We are now witnessing what Governors can do when they want to use their power to protect democracy. And how much folks are rallying around that energetic fight.
But that is just the beginning!
With a recent report showing, alarmingly, that Democratic voter registration has plummeted by 2.1 million voters in recent years, we need public officials to bring the same fire and energy to another key front in the battle for democracy: voter registration.
(By the way, the decline in registration and turnout started before 2020—picking up, of course, right around the time that Shelby County and other court decisions opened the door to a new wave of aggressive voter suppression:
But it turns out, thousands of pro-democracy officials are perfectly positioned to do something about it. We just need to bring the fight—more than ever!
As I explain above, if Republicans are using their political power in statehouses to suppress votes and purge voters (which they are, intensely), local officials in power in the very places where their constituents are disproportionally dropping from the rolls need to use their political power to lift their constituents back into democracy.
This isn’t about partisanship. It’s about democracy and representation.
And it’s a matter of will and commitment, more than anything else.
And it’s not happening enough of that moment.
History is very clear that such efforts can work—the opening push of the Voting Rights Act was not a lawsuit, but a massive federal registration drive in the communities of the South that had been most victimized by suppression.
So if we did this before, we can do it again. We just need to care more about protecting democracy as the other side does about suppressing it.
I write about this in a chapter of “Saving Democracy.”
Here’s an excerpt:
City governments across the nation should be utilizing every element of their public-facing footprints to re-engage constituents and get them back into the political process. Using their recreation centers, health clinics, senior centers, youth centers, fire stations, libraries, park buildings, or any other service they provide, all cities can and should play this role. And because of the nature of their footprints—both physical and the services they provide—cities are ideally situated to participate in every element of the cycle of engagement described above.
And I’m not just talking about leaving voter registration papers in a corner of a desk somewhere. I’m talking about staff trained to bring up the issue of voting as people interact with them, then helping them sign on. Example:
“Sir, thanks for checking in. We see that this is the first time you’ve come to this center. Are you registered to vote? Are you new to the community? If you moved, you’ll need to re-register. We can show you how to register right over here.”
Or:
“Do you have a state driver’s license? You don’t? Well, you need a state ID to vote. We can help you apply to get one.”
That simple conversation needs to happen again and again. It largely doesn’t. For no good reason.
Counties provide other critical services to communities across this country. These include a wide variety of social services helping families and folks in need; criminal justice services; court services; probation offices; public defender work; and so on. These all involve massive interfaces with the public—often the very people who are no longer part of the political world. All of these could be put to work engaging constituents. All of them should be.
In 2021, the Biden Administration issued an Executive Order that offers a great model for what every local government could also do. First, the order requires “each agency to submit. . . a strategic plan outlining the ways that the agency can promote nonpartisan voter registration and voter participation.” Every city and county could ask the same of its departments and agencies. As part of the effort, the Administration then outlined examples of voter engagement work various agencies had already begun: the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and others are all using their vast footprints in creative and effective ways, engaging veterans, newly naturalized Americans, public transit riders, job-seekers, and others. Take a look at the details to get ideas on how governments and agencies in your community could do the same.32
Beyond the locations where they directly serve people, another large part of city and county footprints are the countless organizations they fund to serve constituents. Again, many of these organizations—nonprofits, public housing organizations, public transportation, daycare centers, health organizations— serve daily, and in huge numbers, the very people who are being disenfranchised. Counties and cities should encourage—or better yet, mandate—that these organizations use their footprints to reengage Americans left out of the political conversation.
Finally, cities, counties and other local governments are constantly communicating with residents on a wide variety of matters, another substantial part of their footprints. Those communications can readily be put to work for democracy. In Atlanta, for example, the mayor mandated that communications from water bills to the city’s 311 information hotline provide information on registering to vote.33
Is your city doing this work right now? Your county? Are they fighting back?
Ask them.
If the answer is no, then be sure they start. And have them formalize it through city or county policy staff training, updating intake processes, tracking data on progress, and more.
Then celebrate the hell out of it.
Think about it—mayors often engage in friendly competition about their sports teams. How about a competition among cities over who can register the most voters? And who has the highest overall turnout?
Scaling Up, Again: Coalitions
Now, go one step further:
Build coalitions of groups and institutions. For democracy. In every community.
Community and regional leaders should do on an ongoing basis what many already do when the US Census effort comes around every decade. Counties and cities organize herculean communal efforts—often through committee structures, involving the very organizations I mention above—to ensure that their respective populations are fully and accurately counted. They focus especially on segments of the population who are hardest to reach. They do this for many reasons, including that an accurate population count ensures communities get the funding they are entitled to for services they provide.
If funding inspires a robust community-wide Census count effort every ten years, a fully inclusive democracy should serve as an equally compelling inspiration for an “all hands on deck” coalition for democracy. Bring a wide range of governmental and community-serving organizations together, take stock in all their footprints, and agree upon roles they can all play to engage constituents and lift democracy. Meet regularly, measure outcomes and learn from one another. Always grow.
This is especially needed in states like Ohio, Texas, and others, where government officials at the state level are working hard to purge the very voters who live in these communities.
The civic leaders of these targeted communities’ officials should feel an obligation—a duty—to fight back on behalf of those they serve and represent. And if they combine forces to lift their constituents back into democracy, they will build one hell of a sustained, pro-democracy, pro-voter coalition that doesn’t exist today in most places.
Share this with any local elected officials you know so we can get to work!
