With poor 2014 voter turnout numbers, Santa Cruz County makes push to sign up young voters

The race for the White House is heating up. The top Republican presidential hopefuls have been debating the top issues, but for California, it’s struggling to find young people to vote for them. Not because of their policies, but because younger folks aren’t registered to vote.

In 2014, voter turnout was at 8.2 percent for 18-24-year-olds across the state, according to election officials.

The Santa Cruz County Elections Office is trying to change that.

In Aptos this week, the office was parked right in the middle of the Cabrillo College quad helping students register to vote for the upcoming election. This is a part of California’s high school voter education weeks at the end of September.

County officials said they will start their outreach at colleges and then move on to high schools.

News Channel 5 asked the program director for voter registration and outreach for Santa Cruz about why the turnout was so low last year.

“When I’m out here talking to people sometimes they don’t feel that their vote really matters,” Helen Ruiz-Thomas said. “They don’t have a good understanding of the issues on the ballot so I think it’s a variety of different factors that come into play.”

“I decided to register to vote because I don’t want Donald Trump to win the election,” said Mario Solorio, a Cabrillo College junior.”I don’t want a country where the president is a bit ignorant about the people that live here, the immigrants.”

“I think you should only vote if you know what you are voting for,” said Kylie Martin, a Cabrillo College freshman.

Over the two days at Cabrillo College, Ruiz-Thomas said she helped sign up close to 100 people.

The elections office plans to travel to U.C. Santa Cruz this weekend to continue to get the word out. It also will be at back to school nights for high schools.