For senior Juliana Burke, registering to vote for the March Washington primary and turning her vote into the nearest mail-in ballot box was simple. However, the research and decision for her first-ever election was much more complicated.
“I looked into their policies; none of them really spoke to me. A lot of them seemed like I would have to be settling if I were to vote for them as president,” Burke said. “So it was harder to decide what my vote was because that took work.”
Data from the United States Census Bureau shows that in the 2020 presidential election, 51.4% of registered young adults aged 18 to 24 voted. This was the highest youth turnout ever seen in the history of national elections. Four years later, the attitudes among some UPrep students around Washington’s 2024 primary and presidential elections reflect a different level of interest.
“I really wish we were gonna get a candidate like Andrew Yang and Cory Booker, but that isn’t really an option now,” sophomore Lucas Keppler said. “I’m not a big fan of either of the candidates. Trump is a disaster, and Biden is way too old for this.”
According to the Federal Elections Commission, the last time Washington state voted for a Republican candidate in a presidential election was in 1984 for Ronald Reagan.

Washington’s uninterrupted pattern of being a blue state has led Keppler and others, such as senior Aidan Schofield, to believe that their votes don’t matter in the broad scheme of things.
“Seattle is so overwhelmingly blue along with other cities, that the state is just going to be a blue state regardless of my personal preference,” Schofield said. “I feel like if I were in a swing state that was going to go either way, my vote would actually matter.”
Many UPrep students share Schofield’s view: In a survey of 26 UPrep seniors, 36% said that their vote does not matter in Washington state. Location isn’t the only thing impacting students’ choices; in the same survey, 64% said they are frustrated with the lack of choice.
Some students may have low morale, but others, like senior Pascale Carlson, express how important they believe voting still is.
“I think it’s part of our civic duty, and I think it’s also important to get across the political agenda that you want to promote,” Carlson said. “People are always complaining about politics, and that’s the way to change it.”

Senior Ellie Assadi shares a similar opinion on the impact of voting.
“I think young people have an important part in the election because it’s the rest of their lives that are going to be impacted,” Assadi said. “I still think it’s important to show our voice. You never know what can happen, and even if we know Washington will go blue, what makes that happen is people voting. So if everybody just stops voting, it doesn’t work out the same way.”
Upper school history teacher Patrick Grant echoes Assadi’s sentiment, emphasizing the value that voting has on the coming presidential election.
I think that the outcome of an election is never certain. It’s probable that Biden would win an election in Washington State in 2024. But it’s not certain,” Grant said. “You guys have a lot more power than you realize.”