Arlo Meighan-Thiel is 16, and he’s ready to vote.
Not in two years, when he becomes a legal adult. No, the Culver City High School junior believes he is mature and well-informed enough to cast a ballot now.
In Culver City, a local ballot measure before voters — adult voters, that is — in the Nov. 3 election could eventually give 16- and 17-year-olds such as him the right to cast ballots in city and school board elections. If it passes, it would make the Westside city one of just a few municipalities nationwide, and among a handful in California, to expand voting rights to people under 18.
Alice Blakely looks at a map with houses marked to visit as she canvasses in a Culver City neighborhood in support of Measure YV.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
“I feel really strongly that 16- and 17-year-olds are very capable to vote and make a calm, educated decision for a school board and city elections,” said Meighan-Thiel, a policy and advocacy leader for the student group Vote16 Culver City. “It would be amazing for us, the people who go to school five days a week, to have a say who represents us on the school board.”
Meighan-Thiel had just a few minutes when he spoke with The Times last week. The teenager was busy, as are all of the youth involved with Vote16 Culver City, a lunchtime advocacy group with members juggling extracurriculars, homework, college applications and jobs. Meighan-Thiel, a pitcher and first baseman for the high school baseball team had just wrapped up practice and was about to go canvassing, knocking on doors throughout Culver City, trying to persuade people to support the initiative.
Measure YV, as it is formally called, proposes an amendment to the Culver City charter that would allow youth voters to participate only in school board and municipal elections. They would not be able to vote in county, state or federal contests.
This is the second time the youth-vote initiative has been considered in Culver City, where a similar measure failed in 2022 by just 16 votes. That year — when Meighan-Thiel’s older sister campaigned for the measure — it got 8,293 votes of support — more than any single candidate for City Council.
From left, Adina Austin, Alice Blakely, and Eva Cogan interact with a resident as they canvass Culver City in support of a youth voting initiative.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
In 2024, a citizens’ initiative to lower the voting age failed to gather enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. This February, the City Council, at the request of Vote16 Culver City, voted 3 to 2 to put the measure on the November ballot.
Supporters argue that 16- and 17-year-olds who are old enough to work, drive, and pay taxes are mature enough to have a say in local decisions that affect their schools, parks, public safety, transportation and other matters. In California, they are already allowed to pre-register to vote so that, on their 18th birthday, they become automatically eligible to cast a ballot.
Opponents say they are too young to make reasoned electoral choices and that they could be easily manipulated by adults.
“The fact is, this measure makes our students a captive, impressionable voting bloc,” five opponents wrote in a statement for the city’s voter guide in which they argued that teen voters’ contact information would become part of the public record, making them vulnerable to being courted and contacted “by strangers with political motives.”
“Is that the school district you want?” the statement read. “Do you want it to become a political football, with your children being contacted by competing strangers, pressured to vote for their favored candidates? Or do you feel like your children should be shielded from the political winds of our city?”
Those signing the statement include City Council member Albert Vera, former Mayor Göran Eriksson, and former Mayor Ed Wolkowitz.
Wolkowitz, who was on the City Council from 1994 to 2002, said in an interview Tuesday that while he thought 18 was an arbitrary age for allowing people to vote and that are plenty of capable teenagers, he thinks Measure YV is unnecessary because “you have to have a cut-off date somewhere.”
“I could make arguments that a lot of people my age don’t have either the inclination or the capacity to vote. I’m 77,” Woklowitz said.
He added: “People under the age of 18 who want to get involved in the political system have every ability to do so. They can work on campaigns. They can advocate their positions. They can do it without voting.”
Wolkowitz also said he believes the measure could pose challenges for school board elections because not all students live within city limits, and they would be unable to cast ballots.
Ron Bassilian, who signed the opposition statement, said he had concerns about high schools becoming part of “an arms race” for political interests fighting for access to students.
Bassilian — a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2018 against Democratic incumbent Karen Bass, now the Los Angeles Mayor — is president of Protect Culver City, a political action committee that has opposed rent control and efforts to defund law enforcement. Bassilian said progressive candidates and activists have “really been pushing their way into the high school,” seeking to influence young people.
While young people often put a lot of personal information on social media, he said, they usually do not list their home addresses and phone number, which could become public if they become voters.
“We don’t want to be the bad guy, but if [Measure YV] passes, we will be pursuing legal channels to get this data,” Bassilian said of Protect Culver City. “You’re a voter? You’re a person of public interest. You’ve opened this Pandora’s box.”
His political organization, he said, would send the new young voters political flyers, knock on their doors and cold-call them, just like it would any adult.
A rebuttal by the measure’s opponents published in the Culver City voter guide notes that California has allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote since 2016, and that “our teenagers are already in the system, and none of the harms opponents predict have materialized here” or in other cities across the country where they are allowed to vote.
