“Our democracy depends on voting,” said Archon Fung, Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government and director of the Ash Center’s Democratic Governance Program, at the opening of an all-day symposium on increasing voter participation sponsored by the Ash Center; the Institute of Politics; and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. The event, “Getting to 80%: A Symposium Advancing Voter Participation,” convened on May 3 at Harvard Kennedy School and brought together journalists, technologists, business leaders, elected officials, scholars, and grassroots advocates and organizers to discuss how best to spark cultural and policy shifts needed to increase voter participation in the United States.
The US ranks 26th out 32 OECD countries in voting turnout for nationwide elections, with just 55 percent of the voting age population going to the polls in 2016. “That is not a proud statistic for a country that has been for some time in the business of trying export democracy,” said Fung during opening remarks. The event was an opportunity to discuss strategies for increasing voter participation rates to 80 percent of all eligible voters in the US, a figure reached by only a handful other countries.
Nearly 140 participants spent the day examining issues such as how to create a culture of voting, the roles of technology and social media in encouraging voter participation, strategies for engaging with younger voters, innovations in voter participation at the state level, mobilizing non-voters, and advancing universal registration and voting. “We heard a lot of very powerful ideas about how to turn these numbers around from simple policy fixes such as automatic voter registration and universal vote-by-mail to how best to elevate the way voting is perceived across all sectors of society,” reflected Miles Rapoport, the Ash Center’s Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy and an organizer of the conference.
Contesting repression in divided democracies: Can counternarratives reduce support for police violence?
A new article in the American Journal of Political Science by Yanilda María González, Ford Foundation Associate Professor of Public Policy and Ash Center affiliate, and co-author, examines public attitudes towards police violence in Brazil. The authors find that while police discourse can increase public endorsement of violence, counternarratives from marginalized victims can be effective in reducing citizen support for repressive policing.
Reframing Efficiency: How Public Deliberation Strengthens Public Health Policy
In a recent essay for the American Journal of Public Health, Aditya S. Pawar, Democracy Visiting Fellow; Jon Alexander, former Non-resident Democracy Fellow; Archon Fung, Director of the Ash Center; and co-authors examine how public deliberation and representative engagement can shape more efficient and reliable public health policy.
Terms of Engagement – How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear
What does it take to stand up for what you believe in when your personal safety, security and even liberty are at stake? Ami Fields-Meyer, a political strategist and former senior policy advisor in the Biden-Harris White House, joins Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to speak about speaking out in tumultuous times.
Tova Wang, director of research projects in democratic practice at the Ash Center, shares her top picks for summer reads focused on making democracy more resilient, responsive, and inclusive.
Allen Lab Fellow Spotlight: City Charters Are Deliberative Democracy’s Friends
Allen Lab Fellow Tyler Fisher examines the untapped potential of city charters as a vehicle for deliberative democracy, arguing that advocates should work to embed tools like citizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, and town meetings directly into the governing architecture of cities, institutionalizing deliberative democracy one municipality at a time.
