Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

10 pieces of art to inspire you this election

art about democracy

In a year that has featured tumultuous debates about the very essence of our country, artists of all sorts have responded with an explosion of creativity.

There's been a wave of work: dramatic murals protesting the killing of Black people by police, songs celebrating President Trump and also mocking him, videos urging people to vote. There have been elaborate embroidered messages of protest and contests to design "I voted" stickers.


The outpouring of inventiveness reflects the passions evoked by a presidential election, overlaid on a health crisis with debates about racial justice and fundamental democratic principles thrown in the mix. The slideshow here is but a tiny sampling.

Democracy Matters, a nonpartisan student political reform group, sees art as key to their work and to building community.

"Art can inspire, shock, heal and express emotion," the group's website says. "It engages the senses and stimulates the mind. When art is seen as a core element of encouraging social action, its power moves from a source aesthetic appreciation to a strong political tool."

Diane Mullin, curator at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, has said that "art can teach us or demonstrate things about democracy."

"But art can also participate in democracy because artists are in very important ways contributors to discourse, and contributors to our society," she said said back when her museum was preparing for the 2008 Republican convention in Minneapolis and St. Paul. "So they can put forth proposals and propositions to make us think about things, to make us think about where we live, how we live."

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

This summer the nearby Minnesota Museum of American Art hosted an online forum of "Black Art in the Era of Protest." One key issue in the discussion was how to preserve the murals and other public displays that may end up being painted over or dismantled.

Here then is a gallery offering a glimpse of the artistic response to the election, racial injustice and the other existential questions about the state of democracy the nation is facing this year.

Turn your (democracy) swag on

WeTheUnitedPeople/Etsy.com

Looking for your own little democracy art to add to (or start) your collection? Etsy sells every sort of craft and handmade items imaginable. Search for "democracy" this year and you'll find an unusually expansive trove of options — everything from yard signs to T-shirts, from earrings to buttons.

Read More

ballot envelope

Close-up of a 2020 mail-in ballot envelope for Maricopa County, Ariz.

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Election Overtime Project kicks off state briefings in Arizona

The worsening political polarization in America is creating deep anxiety among voters about the upcoming 2024 elections. Many Americans fear what disputed elections could mean for our democracy. However, close and contested elections are a part of American history, and all states have processes in place to handle just such situations. It is critical citizens understand how these systems work so that they trust the results.

Trusted elections are the foundation of our democracy.

Keep ReadingShow less
Georgia voting stickers
Megan Varner/Getty Images

Experts pan Georgia’s hand-count rule as we prep for Election Overtime

On Sept. 17, Georgia’s election board voted to hand-count all ballots cast at polling places across the state’s 159 counties on Election Day, contrary to the legal opinion of the Georgia attorney general and the advice of the secretary of state.

Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, challenged the validity of the decision in a letter to the elections board:

"There are thus no provisions in the statutes cited in support of these proposed rules that permit counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level prior to delivery to the election superintendent for tabulation. Accordingly, these proposed rules are not tethered to any statute — and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do."
Keep ReadingShow less
Women on state in front of a screen that reads "Our firght for reproductive freedom"

Women from states with abortion restrictions speak during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in August.

Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Abortion and the economy are not separate issues

Bayer is a political activist and specialist in the rhetoric of social movements. She was the founding director of the Oral Communication Lab at the University of Pittsburgh.

At a recent campaign rally in Raleigh, N.C., Vice President Kamala Harris detailed her plan to strengthen the economy through policies lifting the middle class. Despite criticism from Republicans like Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) — who recently said, “The American people are smarter than Kamala Harris when it comes to the economy” — some economists and financial analysts have a very positive assessment of her proposals.

Respected Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs recently gave Harris high marks in a report compared to former President Donald Trump’s plan to increase tariffs. “We estimate that if Trump wins in a sweep or with divided government, the hit to growth from tariffs and tighter immigration policy would outweigh the positive fiscal impulse,” the bank’s economists wrote.

Keep ReadingShow less
People protesting with a large banner that reads "Voters Decide"

Protesters in Detroit rally to support the 2020 election results and other causes.

Why the cost of water for poor Black Detroit voters may be key to Kamala Harris winning – or losing – Michigan

Ronald Brown is a professor of political science at Wayne State University. R. Khari Brown is a professor of sociology at Wayne State University.

The threat of violence was in the air at the TCF Center in Detroit on Nov. 5, 2020, after former President Donald Trump claimed that poll workers in the city were duplicating ballots and that there was an unexplained delay in delivering them for counting.

Both claims were later debunked.

Emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric, dozens of mainly white Republican Trump supporters banged on doors and windows at the vote-tallying center, chanting, “Stop the count!”

Keep ReadingShow less