Terms of Engagement – The 2026 Midterms: Trust, Turnout, and a Shifting Electoral Landscape

Archon Fung: Hey everyone. Welcome. This is Terms of Engagement. I’m Archon Fung, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Stephen Richer: And I’m Stephen Richer. I’m the former elected Maricopa County recorder and I am now a fellow at the Ash Center.

Archon Fung: And we’re coming at you live on Tuesday at 12:15 ET. So please join the conversation in the chat function of YouTube or wherever you’re watching this and we’ll get to as many questions and comments as we can.

Stephen Richer: And this Tuesday isn’t just any regular Tuesday. This is Election Day Tuesday for many states who are having their statewide primaries. We have statewide primaries today, the May 19th in Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania. And Archon told me just before we jumped on this that the Thomas Massie race in Kentucky is set to be the most expensive congressional race ever.

Archon Fung: Yeah. My little bit of internet research revealed that something like 32 million in ad buys there. And I’m guessing $32 million would go a long way toward a lot of things in Kentucky that people might want.

Stephen Richer: Well, and especially if they don’t have many other competitive primaries that are going on, then you can just buy up tons and tons of airtime. But I think you’re saying could we as a society more effectively allocate resources? Probably, but that’s true of every presidential election too.

Archon Fung: Yeah, much bigger numbers. So we don’t really take sides very much on this show, but I got to root for Massie because he’s an MIT kid.

Stephen Richer: A dual MIT kid, isn’t he?

Archon Fung: Yeah. A good friend of mine was his TA in a robotics class and said he was quite brilliant.

Stephen Richer: Oh, wow. Do you guys have a secret handshake?

Archon Fung: No. I don’t even have a class ring. I wonder if he does.

Stephen Richer: All right. Well, we’ll get on with the show, but as always, Archon and I are speaking on behalf of ourselves, not on behalf of Harvard University or the Ash Center or Kennedy School. And as always, we are recording this as well. So if you’re not watching live, you can watch it on YouTube or any of the podcast platforms. And as always, if you have recommendations for future topics or for future guests, please email us at info@ash.harvard.edu. That being said, we are going on a short summer break after this program. So this is our last program of season two. This is episode 42. We will be coming back on June 30th to start celebrating the 250-year anniversary of the United States. We’re going to have Archon’s colleague Danielle Allen on to talk about some of the stuff that is going on with the 250, what the Declaration of Independence means today all these years later.

Archon Fung: And we’ll be really curious about what the Declaration of Independence 1776 means to you. And so I’m sure we have a lot of different ways that people are thinking about the 250th. All right. And so the topic for today, which we’ll continue to revisit between now and November quite a bit, I imagine, is voting. And Stephen will introduce our guest in just a minute, but a couple of the big questions that I want to understand a little bit better in this conversation. Number one is I feel like there are some pressures that are really driving voting for the midterms up a lot. Super competitive primaries, a midterm election that people feel very, very strongly about. Tons of money in the Kentucky primaries we just discussed, I’m sure in the Texas primary and the Georgia primary. And so all that would say voting is going probably going to be quite high, especially for mid-year off your election.

But then a lot of people are worried about lots of things, chaos at the polls, maybe federal presence of different kinds, which may drive voting down. So how does that net out? How do we think about the different crosscurrents for voting? That’s number one. And our guest has been involved in the voting and civic engagement business for a long time. And so I’m also interested in understanding how just the project and the mission of encouraging people to vote has changed over the last 5, 10, 15 years. I’ve always thought of it as just kind of table stakes to get more people out to vote, but I feel like that’s changed a little bit. So I’m really interested in understanding that a little bit better.

Stephen Richer: And so our guest is Andrea Hailey, who is the CEO of Vote.org, which is an organization I’ve long known of and admired. It is one of the nation’s largest nonprofit voter engagement platforms using a blend of technology, legal strategy, and grassroots energy to expand access to the ballot box. Andrea has worked at the intersection of law and technology and civic action for most of her career. She is a graduate of George Washington University. She is born and raised Indiana. So she’s a born and raised Hoosier. She lives in Indianapolis area now and we were just talking to her about the race coming up this weekend in which seemingly all of the United States is going to descend on Indianapolis and turn Speedway into a very, very, very happening place. And so if you are in the Midwest and you’re looking for something to do, get on the road, go to Indianapolis this weekend. Andrea, welcome to the show.

