A decades-old Texas mandate requires public high schools to help eligible students register to vote, yet teen voter registration across the state has plummeted to historic lows ahead of the upcoming election deadline.

New figures from The Civics Center, a Los Angeles-based nonpartisan advocacy group that tracks youth voting access, show that only 29% of Texas’s estimated 420,000 18-year-olds are registered. That figure marks a steep 13-percentage-point drop since 2022 and places the state well behind the 42% national average.

“Texas is one of very few states where these rates have fallen,” said Laura Brill, founder and CEO of The Civics Center.

The decline comes at a critical juncture: Texans face an Oct. 5 voter registration cutoff to participate in the Nov. 3 midterm and local elections.

Urban Counties Lag Behind Rural Counterparts

County-by-county mapping compiled by the organization reveals sharp geographic divides. Major metropolitan hubs consistently fall short of the national benchmark. In Bexar County, only 35% of 18-year-olds were registered as of early May. Peer urban centers posted similarly depressed numbers: Dallas County recorded 27%, Harris County reached 38%, while Travis and Tarrant counties hovered at 39%.

In contrast, several rural communities—including Pecos, Andrews, and Lavaca counties—surpassed 90% registration rates.

Significant disparities also persist among neighboring school systems. Districts like Alamo Heights, Boerne, Comal, and Medina Valley have cleared 70% registration among eligible seniors, while others in the same region fail to reach 30%.

Advocates point to Texas’s strict election apparatus as a major headwind.

“Registering to vote in Texas presents some of the steepest administrative hurdles in the country,” Brill noted, adding that the burden often falls entirely on local educators and grassroots volunteers.

Unlike 43 other states, Texas prohibits online voter registration. The state also caps voter registration eligibility until an applicant turns 17 years and 10 months old—prohibiting the pre-registration at age 16 allowed elsewhere—and offers no automatic registration through driver’s license bureaus. Furthermore, state regulations require volunteer deputy registrars to pass county-administered certification exams before handling forms.

While the Texas Secretary of State’s Office allows individuals to generate registration forms online, applicants must still print, sign, and mail physical copies. For high schoolers without home printers or regular access to postal services, that paper trail often brings the process to an abrupt halt.

An Unenforced Mandate

The legal mechanism to solve this issue already exists. Under a 1983 state statute, high school principals—or their designated staff members—must serve as official deputy voter registrars and distribute registration forms to age-eligible students.

In practice, oversight remains rare.

Heather Eichling, founder and director of the San Antonio-area nonpartisan initiative Youth Do Vote, estimates that only about 30% of high schools in Bexar County currently comply with the 1983 statute, characterizing it as an unfunded and largely unenforced rule.

To help bridge the gap, Youth Do Vote is deploying teams to 10 campuses across seven school districts before the Oct. 5 deadline. The organization registered 2,700 students across 28 high schools during the 2025–26 academic year.

“Districts and school leaders simply need the institutional will to make campus voter registration happen—the statutory authority is already behind them,” Eichling said. “Every piece of data demonstrates that when people build the habit of voting early, they remain engaged voters for life.”