(San Antonio) My CIRCLE colleagues have produced a user-friendly online tool called Reaching All Youth Strengthens Engagement (RAYSE). It provides information about youth voters (and potential voters) in every county of the US. It’s meant to help organizations and movements allocate their resources effectively. It’s designed to inform a range of agendas. You could use it to identify counties where an additional youth voter is most likely to affect the outcome of the 2018 election, or where highly disadvantaged youth are most prevalent, or to learn more about the counties where you already know you want to work.

In early 2016, CIRCLE launched the Youth Electoral Significance Index (YESI), which ranked states and congressional districts that showed high levels of youth engagement (and factors that correlate with engagement) and that were expected to be politically competitive in 2016. The RAYSE Index complements YESI. Whereas the YESI ranked states and congressional districts by the potential impact of youth on voting results in 2016, RAYSE looks at counties, provides data on forms of civic engagement beyond voting, and allows the user to choose priorities instead of providing a single ranking.