Texas Youth Voter Project is turning new voters into lifelong voters

When Gema Gomez was a senior at Moisés E. Molina High School, she was already heavily involved in whatever she could be.

She ran cross country, joined cheer and became cheer captain. She was the class president her senior year.

Still, she wanted to do more.

That’s when she came across Texas Youth Voters Project (TYVP), a Dallas-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering young Texans through nonpartisan voter registration, civic education and community engagement. The organization aims to ensure that “every eligible young Texan has the opportunity to become a lifelong participant in democracy.”

“I wanted to get more involved in politics and the voting process, and wanted to get more informed as a teen here in Oak Cliff,” she says.

Dallas attorney and politician Domingo Garcia, started the project and currently serves as president of TYVP.

“What happened was Domingo Garcia was looking to really have an organization that would speak to the Latino community,” says Hannah Kessler, executive director of TYVP. “At the end of the day, we serve whoever wants to register to vote. We will register them to vote. But we also want to be intentional in our messaging, in where we show up, that we are giving people an opportunity who might be overlooked.”

Kessler says in her past work with other voter organizations, there wasn’t the capacity to register Spanish-speaking individuals, so it’s really important to TYVP to have most of their Volunteer Deputy Registrars able to speak Spanish.

She met with League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) leaders at the beginning of the project with the intention to reach the Latino community.

Another integral part of reaching voters is the strong education component. TYVP works with Dallas ISD and other districts to reach students on campus. Their goal is to register 5,000 Dallas ISD students within the project’s first five years, with a target to reach 20% of the senior class at each high school they serve.

TYVP has brought voter registration efforts to 26 Dallas ISD campuses, including Molina where Gomez served as a student advocate. She was also involved in the student awareness campaign, helping to ensure her peers knew the information needed to vote, such as their last four digits of their social security number or their Texas driver’s license number.

TYVP also attends community events, like the recent Party at the Polls with Somos Tejas.

Gomez was involved in the Puro Oak Cliff: Del Barrio al Ballot Box, a forum held in May that brought candidates to Oak Cliff youth to help them become more educated voters.

“That was an event I promoted on social media,” she says. “So that was a huge role I got to play, being the face of the project and getting the word more out there for teens on my social media.”

“Some of these young folks are super intentional about their lives. They’re looking for any opportunity to get involved,” Kessler says.

On the other hand, Hector Amaya, deputy director of TYVP, says there is also a disconnect.

“They don’t know how the voting process ties into their life, right?” he says. “So when I’m out, whether I’m out in the community or out in schools. I try to explain to them in simple terms how it connects to their life and how it can make a difference. Because when I was growing up, I went to schools in Garland ISD. I don’t recall ever having anybody to talk (to) about voting, let alone registering to vote.”

Gomez shares that sentiment. She says that when she started as a senior in high school, she wasn’t informed about the process.

“I did feel really little. Looking at my peers now, I don’t want them to feel that way,” she says. “I want them to know that they have a voice and they have a mind of their own that they need to put into use, especially here in Oak Cliff. It’s so, so important to see that representation because it’s not something you see here as much.”

Amaya says TYVP’s goal is to make lifelong voters out of these newly minted voters.

“We definitely feel that we will reach the goal of doubling what the typical turnout is, simply for all the work that we’ll put in weeks ahead of time, and then just the excitement of the actual event,” Kessler says. “So that’s a pretty immediate goal. But the goal with us is very similar to a lot of us that do this work, which is to give people access and to turn people out to vote.”