Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

A little skin's exposed, coast to coast, to educate voters

Naked ballots

Emily Kinkead, Olivia Bennett and Bethany Hallam trying to educate Pennsylvanians on the finer points of voting by mail.

Photo courtesy Bethany Hallam

Sex sells, as everyone knows. But it also can be used to promote our sometimes struggling democracy, as two recent examples illustrate. Literally.

The first comes in the shapely form of Kylie Jenner, the 23-year-old member of the Jenner-Kardashian entertainment-celebrity industrial complex.


Jenner posted a pair of bikini-clad photos of herself on Instagram this week, with a link to vote.org, asking fans if they were registered and inviting her 197 million followers: "let's make a plan to vote together." She posted something similar on Twitter, where she has more than 35 million followers.

The response: Vote.org reports her link boosted traffic by 1,500 percent and resulted in 48,000 people registering to vote.

The moment "speaks to an energy among young Americans who want to make sure their voices are heard this election," Vote.org chief Andrea Hailey said in a statement.

Alternatively, it may just speak to people who want to appreciate what Kylie Jenner's wearing while soaking in the California sun.

The second example comes from much less warm Pennsylvania, where a few local politicians have shed even more clothing to focus the electorate's attention on so-called "naked ballots."

These are absentee votes that get delivered to election offices inside the pre-addressed outer return envelope — but not sealed inside the required second, secrecy envelope.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

This happened thousands of times in the June primary, but the state Supreme Court ruled those naked ballots should be counted anyway. The court has taken a different position for the presidential election: Anyone who makes the same mistake this fall will be out in the cold, without a vote that counts.

Democrats are now working hard to educate voters in one of the premier presidential battlegrounds about the importance of "clothing" their mail ballots in the inner sleeve — especially because so many are expected to be voting by mail for the first time this year because of the pandemic. One party official has sounded the alarm that 100,000 ballots will otherwise get discarded because of their nakedness, twice President Trump's margin in the state last time.

In the most dramatic gesture of this education effort, two members of the Allegheny County Council in Pittsburgh and an incoming state legislator posed for a waist-up group photo — apparently unclothed but for the absentee ballots covering their chests.

They tweeted the shot with panels of text explaining the three easy steps for properly returning a mailed-in ballot.

"Immediately when I heard the term naked ballots, and being a woman in the male-dominated environment of politics, where they are always trying to control our bodies, I thought, 'Why not take some control back? And also get the voters' attention," one of the council members, Bethany Hallam, told the Guardian.

The gesture has worked, sort of: More than 1,500 retweets and 3,600 "likes" so far. Not Kardashian-class numbers, but still.

Read More

Historic Bipartisan Reform Passed Into Law

A voter receiving information.

Getty Images, SeventyFour

Historic Bipartisan Reform Passed Into Law

On April 8, 2025, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed SB 16 into law, a historic bipartisan reform that gives more than 330,000 independent voters—who make up nearly 25% of New Mexico’s electorate—the right to vote in the state’s primary elections, starting in 2026. This continues an overall nationwide trend of states opening their primary elections to more voters.

“New Mexico’s open primaries law will ensure that every eligible voter has a say in every taxpayer-funded election, not just those who choose to affiliate with a party,” said Nick Troiano, Executive Director of Unite America. “For too long, a quarter of New Mexicans have been locked out of their state’s primary elections—which in most cases are the only elections that matter. Ending closed primaries is an important step toward increasing participation and representation in our democracy.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Beginning To Explore the Pro-Democracy Arena
a large white building with a flag on top of it

Beginning To Explore the Pro-Democracy Arena

The Fulcrum presents The Path Forward: Defining the Democracy Reform Movement. Scott Warren's interview series engaging diverse thought leaders to elevate the conversation about building a thriving and healthy democratic republic that fulfills its potential as a national social and political game-changer. This series is the start of focused collaborations and dialogue led by The Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum teams to help the movement find a path forward.

Over the last two months, I’ve been privileged to speak with a diversity of stakeholders who work within the pro-democracy ecosystem. These leaders are focused on improving the democratic fabric of this country through tackling issues like structural reform, bridge building, organizing the ecosystem, and place-based work. I’ll continue this series with the Fulcrum over the next few months, and welcome your feedback (and additional potential individuals to interview).

Keep ReadingShow less
The FEC Has Opened the Floodgates for Big Money To Flood Elections. Here’s How We Can Fix It.

A miniature White House on top of coins and bills.

Getty Images, Max Zolotukhin

The FEC Has Opened the Floodgates for Big Money To Flood Elections. Here’s How We Can Fix It.

Elections are getting bigger.

2024 was a blockbuster year in campaign spending, shattering the previous record—set just four years prior—as donors across the nation and the economic spectrum swooped in to pull control of every branch of government their way.

Keep ReadingShow less