The American Democracy Project (ADP) is a network of more than 250 state colleges and universities focused on public higher education's role in preparing the next generation of engaged citizens for our democracy. The goal of the American Democracy Project is to produce college and university graduates who are equipped with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and experiences they need to be informed, engaged members of their communities.
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Faith leaders unite to mobilize and protect voters
Oct 24, 2024
Becvar is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and executive director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Many people are feeling the weight of the presidential election, often carrying concerns about violence at their polling place. This election will be a test of our democracy and our faith, which is why early planning and even more robust strategic engagement by the faith community has been critical.
One organization that has been working to address this concern since 2020 is Faiths United to Save Democracy. The coalition kicked off its work in 2020 amid the big push of the racial reckoning movement. At first, FUSD focused primarily on anti-Black vote suppression, and the lawyers committee for civil rights (dubbed “Lawyers and Collars”) started following 400 voting rights suppression initiatives aimed at suppressing a wider swath of voters.
Since then, FUSD has expanded its scope to identify 10 states where it had trusted leaders with strong and diverse local networks. The coalition strategically focused on Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. These state networks needed to have the capacity to ensure proper support for replicating their national nonpartisan, multiracial, multi-faith, and multigeneration voter protection campaign. The current campaign runs through Inauguration Day 2025, encompassing voter education, voting action and getting those votes counted.
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This campaign has targeted low-income families, distressed communities, and communities with high disparities according to the GINI index.
They have held seven training sessions for “poll chaplains” (ordained leaders) and “peacekeepers” (lay leaders) since July, with a total of 1,400-1,500 leaders attending each of these remote sessions. Participants have come from all over the country for training conducted in conjunction with the Election Sabotage Response Network.
These poll chaplains and peacekeepers will tend to the polls and souls of America in November. FUSD state leaders and interfaith community members representing thousands of congregations are ready to stand against any politician or system making it more difficult for any person to exercise their sacred right to vote, particularly low-income, Black, brown, elderly or disabled voters.
With disinformation and violence threatened at the polls in many states, the multifaith, multiracial, intergenerational poll chaplains and peacekeepers will help provide a calming and moral presence to de-escalate potential conflict and support vulnerable voters, such as the elderly, disabled, youth and other disenfranchised citizens.
Historically, Black Americans have been pushed away by voter intimidation, violence and oppression, but FUSD believes that ignoring voter apathy will allow the enemy of constitutional democracy to win. This is why the leaders are prepared to do the hard work and also talk to Gen Z and unregistered voters across the country and go wherever we are needed to encourage voter participation.
In a press release. FUSD stated that the strength of the organization comes from an ability to be there for each other and knit people together from different places, races and faiths into a bigger tapestry. In order for the U.S. to be a country of freedom and justice for all, FUSD says, we cannot let politicians divide us or pit us against each other based on what someone looks like or how much money they have.
“We must pick leaders who honor the Imago Dei — the image of God in all people — and treat others as they want to be treated. We must pick leaders who are committed to building a more just and inclusive multiracial democracy. Together, we can make this country a place where freedom and community are for everyone, no exceptions,” said Rev. Jim Wallis.
As Americans, we value our freedoms. We value the freedom to earn a good living and care for our families. We value the freedom to cast our votes and elect our leaders. We can choose more freedom this election season, and we have the power to choose to have more human rights that will support us all, young and old. Together we must ensure that everyone in our communities can and actually will exercise their sacred freedom to vote and decide the future of this country in November.
Explore the work of this coalition further by calling 1-866-OUR-VOTE or visiting them at https://866ourvote.org/
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Musk vs. Swift: Will Elon’s payments to voters shift the balance?
Oct 24, 2024
Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
In September, The Fulcrum shared a new study that offers insights into voter perceptions of political candidates and similar evaluations of celebrities — a study that takes a different approach than the usual favorable/unfavorable polling questions.
