Your Assignment: Engage Overlooked Communities

We Must Care Enough to Engage More Deeply

It feels like a long time ago, but I so enjoyed knocking on doors last Monday in North Avondale—one of Cincinnati’s great neighborhoods and a Democratic stronghold.

WHAT WE CAN DO: FIRST OF MANY

But one thing haunted me.

The precisely calculated targets I was given largely led me to single-family homes, one or two adults, with perhaps a voting-age child or two.

And perhaps an elderly parent.

I had great conversations, and those I talked to confirmed that they indeed had a plan to vote.

But I went to these homes, enjoying the conversations, the list I was given had me skipping over large apartment buildings up and down the very same streets.

Each building: Dozens of people. Many doors, units and floors.

Yet not one person on my list to talk to.

One of those buildings had a large courtyard where kids were playing, and parents were observing and chatting.

An entire community….Buzzing.

But not one person on my list to talk to.

That’s right…weeks and days before elections, volunteers like me are instructed to walk right by entire communities.

And are likely instructed to walk right by them the entire election.

Whole communities. Not engaged. Not on our lists.

Because they’re not registered at all. Because they move frequently. Or because they vote too rarely.

And as a result, they’re largely not part of our democracy.

And our present-day machinery of democracy tells us to walk right past.

For the most part, no one takes ownership for having sustained conversations with these overlooked communities.

If you’re like me, you do the math as you walk, frustrated—because there are far more people in these communities than the houses I was tasked to go to.

In my book, “Saving Democracy,” I even offer a diagram of this walk:

And the diagram sums up the problem.

And across an entire state, the math adds up very quickly.

It works like this:

• there are 8.7 million voting-age citizens in Ohio

• about 5.6 million citizens voted in Ohio

• that’s 3.1 million who didn’t vote!

3.1 million!

And how much did Democrats lose by?

• Kamala Harris lost by about 600,000 votes

• Sherrod Brown lost by just over 200,000 votes

• Issue One lost by about 400,000 votes

There’s your math problem right there. We are losing by far, far less than the number of people who don’t participate.

On Election Day, here is how that math problem played out in cities within Ohio (and keep in mind that the turnout numbers below are percentages of the registered voters):

Those low numbers represent all those communities we walk right past and don’t engage…at any scale. Or in a sustained way.

We accept entire communities not being involved in democracy as our default….as opposed to working relentlessly (well before the election cycle, and always) to bring them into democracy. Meaningfully.

I offer solutions to this in “Saving Democracy.”

They’re pretty common sense, actually.

They involve a simple step: all of us taking ownership of this problem. Individuals and groups and organizations already serving these communities in other ways adding to their core mission that we will also engage these citizens in democracy itself.

Most importantly, it involves every person and every organization dedicating their entire footprint in this world to the cause of engaging Americans in democracy. And it involves true precinct organizing—all year, all the time, door to door.

If everyone engaged their footprint in this way, the scale would add up quickly. If every mayor….every non-profit….every school or university… took ownership, it would change the country.

(For more on how to do this, you can go HERE.

For a LOT more on how to do this, grab a copy of my book, “Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual.” I’ve lowered the e-book price to just $3.99. You can get it HERE.)

But as I undertake my travels, I find that this type of work occurs far too rarely on any type of systematic basis…or at any scale.

THAT needs to change.

If we REALLY, TRULY cared about the long-term health of our democracy, we would make sure to do better. Because the math is so damn clear.

Not in the fall of 2026. Or 2028.

But in December of 2024! And every week and month that follows.

So, here’s our collective assignment: commit yourself to doing this as part of your New Year resolutions.

If you’re in any type of organization, commit that you will all do it.

If you are involved in the Democratic Party in any way, take ownership of your precinct. OWN IT! Get to know all those overlooked communities in 2025.

This isn’t rocket science.

It’s math.

It’s common sense.

And it’s caring enough about these communities and a more fully participatory democracy that folks and organizations add this work to their core mission.

News flash! People are about to be horrified by all that Trump does. The sooner we engage them, the better.