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Book Talk with David Toscano

Organizer: Civic Genius

Location: Virtual


While Americans are transfixed by politics in Washington, David Toscano wants to shift our gaze closer to home. In Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives, Toscano explores how states are working around the impasse in Washington and how their work is increasingly shaping society. Toscano served 14 years in the Virginia House of Delegates, including seven years as Democratic leader, and spent 12 years on the Charlottesville city council, including a stint as mayor. Now, he's showing us how state governments are taking action on major issues – and often impacting our lives more than federal lawmakers.

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Signs in a walkway, including one that reads "Early Voting Site" with an arrow pointing the way

A sign guides people to an early voting location in Raleigh, N,C., on Oct. 24.

Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

It’s Vote Early Day!

Bennett is executive director of Vote Early Day, a nonpartisan effort promoting a civic holiday dedicated to empowering Americans to vote early.

It’s Vote Early Day! Today, thousands of nonprofits, businesses, campus groups, election leaders and other voting enthusiasts are hosting celebrations encouraging Americans to vote early in every corner of the country.

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ballot envelope

An Arizona vote-by-mail ballot from the 2020 election

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Republicans target fine print of voting by mail in key states

Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

In the first installment of this two-part series, I focused on the many efforts that failed to roll back the popular vote-by-mail options to pre-pandemic levels and the GOP effort to disqualify more ballots. Today we focus on the states in the crosshairs.

The litigation targeting mailed-out ballots has evolved since the 2020 and 2022 general elections, when Trump-supporting Republicans lost many federal and statewide contests, and their allies took broad swipes at vote-by-mail programs. Take Arizona, for example, whose current mail voting regime has been in place since 1991, and where 80 percent of its statewide electorate cast mail ballots in 2020’s presidential election.

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Avoid the political hobgoblins

Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."

“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” (Emerson)

What exactly is a hobgoblin? In Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the mischievous sprite Puck, who creates havoc in the forest, is a hobgoblin. Dobby, the interfering house elf in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series, is also a hobgoblin.

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