Between book bans and increased school shootings around the country, teenage students from the Garden State have taken a stand by forming their own political campaign — Vote16.

Vote16 seeks to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in municipal/school board elections and be able to voice the issues that affect them such as school curiculum, discrimination and gun violence, according to the Vote16 website.

And the young activists have a growing number of Democratic support.

On Oct. 5, Gov. Phil Murphy and other state officials, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, attended the teen activist conference “Vote 16 Youth Summit” hosted by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice held at Rutgers University Newark campus and voiced their support behind the bill introduced to Legislature.

Their promise is to move it through the Legislature this year, but, according to a report, the proposed statewide bill sent in May to both the Senate and State Assembly has not been scheduled for committee hearings.

But the task faces pushback from both Republican and Democratic parties.

Supporters like Murphy agree that voting at a young age can build lifelong voting habits and champions youth enfranchisement laws. But critics have suggested that it is a way to make kids political pawns and some even considered the idea to allow teens to vote in other elections becomes a slippery slope, the report stated.

According to research from Public Religion Research Institute, 51% of teens ages 13-17 do not identify as a Democrat or Republican, but most share their parents’ party affiliation.

However, the Vote16 campaign outlines a few factors many16-year-olds already face that directly impact them: working, paying taxes, being primary caregivers, running businesses and contributing financially to their households. Some already engage in social activism like advocating for climate change, women’s and LGBTQ rights, immigration, gun control and Black Lives Matter.

If approved, the bill would permit 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in elections for local school boards across New Jersey. The state would be the first to extend voting rights to people younger than 18.

“Once I sign this legislation into law, each one of you will be able to say that you played a part in making New Jersey the first state in the entire nation to secure voting rights for Americans as young as 16-year-olds,” Gov. Murphy said at the summit. “It will be an historic accomplishment that began right here, in Newark.”

In the beginnig of the year, Newark City Council passed a law allowing teens 16 and up to vote in school board races in January. Students will begin to vote in January of 2025.

After an unusually slow start, the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is now in full blast, with multiple hurricanes and tropical storms popping up during the past few weeks — including the monstrous Hurricane Milton, which rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to a scary, powerful Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours.

Amid the flurry of tropical activity and serious threats to people and buildings in the southeastern U.S. region, one noticeable trend has developed. This year’s storms are not making their way up north to the New Jersey region.

Our area isn’t even getting the leftover rain and wind that commonly drifts in our direction after big storms make landfall along the U.S. Gulf coast or the southern Atlantic.

The reason is fairly simple, according to Ken Elliott, a meteorologist for WeatherWorks, a private forecasting company based in New Jersey.

“High pressure has just been blocking everything,” Elliott said.

Elliott said large domes of high pressure have been larger and farther south than they normally are in the late summer and early fall, and those systems of circulating air have acted as a giant shield to block the southern storms or their remnants from pushing north.

“That basically deflected all the moisture south,” he noted.

Elliott said the same general pattern has been repeating itself during recent weeks.

“The first in a series of storms — Francine — went up to the Gulf Coast northound and it basically just ran into one of those highs. That rain just fell apart when it got too far inland,” the forecaster said.

“Try as they might, these hurricanes just can’t get into that,” Elliott added. “The highs just reinforce themselves one after the other, and they (the tropical systems) run into dry air.”

During recent weeks, as hurricane season was ramping up, large high pressure systems have been circulating over Canada and dropping south, sometimes into the Ohio Valley and more recently over Missouri.

“Hurricanes go into the path of least resistance a lot of times, and they will try to find a way to escape,” Elliott said. “Hurricanes look for a weakness in the high. There’s really been no weakness in these highs.”

Elliott noted that Hurricane Milton will be staying far south of New Jersey only partly because of the strong highs near our region of the country. The other big factor with Milton is its steering winds, he said.

Milton formed as a tropical storm in the western Gulf of Mexico, and steering winds are pushing the now-major hurricane across the eastern Gulf on a path that’s aiming directly at the west-central coast of Florida. And the steering winds are expected to push the storm fairly quickly out into the open Atlantic after it makes landfall Wednesday night.

That track is different, Elliott said, from the tropical systems that more commonly move up from the southern Gulf or southern Atlantic and push their way up to the north.

Staying dry in New Jersey

With all the high pressure systems in place near New Jersey, the Garden State has had long stretches of dry and pleasant weather, except for some occasional spotty rain.

Last month turned out to be one of the driest Septembers ever recorded in New Jersey, with many areas of the state getting less than an inch of rain — and some areas reporting less than a half-inch — the entire month, according to data from the National Weather Service.

The dry trend has continued during the first eight days of October, with only a trace of rain reported in the Newark area, the Trenton area and the Atlantic City area.

When will New Jersey see any substantial rain? Forecasters say they don’t see any major storms brewing right now, and there’s only a 30% to 40% chance that a cold front from the west might bring a little bit of rain to our region Sunday night or Monday morning.

Current weather radar

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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com or on X at @LensReality.