Nine minutes before lunch on Sept. 25, senior Grace Mannix heard an announcement asking all juniors and seniors to report to the gym. As she joined other students on the bleachers and listened to a presentation by Tim Bobanic, the Brevard County supervisor of elections, Mannix realized there was more to voting than electing the president.
“I’m not registered to vote, but after that speech, I’m definitely going to pre-register,” Mannix said. “I never realized how [many] other things there are to vote for. I really just thought about the presidential election, but after his presentation, I realized there’s so much more to be voting on, [like] the school board [and] what’s going to be affecting my community. I just thought his speech was very moving, and it makes me want to be pre-registered. So as soon as I turn 18, in the next election I’ll be able to vote for something.”
Bobanic, who has conducted 36 elections since 2009, said the goal of the “Your Vote is Your Voice” assembly is to increase youth voter turnout. With over a decade of experience coding ballots behind the scenes, he said he is a “numbers guy.”
“I started looking at turnout, and I saw all of my reports break down turnout by age, and I saw the 18 to 25 year olds were the worst returners,” Bobanic said. “I wanted to do something to motivate students to come out and exercise the right to vote and really make their voices heard, because if you don’t vote, you can’t complain.”
According to USAFacts, 18- to 24-year-olds had the lowest voter turnout of any age group in the 2024 presidential election, with a turnout lower than 50%. However, a report from The Civics Center reported that 75% of registered 18- to 24-year-olds voted in every presidential election from 2004 to 2020.
Senior Bailey Kidd, who pre-registered to vote while getting her driver’s license, said that people her age do not discuss voting “at all, especially not in high school.” However, she said that Bobanic’s presentation surprised her.
“The amount of voter turnout of our age group is so surprising to me,” Kidd said. “I would figure that our [age group] would have much higher than around 20% [turnout], because I feel like Gen Z, especially, is very passionate about so many issues. The fact that our voter turnout is so low is really shocking to me.”
Bobanic said he wants to host the assembly at every high school in the county, and West Shore was the first school on his tour.
“We’ve always done voter registration drives at the schools, but we wanted to really step it up,” Bobanic said. “Last year, we came up with the idea in March, and the reason was [that] we wanted to get the kids registered in time for the August election before summer vacation. You have to be registered 29 days before an election to be able to participate. Now, what we butted up against in March was testing, and we struggled to get into school, so we wanted to start much earlier this year. So I went before the school board, made the request and it’s been an amazing partnership.”
School Board Member Katye Campbell also spoke at the event. She said that next year, the ballot will ask the public to renew a half-cent sales tax, “which helps us fix the air conditioning in the building,” and renew the millage, “which helps us pay our teachers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers more.”
Additionally, three school board seats are up for election next year, one of which will be Campbell’s.
“The supervisor’s office is the one that’s done all the work,” Campbell said. “We just gave them the ‘A-okay, here’s our schools and reach out to them.’ So, between now and towards the early spring, I think they’ve got scheduled to try to get to every single one of our high schools. I just got an email the other day from Kimberly, [Bobanic’s] assistant, saying we got Mel High scheduled and Bayside scheduled. So, hopefully we’ll get into all the high schools this year.
In Florida, students can pre-register to vote when they turn 16. While sophomore Amabel Tartaro has two years until she can vote, she said she is doubtful that her peers will make use of their voting rights.
“I actually don’t have hope that a lot of people are going to vote in this generation,” Tartaro said. “I’m just saying that based on how my peers speak about politics. A lot of them don’t seem to care as much. There is a minority that cares a lot, but I feel like it’s really either like ‘I don’t care at all,’ or ‘I care a bunch.’ And of course, things will change. But still, I’ve just noticed that a lot of people just feel the need to not pay attention to anything political at all.”
Bobanic said that he would encourage every student to register and vote, and visit votebrevard.gov to get started.
“I would say there is always something on the ballot that affects your everyday life, whether it’s a candidate, whether it’s a referendum, [or] a constitutional amendment on the ballot,” Bobanic said. “There’s something that you should research and cast your vote on to make your voice heard.”
