Eight years after Berkeley voters passed a measure to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in elections for school board directors, the teens could finally have the chance to do so in November.
While Measure Y1 changed the city charter to allow the youth vote, implementation of the measure has since stalled as the county elections office has tried to figure out how to make it work. Now, the city and county are poised to make it happen this fall. City council members will vote Tuesday on an ordinance to formally implement the ability for people ages 16 and 17 the opportunity to vote in November for the school board race.
In a special meeting Tuesday evening, the city council will consider two items: an ordinance to authorize the use of what the city calls “youth voting” for the office of Berkeley Unified school director, and a resolution allowing youth voting specifically in this November’s election. The resolution also requests that a voter center be established on the Berkeley High School campus, “if doing so is reasonably feasible and practical.”
“It’s so beautiful to know that at least these students will be able to help decide who’s representing them,” said Cecilia Lunaparra, a Berkeley city council member representing the city’s student-majority District 7. This “will make sure school board directors are accountable to students for the first time.”
“I think young people are disproportionately going to feel the effects we make because we are going to experience this world for longer,” said Lunaparra, who graduated this year from UC Berkeley. “We are also disproportionately kept out of these spaces — in terms of institutional processes. Things as simple as voting – we see attacks all over the country on the right to vote and access to the ballot box. It’s heartening to see us countering that.”
The proposed ordinance stipulates that youth voting would need to be authorized each election year by the city council “via a resolution adopted at least 88 days prior to each election,” and it provides that the school district ordinance can disallow youth voting in a given election year “for any reason,” including “administrative, technical, or financial infeasibility.”
The Alameda County Registrar of Voters administers elections, but according to the ordinance, Berkeley Unified would be responsible for incurring any additional costs of the youth voting. It’s unclear, however, what the additional costs would be. County and school district leaders did not answer questions related to the costs of the youth voting in time for publication. And Berkeley Unified did not respond to questions sent Monday related to what, if any, challenges would prohibit youth voting moving forward.
The Alameda County Registrar of Voters has noted that plans are underway to get youth voting up and running for both Berkeley and Oakland, which passed its own youth voting measure in 2020 and is also working with the county to move it forward. Oakland’s City Council will vote next week to implement it.
“We continue to work through the logistics required to implement Youth Voting,” said Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis, who noted that his office is working with vendors to implement computer coding changes necessary for the voting. “We are working against deadlines for the November election. Everyone is working hard to put all the pieces together for the November election. We are hopeful that it will all come together.”
A consultant hired by the Oakland Unified School District to support the implementation of its youth voting measure told The Oaklandside last month that the Alameda County systems are in a development-and-testing phase, and testing has to be finished by the end of July to ensure the system is ready by the November election for Oakland and Berkeley’s teen voters.
“Election systems are complex, and involve a lot of requirements, not just for youth voters to be allowed to vote, but requirements that the software interact with the state system called VoteCal, and tons of federal and state laws,” Ross Underwood, a former county registrar who also owns an election technology company and was contracted by OUSD as a consultant, told The Oaklandside. “Any changes that are made to meet those requirements have to be thoroughly tested to make sure that we’re not breaking something else by introducing these new capabilities in the system.”
If the cities pass their ordinances and stay on track, Berkeley and Oakland would be the first California cities to implement youth voting. San Francisco has tried twice to lower the voting age to 16 for all local elections but the ballot measures there were defeated in 2016 and 2020. Advocates in San Francisco are launching another attempt this year to allow residents age 16 and older to vote.
In Berkeley, members of the school board are elected at-large, so voters can select their top three candidates from anywhere in the city, irrespective of the districts where they live. School board directors are not elected via ranked-choice voting.
So far, there are three candidates running for two open seats for school board director, including incumbent school board president Ana Vasudeo. The other candidates are Jen Corn – whose campaign website identifies her as a Berkeley Unified parent and a former teacher and principal in the district who now serves as the Director of School Improvement at Oakland Unified – and Norma J.F. Harrison, who has run for the school board previously.
“I think that every aspect of the city government affects young people. I’d be very open to expanding the right to other races as well,” Lunaparra, the city council member, said.
Berkeley’s city council will consider the ordinance in a special meeting Tuesday that starts at 5 p.m.