This unique study applies insights from the subconscious, human social perception process known as the Stereotype Content Model, or more commonly, the Warmth & Competence model. This widely published and validated framework was developed by social psychologists explains how our perceptions of others trigger predictable emotions and behaviors toward individuals and social groups.
In short, perceptions of warmth reflect friendliness or trustworthiness, and while perceptions of competence reflect capabilities or effectiveness. We admire and are attracted to others we view to be both warm and competent, while we reject and avoid those perceived to be cold and incompetent.
This research is particularly relevant as we approach Nov. 5 as more and more celebrities are endorsing and even actively campaigning for the candidate of their choice.
Two of the most famous celebrities, Taylor Swift and Elon Musk, were evaluated in the 2024 US Celebrity & Politician Warmth & Competence Study to determine the degree to which their endorsements would be likely to influence their admirers. The study found that Swift is somewhat more admired than Musk (46 percent vs. 39 percent), but Swifties are somewhat less likely to be influenced by celebrity endorsements than Musk admirers (21 percent vs. 25 percent).
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Comparing this to other well-known celebrities: Barack Obama was admired by 51 percent of respondents and, among them, 25 percent agree that celebrity endorsements have a significant impact on their views and behavior. In contrast, the figures for George W. Bush and Beyonce Knowles are 41 percent and 37 percent in admiration, while 26 percent and 30 percent of those respondents agree they are significantly influenced by endorsements, respectively.
What the study did not account for was the unprecedented and perhaps illegal action that Musk took last week in Harrisburg, Pa., when he announced he is willing to pay voters:
“We want to try to get over a million, maybe 2 million voters in the battleground states to sign the petition in support of the First and Second Amendment. … We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election.”
Pennsylvania Governor, Josh Shapiro (D) has already stated that law enforcement should “take a look at” these proposed voter payments.
“Musk obviously has a right to be able to express his views. He’s made it very, very clear that he supports Donald Trump. I don’t. Obviously we have a difference of opinion,” Shapiro said, adding: “I don’t deny him that, right, but when you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions.”
These payment seemed to be “clearly illegal” based on federal law 52 U.S.C. 10307(c), which says that any individual who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
While this new study shows how social perceptions have shifted the American electorate from voting based on personal interests to voting based on their perceived inclusion on a social “team,” it certainly did not account for payments by celebrities to voters. What the study did find is that this type of partisan-ideological sorting played out in recent decades and has led to the feeling that every aspect of the social world can be divided into supporting one of those teams.
Social science researchers have established a deep body of research on the effects of polarization on partisanship. It is clear that though any individual's choice to vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in November may be about their policies, it is undoubtedly also tied to their sense of identity — to a much higher degree than it would have been decades ago. Similarly, it is reasonable to consider whether the well-established indicators of trust and capability have become more influential to voters than policy positions or social issues.
This shift poses a thought-provoking question: As we move toward the 2024 election, could public figures outside of traditional politics start to wield even more significant influence on voter sentiment? And more importantly, what does it say about the electorate when celebrities are perceived as more competent leaders than those running for the highest office in the land?
While these questions are certainly important, the answer as to the influence of Swift vs. Musk very well might come down to whether Swift decides to follow up their endorsement not with potentially illegal payments to voters but instead with more traditional support as Musk did on Oct. 10, in which he held a solo event in support of Trump in the Philadelphia suburbs, in the crucial state of Pennsylvania. The reaction to that was mixed; when asking the audience to register and vote for Trump he was met with shouts from the audience of "Why?" Of course the reaction might have been different at the time if he had offered to pay those in the audience
To date Swift has not campaigned for Harris and hasn’t publicly addressed the election since her endorsement in September. Whether she decides to do so could be crucial to the election, especially since Swift is from Reading, Pennsylvania. Although she hasn’t announced her intentions, the opportunity still exists since she’ll be on stage several times before the election and doing so without the offer of paying voters would offer voters a stark contrast to what appears to be the illegal use of celebrity status by Musk.