Andrea Hailey: Thank you for having me. What a welcome.

Archon Fung: Great. So let’s just jump into it. Tell us a little bit about what Vote.org does. And then I’m interested in, has Vote.org’s mission changed over the last decade or so? Is the civic engagement business and voting business the same as when you got started? And if it’s different, how is it different?

Andrea Hailey: Well, at Vote.org, we’re the largest nonpartisan platform in the country. We register people to vote in all 50 states. So you can go to Vote.org and get your voter registration checked and make sure that you weren’t purged. You can register to vote. You can request your absentee ballot. You can sign up for election alerts so that we remind you as the elections are coming up. And you can find, it’s sort of a one-stop shop for all voting information that you need. You can find how you can participate in your state, whether you need a student ID or not. All of that kind of information is sitting right there for you at Vote.org. We see ourselves as critical voting information and infrastructure. This year we’ve registered about 182,000 people to vote already, which is about twice as high as the last midterm election. So we have a lot of momentum and we’re excited to see so many people eager to participate.

Stephen Richer: So I know that you and your team have been responsible over the years for registering millions of people and you just gave us that 182,000 registrants for this calendar year or for this cycle and how that compares with last midterm election. I’m kind of surprised and I want to get your take on this. It seems like registering is getting easier on average in most states, in that we didn’t have online voter registration say 15 years ago in nearly as many states as we have it now, and yet your ability or your need continues to rise. Why do you think there’s that incongruity?

Andrea Hailey: Well, overall, we’ve registered about 9.9 million people since our launch at Vote.org, which is really exciting. I think that in the United States, we have a state-by-state voting experience from registration all the way to the ballot box because the states all minister their own elections. And I think that it’s always a challenge to make sure that the next generation is excited about democracy, wants to participate in democracy, wants to register to vote. There are millions of new voters coming online every election cycle. And a big part of our job is to work with the younger generation to get them registered and get them all the way through the process.

At the same time, you have some states that do great things to make sure that voters can participate like passing online voter registration and having tons of polling locations available and early voting and voting by mail and all of the sorts of things we know increases turnout and participation. And then you have some states that are going in the opposite direction. We have a case right now in Arkansas where they actually started to backtrack and wanted to not have digital signatures so that people had to print out their registration forms and mail them in and we quickly filed to make sure that we could still get people through the process using digital signatures and online voter registration. So we see these fights in states going back and forth about how to either empower or disempower people from the process. And I think it’s why it’s so important that we show up every year.

Stephen Richer: How often do you tell kids these days that they have it easy? Because I used to feel like it was probably harder to register to vote. I don’t know. Do you remember the first time that you registered to vote, Archon?

Archon Fung: I don’t. I don’t remember, but it was through the mail. You had to send something in.

Stephen Richer: I had to go someplace and I think actually register in person. But now I think that the vast majority of registrants in Arizona, it’s through the Motor Vehicle Division when they get their driver’s license or it’s through servicearrizona.com, which is like the online platform for all your motor vehicle stuff, but also you can just register to vote that way.

Archon Fung: So it’s either automatic when you get your license and if you somehow don’t, then you can just get on a website and register.

Stephen Richer: Yeah. It’s opt-in. Obviously since the Help America Vote Act in 2002, states have paired voter registration with vehicle, with getting your driver’s license. Some states have a default setting where you are automatically registered or automatic voter registration. Other states, it’s just you can do it while you’re there.

Archon Fung: Yeah. So Andrea, about how many people who are kind of voting age and eligible to vote are not registered? Is that a lot of people? Or it seems like you’d be over the years working yourself out of a job as more and more people register.

Andrea Hailey: Well, I mean, the real question is why do we have these registration processes to begin with? You should be able to turn 18 and you’re automatically registered to vote, you’re already a part of the process. And then really the challenge would just be how do we make sure that people turn out to vote? I don’t think it’s by mistake that we have multiple steps in multiple stages. We know that the more hoops you put up in front of people, the less likely people will jump through all of them to make it. So I think that right now, I think we have to get approximately another 25% of the population through who’s not currently registered. And I think that’s the challenge ahead.

