Covid-19 could have an impact on the youth vote in the Presidential election in the USA.

Among other things, the younger generations are less likely to vote than the older ones, and Covid-19 might worsen the situation.

Professor Elizabeth Matto directs the Center for Youth Political Participation (CYPP) at Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics. She spoke to journalists during the US Foreign Press Center's Elections 2020 Virtual Reporting Tour.

"One of the many concerns with COVID-19 and this public health emergency has been how that would affect youth voter turnout rates, when young adults were poised to make a significant impact at the polls. As we were preparing for our election one of our concerns was that, with the pandemic, voting practices have changed around the country."

"In the State of New Jersey, the way in which we hold our election is very different this year because of the global health crisis. So, for example, in New Jersey, almost all voting is going to be done by mail. Ballots, if you're an active registered voter, a ballot has been sent to you. You complete the ballot and you either put it in the mail or hand deliver it in a drop box. So, just the fact that processes and practices have changed can be disruptive to voter turnout, especially if you don't have much of a voting history."

The other real challenge is college students around the country.

"Many college students around the country are not on their college campuses." In New Jersey, at Rutgers University, almost all students are learning remotely for example. "There are very few students who are actually on campus. So, that means that we can't reach out to them directly. We can't have voter registration drives on campus. We can't have, get out the vote drives on campus. Typically, we actually even had shuttles and would drive students to their polling locations or have parties to get students excited about an election. So, they're not getting that in-person mobilization that they typically would get. So, again, there was real concern going into this fall that the gains we had made in voter turnout rates might be in jeopardy."

In addition, she said, young adults don't have a really strong track record of voting by mail. In the United States, a number of states do vote by mail extensively. There are some states, like the States of Utah and Washington, that hold their elections entirely by mail. "Students don't have that as a habit, so that was a concern also."

What's been interesting or incredibly encouraging though, she said, is that nonprofit organizations have really worked to support, encourage and help students understand the changes to the election, and vote on election day.

She said that due to the pandemic, there's much more early voting taking place, more vote by mail taking place.

"We know that more than 3 million young adults have already voted in 2020, have already cast their ballots."

"The number of young adults who've already voted in Texas was really, really strong. Almost 500,000 students have already cast their ballots in Texas."

"What's exciting is that we are seeing already that young adults are making use of vote by mail. It doesn't look so far that they've been dissuaded or prevented from voting."