The Youth Vote focuses on the voting age and other issues of concern to new and upcoming voters in their teens and early twenties.

Our presenters are seven award-winning Easthampton High School seniors who will present arguments for and against lowering the voting age to 16, and other current topics chosen by the speakers. All were members of the team that won We The People, an elite national competition on the U.S. Constitution held virtually last April by The Center for Civic Education. Their team mentor Kelley Brown is a government and history teacher at Easthampton High School where she teaches a course called We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution.

The presentations by Sadie Bromberg, Ellie Chappuis, Cylie Kirejczyk, Alice Wanamaker, Lucia Rea, Mackenzie Bates and Liam Burke are followed by Q & A. Moderator Kathleen Banks Nutter, Ph.D., provides historical context.

This is the last in a series of scholar-led public discussions about voting in America. Forbes Library received support for the series through “The Vote: A Statewide Conversation About Voting Rights,” a special initiative of Mass Humanities that includes organizations around the state.

This program is funded in part by Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.