Policy Brief
Some politicians have enacted measures in recent years to make voting harder and to reduce participation among certain groups. Others have sought to counteract that voter suppression by implementing laws to make voting easier, such as same-day or automatic registration. There is another antidote to the effort to reduce participation: lifting up worker organizations. This is especially important to understand given the ways in which powerful individuals and groups have sought to weaken unions because of their political strength representing American workers.
In this report, the author first explains efforts to weaken unions and the voice of working people; then what the decline of unions and union membership has meant for participation; next, Wang looks at the data showing the positive effects unions have on voter participation; and finally, she suggests how going forward we can reform the laws and how labor is structured such that it not only continues to facilitate voter participation, but even enhances it.
Podcast
Public interest technologist Bruce Schneier joins Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss circumstances under which AI systems could defy doom and gloom scenarios and actually enhance democracy and civic engagement.
Podcast
Andrea Hailey, who leads Vote.org, one of the nation’s largest nonpartisan voter engagement platforms, joins hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer on Terms of Engagement to discuss trends, turnout, and trepidation as we head into the pivotal 2026 midterm elections.
Podcast
Oxford University Professor Pepper Culpepper joins Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Steven Richer to discuss corporate excess, bipartisan popular anger, and his new book “Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy.”
Commentary
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.
Commentary
Allen Lab member Charlie Covit reflects on the After Neoliberalism conference and examines the intersection of artificial intelligence and the future of work, arguing that AI forces a democratic reckoning with the meaning of labor itself and that an economy which generates abundance while stripping citizens of purpose and dignity undermines the very foundation of democratic life.
Policy Brief
A new policy brief by Jon Alexander, Non-resident Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center, argues for the development of a Department of Citizen Empowerment (DOCE) at all levels of government around the world.
