9 months ago
42
by Aaron Mendelson
Center for Public Integrity
Santiago Mayer moved to Southern California from Mexico City in 2017, around the time President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” was sparking nationwide protests. “I kept wanting to talk about it with people in my classes and with my friends,” Mayer said recently. “And I realized that many people either didn't know what was happening, or just really didn't have the tools to talk about it.”
Mayer formed the nonprofit Voters of Tomorrow in 2019 to boost Generation Z engagement in politics and at the polls. It has been a busy four years for the organization since. Gen Z, the generation born after 1996, has dealt with voting during a pandemic, the rise of election denialism and recent efforts in statehouses around the country to make it more difficult for young people, especially college students, to cast a ballot.
Members of the generation first became eligible to vote in 2015. The first presidential election where a large number of Gen Z voters cast ballots was 2020.
Amid all that, Mayer, 21, studied at California State University, Long Beach, earning a political science degree this spring. The Center for Public Integrity spoke with Mayer as he was preparing a post-graduation move to Washington, D.C., to continue his work with Voters of Tomorrow.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
