Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter.
Those who participated were a combination of new voters and people who needed to update their registration information.
400K more voters ready for 2020 thanks to National Voter Registration Day
The 2020 primaries are just around the corner, and thanks to this year's National Voter Registration Day, an additional 400,000 people are ready to cast their ballots.
The estimated number of registrations is nearly three times that of previous non-election-year events. And while some of these new or renewed registrants can now participate in local and state elections this fall, many are gearing up for important primary races happening as early as February of next year.
Over 4,000 community partners held events where people could sign up in time for their next election, whether it's this fall or next year. The League of Women Voters alone held over 500 voter registration drives.
Celebrities across the country promoted the unofficial holiday, from Ellen and Quincy Jones to Michelle Obama and Newt Gingrich. #NationalVoterRegistrationDay was also the top trending topic on Twitter on Sept. 24.
For anyone who missed National Voter Registration Day and has a local or state election in 2019, Oct. 4 is the deadline in at least 13 states. Voters can register online here.
- Lin-Manuel Miranda, NRA, Tom Hanks say, 'Register to vote' - The ... ›
- Over 500 locations in one National Voter Registration Day drive ... ›
- National Voter Registration Day was one step to reclaiming our ... ›
Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter.
Ballot measures are good democracy ā but only if you can understand them
Marginal improvements have been made to help voters understand the questions posed to them on the ballot this November, a new study concludes, but such ballot measures still favor the college-educated ā who represent a minority of the U.S. population.
This year voters in eight states will decide the fate of a collective 36 such propositions. In a study released Thursday, Ballotpedia assessed how easy it is to comprehend what each proposal would accomplish, concluding that the difficulty level had decreased compared with the referendums decided in the last off-year election of 2017 ā but not by much.
In fact, according to a pair of well-established tests, 21 of the 36 ballot measures cannot be understood by the 40 percent of the voting-age population who never attended college.
Two states asking Supreme Court for permission to regulate Electoral College conduct
Colorado has become the second state to ask the Supreme Court to decide if states may legally bind their presidential electors to vote for the candidate who carried their state.
The issue of so-called faithless electors is the latest aspect of an increasingly heated debate about the virtues and flaws of the Electoral College that has blossomed, especially among progressive democracy reform advocates, now that two of the past five presidential winners (Donald Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000) got to the Oval Office despite losing the national popular vote.