In 2012, Fair Elections Center (formerly Fair Elections Legal Network) launched Campus Vote Project (CVP) to focus and expand its work around student voting issues. CVP works with universities, community colleges, faculty, students and election officials to reduce barriers to student voting. Our goal is to help campuses institutionalize reforms that empower students with the information they need to register and vote.
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A former Miss Texas and Texas House candidate explains why judges, DAs, school boards and city councils shape daily life, and why your vote counts for more there.
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Why Texas Voters Should Pay Attention to Local Elections
Oct 30, 2026
I grew up in a small Texas town, and for most of my life I had one plan: leave. I didn’t hate it. I just assumed the interesting stuff happened somewhere else.
Then I became Miss Texas and spent a year driving all over this state. I met people in towns smaller than mine who ran food pantries out of church basements and coached Little League with no budget. They showed up for each other in ways that never made the news. That year changed my mind about Texas.
I started seeing what it could be, not just what it was.
People love to say all eyes are on Texas. Lately, that feels truer than ever. This election season has been loud, expensive, and mostly happening on our phones. Every scroll brings another ad, another clip, another person telling me everything is on the line.
And somewhere in all that noise, I think we lost the part most people care about—local races.
I don’t mean it as a civic-duty, eat-your-vegetables thing. I mean it selfishly, and I think that’s fine. People care about their own lives first. Their rent, their kids’ school, the road they take to work. On a plane, they tell you to put your own oxygen mask on before helping anyone else. Voting can work the same way.
The Senate and governor’s races matter. I’m not pretending they don’t. But keep scrolling down your ballot, past the names you’ve seen on TV, and beyond. Texas Supreme Court justices. District judges. Your district attorney. Then, in the spring, school board and city council. These are the people deciding who gets charged, how your custody case goes, what your kids learn, and whether your street ever gets fixed. If you aren’t sure where to start, local newspapers, nonpartisan voter guides, and your county’s website often have simple breakdowns about who is running and what these offices do. It is easier than it seems to find out what matters in your community.
Those races get a fraction of the attention and turnout. Which means your vote goes a lot further there.
I know how this might sound coming from me. I ran for the Texas House at 26 and lost. About $2 million went into that race, and some days it felt like it all went down the drain. You’d think that would make me jaded.
Some days it did.
But it also taught me something. Almost nobody I met at their door wanted to talk about whatever national fight was trending that week. They wanted to talk about property taxes and schools. Local stuff. Their stuff.
There’s a trend online right now about 2016 nostalgia. People are posting about how the world felt right before that election, when things seemed mostly okay, and the future didn’t feel so scary. They’re calling it millennial optimism.
I get it. I miss that feeling too. But I don’t think we get it back by scrolling through old photos. I think we get a little of it back by paying attention to what’s close to home, the stuff we can actually watch change.
So this year I’m voting the whole ballot, top to bottom. And when the spring elections come around, I’m showing up for those too.
Selfishly. For my own block. And if enough of us do that, it starts to look a lot like caring about everyone else’s block. If you’re voting this year, tell a friend or a neighbor your plan. Invite them to go with you, or just share when you went and how it went. A simple conversation can remind us that we’re in this together.
Averie Bishop is a Democracy Architects Fellow and a lawyer, former Miss Texas, and Democracy Architects Council Fellow. She ran for the Texas State Legislature at 26 and now talks local politics, pop culture, and life in Dallas with nearly a million followers online.
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Social Security faces automatic cuts in 2032 and Medicare in 2033. New polling suggests that gives Democrats a powerful election issue. Here’s the case.
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Will the Debt Crisis Engineered by Republicans Succeed in Cutting Social Security and Medicare?
Oct 30, 2026
Overview
The Republican Party’s long game to reduce administrative state entitlement spending centers on creating a debt crisis to provide an excuse for limiting such spending. It may soon pay off. That strategy involved a quarter-century of engineered tax cuts responsible for the stunning rise in sovereign U.S. debt, threatening an eventual economic crisis.
Social Security benefits are projected under current law to be automatically cut in 2032. And Medicare benefits are projected to be automatically cut in 2033. Congressional Republicans intend for those automatic cuts to occur, opposing new taxes to prevent cuts. And they are using the ballooning national debt as an excuse to also oppose new general revenue spending to prevent benefit cuts.
Few voters are aware of these looming automatic benefit cuts. But they are a compelling opportunity for Democrats to dramatize their support for current benefit levels of Social Security and Medicare.
Hobbling the Administrative State
Five Republican tax cuts for elites since 2002 supplemented by tax evasion and eroded tax enforcement caused Federal tax revenues to decline by 2.4% of GDP during 2002-2026 compared to 1995-2001. Budget deficits jumped. That missing revenue is why Republicans are borrowing 29 cents of every $1 the government spends – ballooning the national debt year after year.
