A total of 691 new voters, ages 16 and older, were registered during the 2021-2022 High School Voter Registration Challenge put on by Lee Elections, which included nine high schools in the School District of Lee County.

The winners of the challenge were Lehigh Senior High School, first place, with 346 new registrations, Cape Coral High School, second place, with 126 new registrations and East Lee County High School, third place, with 106 new registrations. The winning schools received a trophy they can display, as well as highlighted on Lee Elections social media outlets.

Community Education Services Director Juan Diez said Lehigh Senior High School registered 22 percent of their students who are 16 years old or older, while Cape Coral High School registered 11 percent and East Lee County registered 9 percent of students 16 and older.

Diez said the three winning schools allowed Lee Elections to go into the school to provide classroom and auditorium presentations between September and December 2021.

“We have better reception from the students and better numbers when going to the schools in person,” he said. “When we are there in the school we finish the presentation and hand out applications and help them complete them. Most of them do it. When teachers are doing it with the students, I don’t think it is very fruitful. They give the students the option. When we are there (there is) a little more pressure from the students to actually fill out the application.”

This year schools taking part included Lehigh Senior High School, Cape Coral High School, East Lee County High School, Dunbar High School, Cypress Lake High School, Estero High School, Ida Baker High School, North Fort Myers Academy for the Arts and Island Coast High School.

“We invited the 15 high schools again, but only nine participated this year. Usually we have 10 to 12, but have never had all 15 high schools,” Diez said.

In addition to the 691 new registrations, the challenge also included 152 students who updated their information from when they first participated in the challenge.

Diez said the goal is to provide students with information of how elections work in Florida, as well as get them registered, so once they turn 18 they can vote in an election.

“We answer questions they have about doubts that they have about the system, things they hear with the news, or with their parents in the household,” he said about misconception. “We are there to answer those questions.”

Once students, 16 or 17 years old, fill out the voter registration information they are put into the Lee Elections system, which remains completely private while they are minors.

“Once they turn 18 the system makes their information public for us and they are officially voters,” Diez said. “Even if they turn 18 the day of the election, they can vote because they are pre-registered.”

Once the student turns 18, they will receive their voter card.

For a voter to vote, they have to be pre-registered 29 days before an election. Diez said this was a problem in the 2020 election as many individuals waited until the last minute to register, which collapsed the system.

“Some people did not manage to register and they voted a provisional ballot that did not count,” he said.

Diez said every year after the school year begins, they send invitations to the 15 district high schools to participate in the challenge. This year the challenge took place from Sept. 7, 2021 to Feb. 25, 2022.

With COVID the challenge has changed somewhat, as Lee Elections employees were not allowed to visit the schools after Christmas break.

“We offered all principals and teachers the option to do Zoom presentations to schedule a date and time and we dropped off voter registration applications,” Diez said, adding that they also pick up the completed applications from the school.

When done in person, they walk students through a PowerPoint presentation and then how to fill out their voter application. The presentation has been done in classrooms, the auditorium, media centers, as well as cafeteria voter registration drives.

Without visitation in the schools, they provided principals and teachers with the PowerPoint presentation, so they can use it however they saw fit.

“We gave them the option to allow the students to register online and then they would send us a list and we would verify it in our voting system if they actually registered,” he said. “Because of COVID we gave them more options to be able to register their students.”

During the 2020-2021 challenge, the new voter registration was not very good, as they had no access to schools at all.

Diez said they offered Zoom presentations, but teachers already had a lot on their plate. The 2019-2020 challenge, however did well, as it ended right when COVID started.