The Good News About This Election
DEPENDING ON YOUR POLITICS, this election’s outcome could send your spirits soaring, or plunge you into despair. But whatever the outcome, Americans around the country are finding creative and innovative ways to encourage participation, keep things civil, make sure things run smoothly, and strengthen the democratic process. Their stories offer inspiration at a moment of national anxiety and uncertainty.
A GROUP OF HIGH SCHOOL students in Denver, many from immigrant families, created an app with the help of AI in a civics class to help encourage voter participation. As NPR reported, the students specifically wanted to make the process less intimidating and confusing to first-time voters. The solution? A multi-lingual voter guide, complete with an accompanying chatbot, that teaches voters in simple terms about where they can register and what’s on the ballot. Said one student of the process: “I want to connect more people to let them know that their vote really matters, and they should be heard.”
ELECTION WORKERS HAVE FACED THREATS, intimidation and false accusations over a sustained period amid conspiracy theories run amok. As many as a third of them have left the field in the last four years. But so far, despite near-record turnout during early voting, the election has been smooth and virtually problem-free. A new crop of election workers is toiling to ensure that balloting is fair, accurate and transparent. Reno, Nevada, election worker Andrew McDonald signed on only five months ago, but he told The Washington Post: “I feel very optimistic. We have a great staff here.” The federal Election Assistance Commission has also gotten creative, The New York Times reports, with a deck of 52 “scenario” cards that helps election workers envision and plan for any number of Election-Day disasters, from a medical emergency to a car crashing into a drop box.
PLACES OF WORSHIP around the country have felt the strain of harsh disagreements throughout this campaign, but one Kansas City church has fought back with a “campaign for kindness” that is going national, NPR News reported. The campaign features TV spots, yard signs and billboards, just like a political campaign, but instead of promoting a candidate it’s promoting messages about reconciliation. “Choosing kindness isn’t about avoiding our differences, but navigating them with respect and compassion,” declares one spot. More than 1,600 churches around the country have signed on.
DARK POLITICAL CLOUDS may have a silver lining when it comes to democracy reforms, scholar Richard H. Pildes argued recently in The New York Times. Americans deeply mistrust Congress, the federal government and the political system, Pildes notes, but this may set the table for significant reforms that help restore majority rule. Ballot measures in a half-dozen states and the District of Columbia propose to end traditional party primaries. Such primaries tend to engage voters who are not representative of the electorate as a whole, and who gravitate to more extremist candidates. Other reforms on the table include an initiative to promote ranked-choice voting in Oregon, and another to ban gerrymandering in Ohio. Notes Pildes: “These proposals are intended to make the political system more responsive to the preferences of a majority of voters, rather than continue a system that has become easy prey for factional minorities.”
We may not know for days how such initiatives fare, or even who will occupy the White House. But from students to ministers and election workers, Americans are stepping up for democracy in ways large and small.