There are a couple of things though that we do have some very real attacks on registration that are complicating it. Florida famously just passed their own version of the SAVE Act, which won’t be in place for this election cycle. But next election, we’ll have to register people and they’ll have to have proof of citizenship documents and papers like a passport. And most people don’t have a passport. Most voters don’t have a passport to begin with. And then once they do, just have to show up in person to bring citizenship documents, just adds another part of the process to people’s already very busy lives.

And so I think that as we look forward to where voter registration is really going and how many people will be able to participate, we have to look at states that are enacting laws like Florida’s in real-time because I think those numbers could go up about the number of people who are not registered.

Stephen Richer: So our guests are highly attuned guests who follow elections and democracy, but just for anyone who doesn’t know, the SAVE Act and SAVE America Act is the piece of legislation that the US Congress is considering regarding documented proof of citizenship in order to be able to register. And obviously there’s a Florida analog that we were just talking about there, but I want to make sure I understood. You’re saying that there are about 25% of the country is 18 years of age, a United States citizen, isn’t otherwise disqualified and yet hasn’t registered to vote?

Andrea Hailey: Yes.

Stephen Richer: That’s an enormous number.

Archon Fung: Yeah, that’s a big number.

Andrea Hailey: It’s the work that is big.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Wow. It’ll be interesting to see, I think probably a bunch of social scientists will be kind of studying Florida to see what effect those registration requirements have on people. I guess my gut would be it’s so onerous to have to register with a passport or a birth certificate that the law just won’t last very long, but who knows? We’ll see.

Andrea Hailey: I mean, I think people need to really pay attention to the intentionality of these laws because sometimes it can seem they don’t sound as bad all the time as they really are. And especially when you take that law and add it with others that are meant to wash people out of the process. I think if, for instance, your birth certificate does not match your current passport, then you have a real problem under the law. And most women, about 80% of women in the United States changed their last names.

So what were these laws really intended to do and who were they intended to target? This is where we start to turn from, I think we’d start to turn into a more authoritarian kind of conversation because that really intentionalizes washing a large swath of the American population or state of population in Florida’s case out of the process. And those are both conservative and liberal women. So I think that as these laws are introduced, the fact that they’re even being introduced, everyone needs to pay very, very close attention.

Stephen Richer: Yeah. And I want to tease out something that Andrea emphasizes, which is one, you could have a public policy debate about whether or not you should require documented proof of citizenship to be able to participate in US elections. But a second component of that is the mechanics. And oftentimes that’s where it gets very messy because it’s maybe not as simple as sort of snapping our fingers and saying that this is something that we’re going to require, because as Andrea mentioned, a minority of Americans have a passport. I think it’s something like 45% of US adults have a passport. Birth certificates, you have that, maybe your maiden name question as well as other challenges as well as the fact that not everyone just has their birth certificate on hand.
But whole debate or whole conversation we can have about SAVE Act, SAVE America Act, but turn us to the present day because I’m actually pretty pumped. This is the first time it really feels to me like election day with quite a few states that are having statewide primaries. What are you hearing from in terms of voters who have already participated or are participating today or in the coming weeks? What’s the level of enthusiasm? What’s on people’s minds in terms of the mechanics of actually participating?

Archon Fung: Yeah. And do you think this is going to be a higher turnout for a mid-year and primary than usual or lower because of all the weirdness that’s happening?

Andrea Hailey: Right now we’re seeing spikes around registration around primaries all across the nation. And in the states that have already had their primaries, we are seeing higher participation, particularly on the Democratic side. We’re seeing a surge in numbers. I think North Carolina had over 800,000 voters participating in the Democratic primary there. We’re seeing a lack of enthusiasm in the Republican primaries. Those seem to not have the highest number of turnout. Marion County, which is where I’m from, just had ours and I think it was the highest participation overall since 2010. So numbers were really up and then were really surging in the Democratic primary.

I think you have a lot of interesting challenges and a lot of people challenging incumbents this year and so that’s bringing about more participation as people get excited to get in the mix. And I think that quite frankly, specific issues and affordability, things like that are driving people to participate in these primaries. And so it’s exciting to see that the numbers are up. I think in Texas, two thirds of the counties that exist in Texas saw increased participation in their primaries. So the overall trend is that people are showing up and they’re showing up in larger numbers and the real question is, what does this mean for the general election?

