Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Become an informed voter – it’s the best way to fight voter suppression

A roll of stickers that read "I registered to vote today!"
Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images

Harris is director of media engagement at Stand Up America.

This is National Voter Education Week, when activists and organizations across the country mobilize to educate voters on how to make their voices heard in November. This year, that mission is more important than ever. While voting rights advocates are hard at work helping voters find their polling location and voting options, learn what’s on their ballot, and make a plan for voting, MAGA politicians are ramping up efforts to make it more difficult to vote and even purging voter rolls in battleground states.


In MAGA-led states like Florida, Kansas, Missouri and Texas, voter outreach groups face legal barriers and steep fines designed to stifle their critical work. In Florida, for example, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that targets community-based organizations that help register voters of color, reducing the number of days these organizations have to submit voter registration applications while increasing fines for late submissions — up to $250,000 annually.

Data shows that the impacted groups “enrolled about 1.5 percent of all white registered voters between 2012 and 2023,” but they registered “roughly 10 percent of Black voters, 9 percent of Hispanic voters, and some 8 percent of voters who were members of other minority groups” — demographic groups that favor Democrats over Republicans. No wonder DeSantis wants to stop their work. Voter registration drives in the Sunshine State fell 95 percent in the months after the Florida law took effect in 2023, compared with the same months four years earlier.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

MAGA politicians have found other creative ways to keep some citizens out of the electoral process. Republican-led states are purging voter rolls of eligible voters just months ahead of the November election. In June, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose published a list of over 150,000 inactive voters who were eligible to be removed from the state’s voter registration database. Over half of the voters at risk of being purged live in majority-minority counties. In North Carolina, Republicans sued to have 225,000 voters removed from the rolls after making baseless claims that the state was registering “noncitizens.” In August, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that his state had removed over 1 million people from its voter rolls since passing a package of anti-voting measures.

These purges and restrictive measures aren’t isolated incidents; they’re part of a nationwide strategy to silence minority voters, boost Republicans, and undermine free and fair elections.

Despite these challenges, we are not backing down. Across the country, groups are standing up to these tired Jim Crow tactics and ensuring citizens are familiar with new requirements. At Stand Up America, we’re using digital ads and texts to reach out to voters in states with the biggest gaps between the number of eligible voters and the number of voters who are actually registered. We’re also partnering with social media influencers and dozens of celebrities to help their fans and followers check their registration, learn what’s at stake in the election and make sure they’re ready to make their voices heard. We’ve registered nearly 100,000 voters since 2020 using these tactics.

We know that voters should choose their leaders — politicians shouldn’t get to choose their voters. The fight for voting rights in the midst of MAGA’s regressive vision for our country is a reminder of what National Voter Education Week is about — building a truly representative democracy. As Abraham Lincoln once said, America is a “government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people.” We intend to keep it that way.

Not sure your voter status is up to date? Text CHECK to 63033 to find out. Or visit standupamerica.com to help get out the vote. Together we can protect democracy and make sure every eligible voice is heard in this year’s election.

Read More

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand Placing Ballot in Box With American Flag
Getty Images, monkeybusinessimages

We Can Fix This: Our Politics Really Can Work – These Stories Show How

As American politics polarizes ever further, voters across the political spectrum agree that our current system is not delivering for the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans feel most elected officials don’t care what people like them think. Eighty-eight percent of them say our political system is broken.

Whether it’s the quality and safety of their kids’ schools, housing affordability and rising homelessness, scarce and pricey healthcare, or any number of other issues that touch Americans’ everyday lives, the lived experience of polarization comes from such problems—and elected officials’ failure to address them.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump
text
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump

Donald Trump wasted no time when he returned to the White House. Within hours, he signed over 200 executive orders, rapidly dismantling years of policy and consolidating control with the stroke of a pen. But the frenzy of reversals was only the surface. Beneath it lies a deeper, more troubling transformation: presidential elections have become all-or-nothing battles, where the victor rewrites the rules of government and the loser’s agenda is annihilated.

And it’s not just the orders. Trump’s second term has unleashed sweeping deportations, the purging of federal agencies, and a direct assault on the professional civil service. With the revival of Schedule F, regulatory rollbacks, and the targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the federal bureaucracy is being rigged to serve partisan ideology. Backing him is a GOP-led Congress, too cowardly—or too complicit—to assert its constitutional authority.

Keep ReadingShow less