• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Newsletter>
  3. newsletter>

Op-eds of the week: Early voting, poll workers, reforming local government

The Fulcrum
October 29, 2022

Make your voice heard by voting early

To mark Early Voting Day, four elections officials encouraged voters to cast their ballots in advance of Election Day.

As Commissioner Ben Hovland of the U.S. Election Assistance Commision, New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Boulder County (Colo.) Clerk Molly Fitzpatrick and Weber County (Utah) Clerk Ricky Hatch remind us, various unforeseen issues can mess with our voting plans. Illness, traffic, changes in child care or work schedules and other problems can all derail the best-laid plans.

But those concerns can be avoided.

When you vote early by mail or in person, nothing can stop you from having your say. When people vote ahead of Election Day, they have the convenience of finding a date and time that works for their schedule. The lines may be substantially shorter, which means you can get in, get out and get on with your day. And if you run into an issue like not having the right ID or showing up to the wrong polling place, you have plenty of time to correct the issue and cast your ballot.

Read more.

Citizens can ensure a credible election

There’s more to elections than voting. After all, you wouldn’t be able to vote if no one was mailing ballots, staffing polling locations and counting the votes. Unfortunately, there are some – those The Fulcrum’s Debilyn Molineaux refers to as “conflict profiteers” – who want to stir up trouble by claiming voter fraud just so they can amass money and power.

The solution?

It’s up to us, the citizens, to accept our responsibility to restore faith in our elections. To be helpful, to be involved and to administer the election ourselves. Across the nation, election administrators from county offices, their staff and the thousands of volunteers are stepping up. In two weeks’ time, they will dedicate themselves to a free and fair election for the rest of us.

Read more.

Through local reform, women of color are re-imagining democracy

Women form the majority of the population, and people of color are on track to do the same. But women of color are underrepresented in government. So Maria Perez created Democracy Rising to help women of color gain political power by focusing on the local government.

Why focus on the local level? Because smaller communities are better positioned to experiment around reforms and initiatives, and are able to course correct more nimbly than at the state or federal level. Effective democratic reform is happening at the local level; it is where the hands-on work of re-imagining democracy is being done, and it is largely getting done by women – particularly women of color.

One of the biggest successes has occurred in Seattle, where the Democracy Vouchers Program has contributed to changes in city government.

Read more.

Ill-informed patriotism

Many supporters of Donald Trump can be found among the working class who embrace imagery of the American Revolution. But author Lawrence Goldstone thinks a history lesson is in order.

That Trump, an amoral narcissistic profiteer, has become a rallying point for the working class — which he has spent the better part of his life disparaging, stiffing out of money and swindling — could not be more of an irony. If his working-class supporters had spent some time learning what actually transpired during the Revolutionary period they are evoking with such nostalgia, they might decide that their loyalties would be better directed elsewhere.

Read more.

newsletter

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Julio A. Alicea

Policymakers must address worsening civil unrest post Roe

Sarah K. Burke

Video: How to salvage U.S. democracy from the "tyranny of the minority"

Our Staff

What "Progress" should look like, and what we get wrong

Damien De Pyle

The long kiss goodnight: Nancy Pelosi and the protracted decay of public office

Kevin Frazier

Demanding corporate responsibility for food system challenges

C.Anne Long
latest News

Video: The dire roles Congress, White House play in addressing migrants

Lennon Wesley III
49m

Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Joe Weston
22 September

Prioritizing the grand challenges

Leland R. Beaumont
22 September

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

The show must go on

Amy Lockard
21 September

Constitution Day conversation with Jamie Raskin: Preserving democracy today and tomorrow

Rick LaRue
Jamie Raskin
21 September
Videos
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Our Staff
Video: The history of Labor Day

Video: The history of Labor Day

Our Staff
Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

Podcast: How states hold fair elections

Our Staff
14 September

Podcast: The MAGA Bubble, Bidenonmics and Playing the Victim

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
12 September

Podcast: Defending the founding principles of our government

Our Staff
07 September
Recommended
Video: The dire roles Congress, White House play in addressing migrants

Video: The dire roles Congress, White House play in addressing migrants

Big Picture
Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Ask Joe: Warring with AI is warring with ourselves

Pop Culture
Prioritizing the grand challenges

Prioritizing the grand challenges

Big Picture
Podcast: All politics is local

Podcast: All politics is local

Big Picture
The show must go on

The show must go on

Big Picture
To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Big Picture