Over the past decade, towns across Maryland have lowered their voting age to 16. This was to increase the youth impact in the community and start life-long voting habits. But the turnout hasn’t been what was expected. Last year, in 2024, Greenbelt had only two voters under the age of 18 turn up to the polls.
In efforts to increase awareness, Greenbelt local and student of Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Emerson Gary spearheaded a candidate forum at the Greenbelt Firehouse. When asked why teens aren’t voting she said “People don’t really know about it. I didn’t even know about it. The only reason I knew is because my mom is an election judge. She told me and I was like why aren’t people voting?” She has dedicated her Girl Scout Gold Award to raising awareness, she says “I want to get the word out on teen voting.”
Maryland is one of the only states to have teen voting. According to the National Youth Rights Association, seven Maryland towns have implemented teen voting in local elections (Greenbelt, Hyattsville, Riverdale Park, Takoma Park, Cheverly, Mount Rainier, and Chevy Chase) with Brattlesboro, Vermont being the only other town outside of Maryland to fully do so as well.
Micah Watson, the mayor of Cheverly, said that the idea of instating teen voting “came from residents, who brought it to a Council Member, and that Council Member brought it up to the entire Council.” Maryland law gives almost complete authority to towns to run their own elections. “[W]e felt that voting in Town elections is a good way for teenagers to ‘get used to’ voting and also to feel like they have a stake or a voice in how their Town is run.”
In May of this year, Cheverly held its own elections with the newly instated teen vote. Mayor Watson noted that “a few dozen teenagers voted, for the first time ever.” Looking at the statistics, these dozens of votes didn’t have any significant effect on the results, but it got teens to care about their community. In his own words, Mayor Watson said “[I]t’s hard to say if voting in 2025 ‘changed’ the kind of engaged residents that Cheverly teens will become, but we do know that more teens were talking about the 2025 election than any previous election.”
Teen voting can benefit the community, but only if teens know about it. The Greenbelt Candidate Forum is Thursday, October 9th and the election is November 4th. The youth vote impacted Cheverly and it can make an impact on Greenbelt too.