Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day — and for the first time, more than 135 Minnesota high schools are participating in an initiative to get 16- and 17-year-old students to pre-register to vote.

The election is less than 49 days away, and voter registration deadlines are quickly approaching in many U.S. states and territories. In Minnesota, you can register in person until Election Day, but online and mail-in registration deadlines end on October 15. However, new laws enacted over the past two years have made it easier than ever to vote. Minnesota residents are automatically registered to vote when they get or renew their driver’s license, and 16- to 17-year-olds can now pre-register to vote.

“It puts them in the pipeline,” Michael Wall, youth voter outreach specialist in the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, told MPR News. He said students who pre-register are more aware of the political situation around them and have higher voter turnout when they are actually eligible to vote, which is what statewide trends suggest.

The power of pre-registration is what motivates 17-year-old Markus Wessman, executive director of the Youth Voter Project and president of Wayzata High School’s student council, to get his peers involved in politics. He founded the all-student-led, nonpartisan group last December after Minnesota’s Democracy for the People Act passed.

“I’ve always been interested in politics and at some point I decided that I couldn’t just stand by and watch this election pass me by,” Wessman told MPR News.

Wall planned Tuesday’s event along with the Minnesota DFL, Republican Party of Minnesota, Legal Marijuana Now Party and the League of Women Voters of Minnesota. In two 30-minute sessions, students and teachers will explain why it’s important to vote, Secretary of State Steve Simon will give a brief speech and Wall will demystify the pre-registration process while helping students sign up. Schools that were unable to attend the hybrid event can register and access the recordings. Wessman is one of the speakers.

Civic engagement doesn’t begin and end with voting, and youth who can’t vote in the 2024 general election can still make a political impact, Wessman asserted. Pre-registering, volunteering on a campaign and signing up to be a student poll worker are all good options.

“The fourth option is you start your own project, like I did. There are so many opportunities out there,” Wessman said. And if you’re passionate about something that maybe isn’t covered on a national level, if you want to start something, you just have to do it.”

Wessman and Wall both said they received a positive response when encouraging students to pre-register, and Wall hoped that would hold true at Tuesday’s event.

“It’s not mandatory and it shouldn’t be,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to take the fear out of part of the process if the school helps with that or offers opportunities for civic engagement.”

Regardless of your age, learn more about pre-registration and automatic voter registration on the Minnesota Secretary of State website.