Archon Fung: Yeah, for the midterms. Yeah. Do you expect that trend of participation to occur? I mean, usually midterm elections and then midterm primaries, we don’t expect to see too many people fired up and getting to the polls, only the real enthusiasts, but maybe it’s a bigger deal this time.

Andrea Hailey: I think there’s a bigger trend of taking the primary numbers and then coupling that with the fact that organically at Vote.org, we’re seeing a surge in traffic even before we put our program out in the field. And so that means that people are really wanting to have their voice heard. I think about 35% of the registrations that we’re seeing that are organic registrations are 18-year-olds. So that’s also usually the toughest registration to get. So I think a younger generation is about to show up at the polls. I think that the numbers at Vote.org are about double the last midterm election at this point and that tells me that we probably do have a wave of participation coming.

Stephen Richer: Okay. Just reminder that if you’re viewing online live, you can type your chat question in and we’ll integrate it into the chat. But this is another area, sorry Archon, where I’m a bit of a party spoiler, a bit of a sort of like, I hate to be the guy that asks the question, but is this heightened turnout necessarily a positive thing or is it a reflection of deep satisfaction with the governing status quo and therefore we should all be rooting for nice low turnout because everyone’s pretty good. And so it’s just like, it doesn’t really matter that much. So I’d rather go hang out with my kids for a few extra minutes or something like that. How much do you get a sense, Andrea, that it’s just dissatisfaction, unhappiness, unrest?

Archon Fung: Yeah. Is there bad turnout?

Andrea Hailey: I don’t think that there’s any such thing as bad turnout. I think having high turnout numbers means that people are civically engaged, that they’re really thinking about the things that matter in their community, especially at the local level. It shows me that people want to participate, have their voice heard. I get scared for the day when people lose trust in elections and don’t believe that their voice matters anymore. And I get scared for our society thinking about the implications of that, if we were to lose that spark that says, “Hey, I’m an American and I’m excited about our elections and I can participate. And if I don’t like something, I have a method by which to express my dissatisfaction. And if I’m excited and I love something, I have a method to express that too.”
We want people to have channels of expression because on the other side of that, if you don’t feel you have that and you don’t trust your elections anymore, you either start to go towards a different style of government completely or you have chaos in our society. So I think high turnout is a good sign. I think people showing up for the things that they care about in their community is a good sign overall and I think we’re about to see that in the midterm.

Stephen Richer: How close do you think we are to that doomsday scenario? So according to recent polling, 60% of Americans have high confidence that the midterm elections in November will be accurately and lawfully and accessibly administered. So 40% are not at high confidence. When do you think that doomsday scenario would kick in?

Andrea Hailey: I mean, I think we’re getting closer and closer to the edge of that and I think we cannot have multiple election cycles where we tell people or where we have people in leadership communicating that the elections don’t work. If you don’t like the results of an election, that’s fine that you don’t like it, but to then try to say that the election itself is invalid is where the danger point is and people are starting to lose trust. And if you hear those messages over and over again, it’s no wonder that they are.
I don’t know exactly how far out we are from that moment where people just really feel like what they do and say doesn’t matter anymore. I think we have a resiliency that we’re seeing in our communities, but I think over time trust is earned and it does really start to weight on people if they feel like they can’t trust the system. But I think better to kind of reinforce that you can go out, you can have your voice heard and you can make change, you can run for office, you can do all sorts of things to filter your energy through the systems that we have versus the chaos that could reign on the other side of losing that trust.

Archon Fung: Yeah. It seems like that the trust numbers in, is the election going to be free and fair and everybody counted, 60% seems like an awfully low number to me, like an awfully low number. And then there are all sorts of worries that polls show people are having about law enforcement at the polls and federal interference. But so far, at least for this cycle, as you say, it doesn’t seem to have scared everyone off. Plenty of people are still participating, maybe more so. So that’s a good sign.

