Bethesda high school senior fought for 17-year-olds’ suffrage

The Bethesda teenager wanted to vote in the upcoming primary election, under a decades-old state practice allowing 17-year-old citizens who turned 18 before the next general election to vote in the primary.

‘‘If we get to vote in the general election, we should also have a say in [which candidates move on to] the general election,” she said.

Boltuck is a senior at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda — a ‘‘pretty political” school filled with students who want their opinions heard when it comes to government, she said.

‘‘A lot of my friends are in the same situation as I am,” Boltuck said, referring to her rejected voter registration. ‘‘My friends were just as surprised as I was.”

After appealing all the way to the state’s Board of Elections with the help of her father Richard Boltuck, she regained the right last month — along with thousands of Maryland teens — to vote for a 2008 presidential candidate.

In her testimony Dec. 20, Sarah Boltuck asked the board to ‘‘undertake a concerted, targeted campaign” to reach eligible 17-year-old voters who may think they are barred from the polls.

She told the board an ‘‘estimated 50,000 young citizens” — a figure her father calculated using U.S. Census Bureau data — possible voters could be disenfranchised.

That day, the board restored the rule allowing 17-year-olds to vote in primaries — the same rule it reversed a year ago under the advice of the state’s attorney’s office.

‘‘We’re in celebratory mode,” her father Richard Boltuck said last week.

Downcounty high school students’ opinions on the vote have been split. Some believed the state infringed on democracy by not letting 17-year-olds choose candidates for their political party’s general election ballot. Others believed that voters at age 17 would be too influenced by their parents’ views, and many questioned whether the 17-year-old voting bloc would actually show up at the polls.

‘‘All my friends are really politically active, and they are definitely really excited to vote in the presidential election and the congressional election, but I feel like it’s just a really small portion of the youth population,” said Nancy Dong, 17, a senior at Winston Churchill High School and president of the school’s Young Democrats club. ‘‘Most people are politically apathetic.”

Since losing, then regaining, her suffrage, Sarah Boltuck said her awareness of the political universe has grown. Now she is paying closer attention to the political hopefuls vying for her vote this February.

‘‘I want to know exactly who the candidates are,” she said.

Boltuck and her father are hoping the state will launch a full-scale voter registration campaign to get younger voters involved. The deadline to register to vote in February’s presidential and congressional primary is Jan. 22.