HEADCOUNTING

Without yet knowing the results of the election (fingernail-biting is the new vaping), we have one result already in: the tremendously successful efforts of HeadCount.

In 2024 the 20-year-old organization has set a new record by registering over 450,000 young voters.

In partnership with 100+ multigenerational artists, HeadCount was again at the forefront of using music to boost civic engagement among young people.

We talked to Executive Director Lucille Wenegieme.

Let’s start with an overview of the history of HeadCount and the work that you’ve done over the last two decades.

We were really started by music fans. First, it was just organically at shows and festivals with friends talking to friends, and it just kept building from there.

We've gotten artist partners across all kinds of genres and generations, from Ariana Grande and Harry Styles to Green Day to Dead and Company. HeadCount works with talented people across the board to ensure that young people have everything they need to vote.

We turn music fans into voters. And that’s expanded over the last 20 years into other kinds of entertainment, including sports fans. We do youth voter registration at concerts and music festivals, but we’re at community events as well. And we have a robust digital effort that we call our Good to Vote campaign.

Congratulations on 450,000 new registered voters. Now that the election is almost over, did you get the sense that young people felt this election was somehow different?

We always follow where young people are, and we hear them talk about their ability to actualize the American dream. Every election seems like it’s the election of our lifetime. But this one…

Tell me a little about yourself. You just became executive director last year. How did you get involved in HeadCount?

I'm a millennial. It's funny—I never had to talk so much about how old I am until I started leading a youth organization. But I'm 33 years old, so I like to describe myself as being young enough to know what's going on and old enough to be dangerous.

I was introduced to HeadCount in the aftermath of the pandemic, when the policy landscape about what people had access to for voting after COVID had changed so much. So in doing that civic work, I got to work really closely with HeadCount, and I really loved how they were doing things in the new civic space. I always think about, “How do I make civic engagement important enough or interesting enough to make it onto someone's to-do list, with the eight million things that people have to do on any given day?"

That’s a smart way of looking at it because most people, on average, spend only four minutes a week thinking about politics.

Yes, and even when they're thinking about things that might be politics-related, they wouldn't think of them as political. So I always thought HeadCount had a really great perspective on how to get politics on people's radar. If young people are at a concert to see an artist that they really love and they also get registered to vote, they never forget that. And for a lot of young people, their first interaction with democracy is a positive association with HeadCount and their favorite artists.

What stands out to you that really worked with an artist?

There's a great example that comes to mind: Harry Styles, because we did so many things as part of that single campaign with him in 2022. We did a digital push and an in-person piece. That’s always the Holy Grail for us, when an artist is willing to really use their personal platform to activate their fans. It was so great just to see their reaction. This is a group of fans who are really dedicated to him.

And their leaning in and having conversations with us at the HeadCount table actually changed the makeup of our organization, because we got so many new volunteers from those shows. We know that in 2022, which was a midterm year, about 60% of the young people who participated in a campaign like the one we did with Harry ended up voting.