Andrea Hailey: Yeah. I think all the noise has been meant to distract everyone and throw people into that feeling of despair. And what we’re seeing right now is the opposite of that. We’re seeing people show up, we’re seeing the numbers spike, we’re seeing people register and I think we’ll see people show up in the general. I do think you can try to have harmful rhetoric, you can pass new laws, the Supreme Court can come out with the new decisions, but the people are still there. The 9.9 we’ve registered are still active and going to show up in elections and that’s sort of the answer to the distraction and to the noise is just the extreme focus on how do you protect everybody’s individual right to the ballot box and how do you show up time and time and time again to protect elections. And right now I think there’s a bit of a backlash. I think people are moving so aggressively and so fast to attack our elections that we’re seeing possibly a backlash occur.

Archon Fung: To that attack. Yeah. Interesting.

Stephen Richer: So I know we want to move into the philosophical case at some point, but I’m going to keep us in the present, in the real for at least another question or two. And I don’t know how much you follow Louisiana, but Louisiana concluded its first primary this past Saturday and Louisiana represented the confluence of a whole bunch of changes. This year they moved to a partisan primary system versus a unitary primary system where everyone was on the same ballot.

And then of course, while early voting had already begun in Louisiana, the governor said, “We’re going to redraw the US House districts. So hold off on those elections. Those are going to be postponed, but all of the other elections are still underway.” Senator Cassidy, who came in third in the primary and so therefore will not be advancing to a runoff in the Republican primary said turnout was suspiciously low. Do you think it’s because… What is causing this? Is it all those changes? Is it a sense that it doesn’t matter because it can all be manipulated anyways? Or is it just that some of these races weren’t terribly compelling?

Andrea Hailey: I mean, I think anytime you insert that level of confusion into the process that voters get turned around every which way, the idea that you suspend in an election after voting has already started. I think that this was an example of the insertion of confusion and chaos. And I think the lesson from Louisiana is that we have to meet those moments with extreme focus and with getting the information to voters in real-time that they need to navigate it. But I think voters across America should be paying attention to that confusion and chaos moment because we need to run all the way through the finish line in the general election.

Archon Fung: I mean, maybe Louisiana’s a case where the chaos did overwhelm and drive participation down.

Andrea Hailey: And because it was in the middle of the election. I mean, they suspended the election. I mean, that’s a-

Archon Fung: Can we draw them in.

Andrea Hailey: I’m the CEO of Vote.org and if I lived in Louisiana, that would be a confusing moment for me. That’s not something that happens very often. A matter of fact, there have been tons of Supreme Court cases that have said, hey, it’s too close to the election to hear these cases and to have it effective immediately. And now, but in this instance, states were able to immediately start to take moves right before or during an election to start to redistrict and do all sorts of wild things. So I think that was a high level of confusion and I do think it played a role.

Stephen Richer: I was cribbing off of Spiro4519’s question. It ties into what George Doyle is asking in the comments, what do you tell voters right now who are seeing their jurisdictions redistrict? Do you just say like, “Hey, you got to stay tuned, keep coming back to the website. There might be updated information.” Or what type of language are you using to keep them engaged and informed while this fairly unprecedented late stage redistricting process is happening?

Archon Fung: In Democratic and Republican states, right? I mean, there’s the confusion part, but there’s also the disempowerment part. My vote’s not going to matter because it’s not competitive or party competitive anymore, right?

Andrea Hailey: Well, what I try to remind people of in general is that most of the things that affect your daily lived experience in life are going to happen at the hyper local level. So your local school board elections, your mayor’s race, things like that. And so if you keep people focused there, those are the mechanisms right now for really getting your voice heard and getting anything accomplished that you care about from an agenda perspective.

I think on the national level, but we still have to get people through this process and through these midterm elections, I think on the national level, this puts a lot of stress on programs like ours. We need the resourcing to really do a lot of voter education, a larger amount of voter education than we’ve ever had to do before before the elections. And so as this environment changes and you have to get people through those changes, I think that there’s a real conversation that needs to happen in the philanthropic world as well about how do we make sure that voters have everything that they need, especially redistricting used to occur around the census and now it occurs between lunch and dinner every other day. So if we’re going to do it this way, then we need to resource the communication around that and the voter education around that in new and different and larger ways. And that’s just the reality of it.

