Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate Malaya Ulan, a junior at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber, knows what it feels like to be young and overlooked in 2024.

With the upcoming election dominating conversations in Pennsylvania — a swing state that could play a pivotal role in deciding the presidential race — Ulan and other Philadelphia youth are being inundated with questions from adults about whether they’ll show up at the polls on Nov. 5 and why it’s so hard to get young people to turn out for elections.

“Who are we to them? Are we young minds to be cared for? Or statistics to be counted and ignored? ‘Cause they treat us like a chore,” Ulan intoned, sharing one of her poems with a room full of her peers gathered at City Hall on Wednesday for a “Vote That Jawn” event to talk about the importance of showing up to the polls.

“What about the students tossed into schools that make our minds bleed. What about the students who don’t get a good education?” asked Ulan, 16.

Indeed, Philadelphia youth told Chalkbeat they do keep up with the news and care passionately about political issues like access to health care, raising the minimum wage, stopping the ongoing violence in the Middle East, and making Philadelphia a safer city.

With the Oct. 21 voter registration deadline days away, 54.6% of 18-year-olds are registered to vote in Pennsylvania. It’s roughly the same for Philadelphia youth, where nearly 55% of the city’s more than 57,900 18-year-olds are registered to vote, according to data compiled by The Civics Center, a nonpartisan organization focused on increasing the number of high school students registered to vote.

By comparison, 78% of Pennsylvanians 45 and older are registered to vote.

Vivek Babu, former president of Drexel University’s undergraduate student government association, said the reason why so many Philadelphia youth may not engage with politics or voting is because they are overloaded with commitments.

Read the full article about Philadelphia youth engaging in the election by Carly Sitrin at Chalkbeat.