However, the Democratic Party is not waiting, with the launch of a Swift-themed “I Will Vote” campaign across Florida and other battleground states. This campaign has Snapchat filters and advertisements directing Swifties and others to IWillVote.com, which provides information about voting, registration and other questions young people may have about the election.
The jury is still out on whether Taylor Swift will be the biggest election influencer of them all.
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Saying an election is stolen or rigged, without good reason, hurts America.
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Why we must avoid temptations to call lost elections ‘rigged’
Oct 24, 2024
Elwood works with Builders, a nonpartisan organization aimed at overcoming toxic polarization, and is the author of “Defusing American Anger.”
Shortly before the 2020 election, a survey found that many Americans — including many Republicans and Democrats — were prepared to view the election as “rigged” if their candidate lost. One of the survey creators said the results were, “in a word, extreme.”
The stability of a democratic republic like ours depends on widespread trust in and acceptance of election results. Without this, things start to fall apart. Political dysfunction can give way to chaos, constitutional crises and even significant political violence.
We must see that when we call elections “illegitimate” without very good reasons, we hurt America.
Whether you’re more upset about Donald Trump claiming the 2020 election was stolen or by Democrats calling Trump’s 2016 win illegitimate due to Russian influence, I hope you’re willing to consider, for America’s sake, how we can be drawn to distrusting elections for weak reasons.
Both political sides have been pulled into the winner-loser gap, which refers to the tendency of those whose group loses an election to have more election distrust than the winners. Regardless of which political group you think is more unreasonable in this regard, it’s possible to see that this dynamic is present for people across the political spectrum.
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In “Election Meltdown,” Richard Hasen examines instances of Trump making false and misleading statements promoting the idea the 2020 election was stolen. He also examines examples on the left, such as Hillary Clinton blaming her 2016 loss in Wisconsin on Republicans passing voter ID legislation, despite a lack of clear evidence to support that claim.
When we dislike and fear the “other side,” it’s easy to believe they’re up to something dishonest, even when we don’t have good evidence for that. Among people who said they thought the 2020 election was stolen, a 2023 study found about half of them weren’t fully convinced of that. Our partisan hostility and suspicion can lead to expressions of election distrust even in the absence of certainty.
Some people may distrust an election because they think bad and biased actors have influenced the vote. For example, some Republicans will cite biased liberal-leaning media among reasons they see the 2020 election as illegitimate.
Leading up to the 2016 election, there were many fake pro-Trump news sites, domestic and foreign, that many thought unfairly shifted the election. Republicans presumably would dislike it if Democrats used such instances as reasons to call Trump’s 2016 win illegitimate. The truth is it’s always possible for people to see biased media as unfairly influencing views, making that a weak reason to call an election “rigged.”
Some people saw Trump’s 2016 win as illegitimate due to thinking Russia influenced the election — but there’s no strong evidence Russia succeeded at that. Various analysts have made the case that Russia’s efforts were minor compared to other political activity. Also, a 2023 study found no evidence that exposure to the Russian campaign had led to “changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.”
Foreign powers who meddle in our elections are trying to foster discord and chaos. We should avoid playing into our enemies’ hands by too readily calling elections illegitimate.
In any given election, there’ll be various mistakes, technical issues and biased decisions — and even some genuine fraud. This means it’s easy for people to seize on irregularities as reasons to distrust an election’s result.
In “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections,” Mollie Hemingway argued the 2020 election was stolen. A Wall Street Journal review criticized her for conflating minor and expected election Iissues with purposeful fraud.
One reason some Democrats have viewed elections as illegitimate is because they think Republicans have suppressed votes in undemocratic ways. One prominent example of this was the 2018 Georgia governor’s race, where Democrats saw Republicans making it harder to vote as causing a Democratic loss.
In “Why Democrats Should Not Call the Georgia Governor’s Race ‘Stolen’,” Hasen argued that a political group that loses an election should accept the results even when they think an election was not conducted perfectly, and that it’s important to distinguish between legal actions and illegal activity (like fraud).