From left;, Mia Moroz, Eva Cogan, Adina Austin, Alice Blakely and Leila Behforouz plan their canvassing routes .
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
“California voter information isn’t handed to ‘anyone who requests it,’” says the rebuttal, whose signers include City Council member Yasmine-Imani McMorrin. “State law limits access to electoral, governmental, scholarly, journalistic, and political purposes, and misuse is a crime — the same protection every voter receives.”
At the February meeting in which the City Council decided to put the measure on the ballot, Vice Mayor Bryan “Bubba” Fish, who supported it, addressed the youth activists who spoke in favor, saying: “We often hear that young people are the future. … You are the present.”
1. Adina Austin holds a pamphlet to be hung to a door knob as she canvases in a neighborhood in an effort to make it so 16 and 17 year-olds can vote in municipal elections, in Culver City, on October 23rd, 2026. (Etienne Laurent/For The Times) 2. Alice Blakely (L) and Eva Cogan walks by a poster against the reform they support as they canvas in a neighborhood in an effort to make it so 16 and 17 year-olds can vote in municipal elections, in Culver City, on October 23rd, 2026. (Etienne Laurent/For The Times) 3. A resident, Joe (L), interacts with Eva Cogan, Adina Austin and Alice Blakely as they canvas in a neighborhood in an effort to make it so 16 and 17 year-olds can vote in municipal elections, in Culver City, on October 23rd, 2026. (Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
“The decisions we make on this dais are already impacting you, and in many cases they’re impacting you the hardest,” he said. “When it comes to affordability, you all are going to bear the brunt of our housing crisis. When it comes to climate change, it’s young people who will live the youngest with the consequences of a warming planet.”
The “least we can do,” he said, “is let our young people have a seat at the table and a say in some of the decisions and the leaders that shape their everyday lives.”
Vote16 Culver City is a part of Vote16USA, a national organization that supports youth-led state and local campaigns to lower the voting age. Vote16USA is funded by the New York-based nonprofit Goodnation Foundation, according to its website.
In 2013, Takoma Park, Md., became the first city in the U.S. to lower its voting age to 16 for municipal elections. A few additional cities in Maryland, as well as cities in New Jersey and Vermont, allow people under 18 to cast ballots in some or all local elections.
A San Francisco charter amendment that would have lowered the voting age fell short at the ballot in 2016 and again in 2020, when it lost by just 1.6% of the vote.
In 2016, Berkeley became the first municipality in California to drop the voting age to 16 for school board elections, followed by its Alameda County neighbor, Oakland, in 2020.
Voters in Albany, also in Alameda County, took it a step further in 2024, when they passed a measure to let 16- and 17-year-olds cast ballots in all municipal elections — though the county is still trying to figure out how to fully accommodate youth voters in citywide contests.
In the three cities, 16- and 17-year-olds will be able to vote for the first time in this year’s school board elections, according to the Alameda County elections office. Every eligible pre-registered youth voter was set to receive a vote-by-mail ballot before the election, just like adult voters.
Like many youth voting advocates, Adina Austin, vice president of Vote16 Culver City, is well-versed in research that has found that 16-year-olds have adult levels of cognitive capacity, allowing them to make reasoned electoral choices.
Austin, a 17-year-old senior at Culver City High, said she was initially skeptical of the efforts to lower the voting age, which have been talked about for years on her campus. She was just 13 when the 2022 effort failed.
“Looking around at my fellow teenagers, I thought, ‘I don’t know if we should be allowed to vote,’” she said with a laugh. But then she started going to the lunchtime meetings and hearing how passionate — and well-informed — her peers were and changed her mind.
Electoral pamphlets are affixed to a door in Culver City on Oct. 23, 2026.
(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)
Austin said it has been frustrating to feel like she has had no real say in decisions by the Culver City Unified School District board, which recently has approved significant budget cuts and staff reductions, including a staff member she adored in the performing arts program. Expanding youth voting rights for issues that directly influence them is a pathway toward a lifetime of civic engagement, she said.
“This isn’t just meant to help teens,” Austin said. “It’s meant to help our country as a whole. We’re in a time when civic engagement and interest, especially among young adults, is low … and just overall trust in government is low right now.”
She said she is not concerned about her contact information becoming public if she is able to vote because teenagers already are subjected to “the same political noise” and messaging as adults in this era of powerful social media algorithms.
“The fear that giving us the right to vote would create that noise just doesn’t make sense because it already exists,” she said.
Austin, who plays water polo and has been busy applying to colleges in hopes of studying linguistics, has spent her evenings the last few weeks knocking on voters’ doors, arguing for the cause — and finding the confidence in her voice as someone who used to be more shy.
She wishes she could cast a ballot for Measure YV herself. But, for now at least, she is too young.
