Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Automatic voter registration grows rolls a lot, study finds

Automatic registration laws have significantly increased the number of people signed up to vote, a new study finds.

Fifteen states and Washington, D.C., have enacted laws in the past five years under which anyone eligible to vote is registered when they interact with a government agency, such as a department of motor vehicles, unless those people ask to opt out.


The liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which supports easier ballot access, studied the eight jurisdictions where the laws have been on the books long enough to generate significant data. They concluded the voter rolls had surged significantly in each place above what the increase would have been without automatic voter registration. The biggest gain was in Georgia, where the ranks of registered voters soared from 6 million to almost 7 million between 2014 and last fall — what the Brennan Center viewed as a 94 percent increase above what would have been expected without the new law.

The other gains:

  • Vermont: 60 percent
  • Rhode Island: 47 percent
  • Alaska: 34 percent
  • California: 27 percent
  • Colorado: 16 percent
  • Oregon: 16 percent
  • Washington, D.C.: 9 percent

Automatic voter registration is one of a handful of voting rights proposals in H.R. 1, which the Democratic House passed along party lines but the Republican-majority Senate does not plan to debate.

Read More

The Evolving Social Contract: From Common Good to Contemporary Practice

An illustration of hands putting together a puzzle.

Getty Images, cienpies

The Evolving Social Contract: From Common Good to Contemporary Practice

The concept of the common good in American society has undergone a remarkable transformation since the nation's founding. What began as a clear, if contested, vision of collective welfare has splintered into something far more complex and individualistic. This shift reflects changing times and a fundamental reimagining of what we owe each other as citizens and human beings.

The nation’s progenitors wrestled with this very question. They drew heavily from Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who saw the social contract as a sacred covenant between citizens and their government. But they also pulled from deeper wells—the Puritan concept of the covenant community, the classical Republican tradition of civic virtue, and the Christian ideal of serving one's neighbor. These threads wove into something uniquely American: a vision of the common good that balances individual liberty with collective responsibility.

Keep ReadingShow less
We’ve Collectively Created the Federal Education Collapse

Students in a classroom.

Getty Images, Maskot

We’ve Collectively Created the Federal Education Collapse

“If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men.” - W.E.B. Du Bois

The current state of public education has many confused, anxious, and even fearful. Depending on the day, I feel any combination of the above, among other less-than-ideal adjectives. Simply, the future is uncertain. Schools are simultaneously cutting budgets and trying to remain relevant, all during an increasingly tense political climate.

Keep ReadingShow less
Recent Republican policies and proposals limiting legal immigration and legal immigrants' benefits and rights

An oversized gavel surrounded by people.

Getty Images, J Studios

Recent Republican policies and proposals limiting legal immigration and legal immigrants' benefits and rights

In a recent post we quoted a journalist describing the Republican Party as anti-immigration. Many of our readers wrote back angrily to say that the Republican party is only opposed to immigrants who are present illegally.

But that's not true. And we're not shy of telling it like it is.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Importance of Respecting Court Orders
brown wooden chess piece on brown book

The Importance of Respecting Court Orders

The most important question in American politics today is whether Donald Trump will respect court orders. Judges have repeatedly ruled against his administration.

But will he listen?

Keep ReadingShow less