In America, there’s a tension between the demand for easy voting and concerns about election integrity. We can see how this tension makes it easy for changes to election policy to produce distrust and frustration. But calling an election “illegitimate” without very strong reasons raises the partisan temperature and harms the democratic institutions that make America tick.
If you believe a recent election was illegitimate, this short piece almost certainly didn’t address all your concerns. I do hope that this helps you see the importance of thinking more about our tendency to distrust elections. If we care about this country, we must work against overly pessimistic views — both in ourselves and among our political peers.
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Election experts prep Georgia media for covering contested elections
Oct 24, 2024
Kickols is the communications manager for the Election Reformers Network.
Several prominent election law authorities and administration experts discussed potential election challenges in Georgia during an online event launching the Election Overtime Project, which supports journalists in Georgia and other swing states covering close and contested elections.
Key features of the project, run by the Election Reformers Network, include the curated, user-friendly election procedure briefs available to all Georgia reporters and voters.
The event was the fourth in a series of election media briefings. It featured Don Balfour, former Georgia state senator and Republican co-leader of the Georgia Democracy Resilience Network; Kathleen Hamill, senior advisor and member of the American Bar Association’s Georgia Democracy Task Force; ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson; and ERN Vice President Heather Balas. Their collective expertise provided invaluable insights into Georgia’s challenges and solutions for the upcoming elections.
Hamill outlined why courts are appropriately equipped to handle election contests.
“The judicial process offers advantages over a county election board for conducting any type of thorough investigations,” Hamill said. “Courts have to examine evidence, subpoena relevant documents, compel testimony under oath by witnesses and apply rigorous legal standards in evaluating claims of irregularity or fraud. County election officials are not prepared to do the rigorous legal work that the courts are statutorily responsible for.”
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Johnson agreed, emphasizing the need for “election culture” to catch up to electoral laws and processes.
“We now have a clearly established right of election contestants to challenge results in court, and you could almost say we wouldn’t quite be a democracy without it,” said Johnson. “And what we need is for public culture about elections to catch up. We haven’t had many elections where the courts have been prominent, but elections are a rule of law system, and we need to think about them that way.”
Balfour, who served in the Legislature for 22 years, highlighted the challenges the now politicized Georgia State Election Board presents for the 2024 election.
“The big question in Georgia is because of the State Election Board becoming very political,” Balfour said. “One member is appointed by the Republican Party, one by the Democrat Party, one by the governor, lieutenant governor, and one by the speaker, all of whom are Republicans. So, you’ve got four Republicans and one Democrat. Three of those Republicans are making rules that go beyond state law, according to the Republican attorney general of Georgia. So, this has become controversial and is in court. I think there are eight different court cases on this very issue.”
Hamill also clarified misunderstandings about “non-discretional authority” and the roles of county election boards, another challenge for Georgia voters this cycle.
“County election boards do not have discretion when it comes to certifying results,” Hamill said. “That is a mandatory duty. It is a fixed obligation established in settled law in Georgia and elsewhere across the country. Election superintendents have a fixed and mandatory obligation to certify election results. The election code speaks very clearly to that.”
The Election Overtime Project is a comprehensive set of resources that includes litigation monitoring, guides for reporting on election transparency, verification processes and judicial procedures. It also offers an extensive speakers bureau to connect journalists with expert commentary for local and national coverage. The program focuses on Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“What I want for Georgia — and the rest of the nation — is clear and accurate election information by the press and on social media, so that voters have confidence in the accuracy of the electoral outcomes, no matter who wins. This is especially critical in races that are close or contested,” said Balas. “I also want state and county election board members, as well as election officials, to do their jobs without partisan influence and in ways that are transparent.”
“Who won an election is not a subjective question. It’s a matter of fact and a matter of law, and it’s important to help voters understand that,” Johnson said.
Materials under this program have been produced with the generous support of The Carter Center, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation and the Bridge Alliance, which publishes The Fulcrum.
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