To build public support for cutting entitlements, billionaires and Republicans are gaslighting voters, misrepresenting the source of that debt. Instead of tax cuts, Medicare and Medicaid are demonized in the Republican bluebook Project 2025 as “principal drivers” of the national debt: “our deficit problem is a Medicare and Medicaid problem.”
The Looming Entitlement Crisis
Social Security and Medicare are the largest entitlement programs, making them juicy targets for Republican elites. And opportunity beckons. If insolvent, current law requires an automatic 24% annual benefit reduction for the 75 million Social Security participants beginning in 2032 - an $18,400 annual reduction for a typical couple. And it requires a 12% cut in annual Medicare (hospital) reimbursements beginning in 2033 - raising out-of-pocket costs for 75 million Medicare patients.
These automatic reductions are catnip for Congressional Republicans. They can cut entitlements by simply sitting on their hands, refusing to raise taxes or spending to replenish the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. To obfuscate the cuts they actually make, Congressional Republicans mislabel their benefit reductions as “rooting out waste.”
At gravest risk is Medicare because Party elites since Reagan have been ideologically opposed to “socialized” medicine. For some time, Republican budgets have whittled down Medicare while gradually replacing it with for-profit private health insurers (Medicare Advantage) that deny care and provide lower quality care at a higher cost.
For Social Security, Republicans propose raising the retirement age to 69 from 67 which would reduce lifetime benefits 8%. Yet, 78% of respondents to a June 2026 Quinnipiac survey specifically opposed raising the retirement age to 70. Moreover, their proposed changes are too meager in any event to avoid trust fund insolvency and benefit cuts for Social Security and Medicare.
An Ace-in-the-Hole
That Republican stratagem is risky because Congressional Democrats have an ace-in-the-hole.
A question buried deep in a September 2026 survey of Senate battleground states found that support for reforms to sustain current Social Security benefits jumped from 49% to 91% once voters learn about the pending automatic cuts. In addition, Medicare is also extremely popular, with 85% of Americans opposing any benefit cuts.
Entitlement Reforms
These data suggest that advocating reforms to sustain these two entitlements is a promising major Democratic Party theme.
For Social Security, Democrats embrace The Roosevelt Institute and Biden administration’s proposed reforms. First, despite virtually all real income growth in recent decades flowing upward, the social security payroll-tax exempts income from wages above $184,500. That cap could be eliminated, a move supported by 85% of respondents surveyed by the American Association of Retired Persons. Second, the payroll tax could be expanded to tap non-wage income from sources favored by the wealthy that are presently exempt – large inheritances, corporate profits and capital gains.
Democrats also support reforms establishing a solid fiscal foundation for Medicare. As proposed by President Biden, for instance, the net investment income tax and Medicare payroll tax could be increased on incomes above $400,000. And a host of Republican tax cuts for high earners and corporations in 2017 and 2025 can be reversed. Other Democratic reform proposals would reduce the drain on the Medicare program by the unreliable Medicare Advantage program managed by private insurance firms illegally “upcoding.” They habitually over-charge Medicare for medical procedures by misclassifying enrollee ailments as sicker than they are. Finally, since Medicare reimburses health providers at about half of current private provider prices, a gradual expansion of Medicare (perhaps lowering the eligibility age to 62) would be a powerful weapon to lower health care costs nationwide.
All these Democratic entitlement reforms would be popular and obviate the need for benefit cuts.
Stewards of Social Security and Medicare
Democrats and Republicans are offering different solutions to the Social Security and Medicare debt crises. Partisanship aside, their solutions reflect how each Party perceives the role of government, the Administrative State and entitlement spending.
At the moment, surveys suggest that voters support Democratic plans to prevent the benefit cuts favored by Republicans. A major reason is that health care has emerged as the leading 2026 domestic concern, with 68% of independent voters worried about its cost. Some 35% of these swing voters trust Democrats to control health care costs compared to just 15% who trust Republicans. They also trust Democrats to manage the future of Medicare by a margin of 37% - 15%. And some 44% of these pivotal voters say health costs will have a “major impact” on which party’s candidate they support.
Independents also trust Democrats more than Republicans by an 11 percentage point margin to handle Social Security concerns.
Since FDR, Democrats have been stewards of Social Security and Medicare. Reflecting that responsibility, they should make preventing automatic benefit cuts an election issue.
George Tyler is a former deputy assistant treasury secretary and World Bank official. He is the author of books including Billionaire Democracy and What Went Wrong.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and U.S. President Donald Trump followed by Chinese first lady Peng Liyuan and U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrive for a state dinner in the East Room of the White House on September 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.
