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Trump’s Deepfake Isn’t Just Offensive—It’s a Racist Distraction from Real Governance

Trump’s Deepfake Isn’t Just Offensive—It’s a Racist Distraction from Real Governance

Is Pritzker Right? Is It Time To Invoke the 25th Amendment Against Trump?

Is Pritzker Right? Is It Time To Invoke the 25th Amendment Against Trump?

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Project 2025 in Action: Sounding the Alarm for Democracy

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This Nation’s First Dictatorship Is Emerging. It Is Time To Call It What It Is.

Pope Leo XIV’s Rebuke of U.S. Immigration Policy Is a Wake-Up Call

Pope Leo XIV’s Rebuke of U.S. Immigration Policy Is a Wake-Up Call

Over 500 locations in one National Voter Registration Day drive

Over 500 locations in one National Voter Registration Day drive

The unofficial holiday helps register thousands of voters each year.

The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumSep 20, 2019
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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More than 500 registration events will be held across the country Tuesday by the League of Women Voters.

The events will be held as part of National Voter Registration Day. The unofficial holiday, always the fourth Tuesday of September, was created in 2012 by a broad group of civic educators and state and local election officials to boost awareness of registration opportunities and get as many thousands of new people as possible added to the rolls almost simultaneously.

This year, LWV volunteers plan to host in-person registration events at public locations such as transit stops, sporting events and naturalization ceremonies, while also promoting the group's newly redesigned website for election information, Vote411.org.

Visitors of the site can check their voter registration status, begin the process of registering, confirm polling locations and voting hours, review any voter identification requirements, and compare candidates and propositions on the ballot in November.

Volunteers registered 865,000 people last year on Sept. 25, a record for the holiday in its sixth year. There were 153 million registered to vote nationwide by the 2018 midterm, a decline of 4 million from Election Day 2106, the Census Bureau says.

"Voters are just a few months away from casting the first ballots in the 2020 elections, so now is the time to make sure your voter registration is up to date," said Virginia Kase, CEO of the League of Women Voters. "Even if you are registered to vote, spread the word."

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U.S. President Barack Obama speaking on the phone in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Barack Obama talks President Barack Obama talks with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan during a phone call from the Oval Office on November 2, 2009 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, The White House

‘Obama, You're 15 Years Too Late!’

The mid-decade redistricting fight continues, while the word “hypocrisy” has become increasingly common in the media.

The origin of mid-decade redistricting dates back to the early history of the United States. However, its resurgence and legal acceptance primarily stem from the Texas redistricting effort in 2003, a controversial move by the Republican Party to redraw the state's congressional districts, and the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. This decision, which confirmed that mid-decade redistricting is not prohibited by federal law, was a significant turning point in the acceptance of this practice.

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Gerrymandering silences communities and distorts elections. Proportional representation offers a proven path to fairer maps and real democracy.

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Gerrymandering Today, Gerrymandering Tomorrow, Gerrymandering Forever

In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." (Watch the video of his speech.) As a politically aware high school senior, I was shocked by the venom and anger in his voice—the open, defiant embrace of systematic disenfranchisement, so different from the quieter racism I knew growing up outside Boston.

Today, watching politicians openly rig elections, I feel that same disbelief—especially seeing Republican leaders embrace that same systematic approach: gerrymandering now, gerrymandering tomorrow, gerrymandering forever.

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Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

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In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

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How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

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Getty Images, Olivier Douliery

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

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