult topics and students sharing their perspective on current events with their teachers. You might be surprised to learn that your ten year old actually knows quite a bit about a local political issue through the social media and conversations they are around. I have found myself many times out-performed and out-knowledged by students much younger than me, and every time I am ecstatic to learn more. It is exciting to see political pundits and elected officials giving students a bigger platform on political issues, and young people seizing opportunities that are not given to them to make themselves heard. I am eager to contribute as much as possible to our country and world, realizing the immense knowledge, passion, and potential young people have to create change.

The views and opinions of the author are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Aspen Institute.