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When Leaders Disagree, Ceremony Plays an Important Role
Oct 30, 2026
When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived at the White House on 24 September, the U.S. welcomed him with an elaborate display of ceremony. The Army Herald Trumpets sounded a fanfare, the Chinese and American national anthems were played, and the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps performed. A military review was followed by a flyover involving a B-2 bomber and four F-22 fighter jets, according to the White House. It was an extraordinary production for two countries that still disagree on some of the most important issues in international politics.
Talks between President Donald Trump and Xi touched on trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. The visit was marked by warm words and some signs of cooperation, but it did not erase the fundamental competition between the United States and China. So why was all this ceremony staged? It is tempting to dismiss political pomp as mere window dressing: an expensive historical relic surrounding the serious business taking place behind closed doors. As a music historian, however, I think this misunderstands what ceremony does. Ceremony can become particularly valuable when words alone are not enough.
Long before governments could issue statements instantly, political authority communicated through sound and movement. Trumpets announced arrivals and bells marked public events. Processions established hierarchies, while anthems and military bands allowed states to demonstrate their relationships even before anyone issued a communiqué.
Today, a president can address millions of people in seconds, while citizens can follow diplomatic negotiations almost in real time. And yet, when another head of state arrives, we still raise flags, invite musicians and perform carefully rehearsed rituals. The purpose of ceremony is not necessarily to demonstrate agreement. Sometimes its purpose is to make disagreement manageable.
Music is especially useful here because it can express recognition without requiring ideological consensus. Performing another country's national anthem does not imply approval of its government or policies. It signifies recognition of the state and the people represented by its leader. The same is true of many diplomatic rituals. A handshake does not resolve a trade dispute, and a state dinner does not ease tensions over Taiwan. These gestures instead create a temporary framework within which disagreements can take place.
Much of our public political culture is designed to highlight differences. Diplomacy sometimes has to do something more complex: acknowledge deep disagreements while preserving a relationship capable of weathering them. Ceremony offers a language that makes this possible. Of course, there is another side to political spectacle. Ritual can glorify power. Military ceremony deliberately demonstrates strength, and the B-2 bomber that flew over the White House was hardly a neutral prop.
Nor should carefully orchestrated hospitality be confused with diplomatic success. Governments can stage grand ceremonies while achieving very little, and pomp can divert attention from difficult political realities. Ceremony cannot replace successful diplomacy. But it does not lose its meaning simply because it does not lead to the signing of a treaty.
Consider the mixture of signals contained in the White House welcome. The Chinese national anthem was played alongside the American one. Xi was received with the honours accorded to a visiting head of state. At the same time, the ceremony demonstrated U.S. military might with extraordinary clarity. Hospitality and power were not contradictory messages. They were conveyed simultaneously.
This is something ritual does exceptionally well. Music historians encounter this throughout history: music has accompanied coronations, funerals and diplomatic events because it can communicate meaning without requiring everyone present to interpret that meaning in precisely the same way.
Relations between states, like relations between people, depend on more than the transmission of information. They also depend on recognition. A ceremony says: you have arrived; we recognise the significance of this meeting; for the duration of this encounter, we have agreed to occupy the same political space. None of this requires friendship.
In fact, ceremony may be most revealing precisely when friendship is absent. If two governments already agree, ritual reinforces an existing relationship. When they are deeply divided, the ritual itself can become part of the mechanism that allows them to remain in the same room.
Outside the ceremonial framework of the Trump-Xi meeting lay unresolved questions about trade, artificial intelligence and Taiwan. Inside it were trumpets, flags and carefully rehearsed movements. One did not preclude the other. The ceremony created a temporary language through which two rival powers could acknowledge one another without pretending that their differences had disappeared.
In an era when compromise is often seen as weakness and disagreement as a reason to stop listening, there may be something worth noting in this old diplomatic tradition. Sometimes the first achievement isn't agreement. It’s the fact that dialogue remains possible.
Stacy Jarvis is a Manchester-based music historian, culture writer and violinist. She writes about classical music, cultural history and the intersections between music, politics and society, with work appearing in The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Conversation and other UK and international publications. She is also a radio contributor and is completing a PhD in Musicology at the University of Birmingham.
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Americans Voting in an Election
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Voting Is Not Just a Privilege It Is Every Citizens’ Responsibility
Oct 29, 2026
Despite the consistent determinations that US elections are secure across the country and there is virtually no evidence of non-citizens voting, in reports released as recently as September 2026; President Trump has doubled down on his claims that voter fraud is a major problem in America and on October 20th, he announced a new $25 Million Fraud Whistleblower program to be administered by the Department of Justice.
This announcement achieves a variety of the president’s goals: (i) It intentionally perpetuates the misinformation, that voter fraud is a serious problem in the United States; (ii) it undermines the trust in the voting systems, as well as in the states administering the elections; (iii) it fosters distrust amongst neighbors, who are more likely to suspect people of color and report them for a reward. This has the concomitant benefit of (iv) intimidating people who are in fear of going to the polls and (v) It gives the illusion that the federal government is prepared to give away more free money (along with the Tariff rebate checks, the Trump Accounts, the DOGE dividend, the direct payments for healthcare and the $5,000 for supporting GOP midterm candidates.)
The President’s efforts to sow confusion surrounding the election, are consistent with the GOP’s decisions to close more than 1,688 different polling sites across 13 states between the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision by the U.S. Supreme Court and 2018. After Shelby, the states were no longer required to notify voters of changes of polling place relocations.
In addition, since 2024, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, 22 states have enacted 38 restrictive voting laws which are in effect at the midterms, 12 states have enacted stricter voter ID laws or invalidated previously acceptable IDs for voting.
When one considers the impact of the gerrymandering wars, it is a wonder that anyone who is not a dedicated follower or a political devotee, will know where to cast their ballot and in advance of seeing their ballot, who they will be voting for.
The President in March, issued a sweeping executive order intended to federalize the administration of U.S. Elections. It would require people to prove their citizenship at registration, change the certification standards of voting machines, prohibit the counting of ballots postmarked before the election day but received thereafter. It would have also put DOGE and the Department of Homeland Security, in charge of monitoring the voter rolls and other available records. The courts blocked or suspended most of the president’s election initiatives, but this combined with the January 6th 2021violent assault on the Congress seeking to overturn the 2020 election, provide grim reminders of the extent to which the president will go to achieve his goal of retaining power.
In addition to his other efforts, Reuters reports as recently as October 14th, that it is highly probable that the President could:
- Allege election fraud or that voting machines have been compromised.
- Pressure election officials to change or cancel results.
- Seize ballots or manipulate voting machines.
- Have federal election monitors interfere with voting.
- Deploy ICE officers to provide an intimidating presence near polling sites.
- Deploy US troops to the polling sites.
- Declare a national emergency over voting fraud.
- Initiate federal investigations and charges against election officials.
- The GOP might refuse to acknowledge the election results (as some tried on 6 Jan 2021) and refuse to swear in the new members of congress.
These concerns are amplified, when combined with fact, that the GOP’s largest donors this election cycle, who have contributed $9.8 billion the through the 25th of September, (we note that the numbers have gotten fuzzier since the secret super PACs and Crypto contributors) have also been provided ample opportunities to evade election commission oversight.
So, what can you do.
- BY ALL MEANS VOTE
- If you have a mail in ballot return it as soon as possible.
- Several states have drop boxes to receive absentee ballots. If you can return your ballot early or have someone (if that is permitted in your state) return your ballot, to a drop box in advance of the election date.
- Mail your ballot in plenty of time to get there by the election date. Ten days before November 3rd, is recommended. As mentioned, some states will count ballots, as long as they are postmarked before the election date. Some will not. There is an effort by the president to force polls to cease counting on the date of the election. Do not risk this, vote early.
- Many states permit you to track whether or not your ballot has been received.
- If you have a mail in ballot return it as soon as possible.
- Vote Early
- Many states have early voting. Some open polls several weeks early, others permit early voting at the local election commission. Filing your vote early, provides the comfort of knowing you have voted and your ballot has been received, regardless of what happens on the day of the election.
- Demand your right to vote
- If you are at the polls on November 3rd, ensure that your vote is accepted. There will be poll watchers, representatives of political parties, legal advisers and others who will assist you to resolve any issues that may arise. In general, they are extremely professional, courteous and it is highly likely that they have dealt with whatever issue(s) you may have and will be able to craft a resolution.
- Do not let anyone take away your ability to vote or intimidate you. In the worst-case scenario, one of those lawyers or party representatives will escalate any challenge to your vote to the on-site supervisor, election commission or even the courts. In most cases, that is not necessary and most situations will be resolved quite easily. In some cases, and in some states, it is appropriate to cast a provisional ballot, while the issues are resolved.
Many people believe that this election is extremely important. That issue is for each individual to decide. What most of us can agree upon is, that if you are a citizen you are entitled to vote. In our democracy it is imperative that you exercise that privilege.
Walter H. White, Jr. is a member of the Board of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, a founding director and past chair of the ABA Center for Human Rights and has served as an election observer in the former Soviet Union on behalf of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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