For us, we have a What’s on My Ballot tool that will help voters to see what’s on their ballot. They put their address in and it gives all of the information of who’s running and they can then go to the sites of the different candidates and plan out their ballot. And then that’s on us then to keep that data up in real-time to make sure that we can have everything we need to support voters. But it does add extra stress to Vote.org and to our teams at Vote.org and to the teams at every other organization at the local and national level that are really engaged in this work.

Archon Fung: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think we should do it this way. I mean, it’s ridiculous. It’s like Stephen used to play baseball. It’s like introducing the pitch clock in game three of the world series. It’s ridiculous.

Stephen Richer: But incidentally, the pitch clock is a great invention.

Archon Fung: Yeah, yeah. But you should do it between seasons.

Stephen Richer: Yes. And kind of importantly, this is maybe torturing the metaphor, but they had a whole rules committee with representation from all the owners and they had to have a requisite level of buy-in and they tested it first in some of the preseason spring training games. And so basically-

Archon Fung: All that should happen.

Stephen Richer: … confirming my suspicions, which is that all lessons you should learn in life, you can learn from sports.

Archon Fung: From pro sports.

Andrea Hailey: You change the rules of the game when you’re afraid of honest competition. That’s what has happened here. And so people don’t want to compete so instead they’re changing all of the rules around in real-time and then making everybody play by a different set of rules in which they think that they might be able to find some sort of victory. But an honest competition is what I think voters want. You compete in the marketplace of ideas and then the voters decide which ideas they like.

Archon Fung: Yeah. And that’s what you should be changing the rules to try to achieve for sure. So Barb Colvin asks, what’s happening with states that are purging voters without notice? And so Stephen and I are in lots of conversations with election directors and others and some of them feel like this whole language of purging the rolls is quite unfair to them because of course they have to check the rolls to make sure people are still living where they said they were living in the state, et cetera. And so what are you seeing out there about kind of legitimate efforts to make sure that the voter rolls are clean and in order versus manipulative efforts to try to eliminate voters who should be on the rolls and how are you communicating and dealing with A and B?

Andrea Hailey: Our big message to voters is go to Vote.org, check your voter registration, verify. We have a verify tool and that verify tool has been used over 25 million times and there’s a reason for it. It’s just people know that some states are better actors than others on this and people come to the site to make sure that no one has tried to take them out of the process. And I think that that’s a good thing. And unfortunately we’re having to tell people to do it more and more often so that they make it all the way through the process.

But of course there are wonderful election officials all over this country who are doing their best to maintain lists and there are all sorts of reasons why people may need to fall off the voter rolls and they need to be cleaned and updated. And I think that that work for the most part, over the different election cycles, has gone off without a hitch. But we do have some states where they’re trying to pick and choose voters instead of the voters picking the leaders, and in those states it becomes really suspicious who gets purged from the voter rolls and who doesn’t. And I think that this gets back to intentionality and then accountability for the people who are trying to kick voters off of the rolls.

And it particularly affects voters of color. We see states in the South that have played games and manipulated the voter purges on purpose, or they kind of use it or lose it attitude of if you haven’t voted in the last election cycle, you could be purged off of it. I mean, I would say some of those states, they don’t make people, if you haven’t used your hunting license, they don’t just revoke it. The communication also to voters around those sorts of rules I think is really important. So we just tell people, keep verifying your registration status, verify it all the way through until you cast your ballot on election day and make sure that you are on the rolls. Some states are great and some are really terrible.

Archon Fung: So just a question. So your voter tool is connected to all of the state, secretaries of state and updated in real-time. And so in Massachusetts, I don’t even know how they do it in Massachusetts, but if they did a cleaning, whatever, next month, I could check now and then I could check a couple months from now and I would get the right information from your tool, is that right?

Andrea Hailey: Yes, you would.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Okay. That’s really important to know out there for people who want to be sure.

Stephen Richer: I assume it just has an API then that plugs in with the secretary’s website.

Andrea Hailey: That’s right.

Stephen Richer: Yeah. So in Maricopa County, we had our own checking. You could go onto your voter dashboard and you can make sure that all your voter registration information is up-to-date. But of course, under the National Voter Registration Act, we push up to the Secretary of State who maintain the statewide voter registration database and would have, at least on a monthly basis, all the updated information and I assume then an API that connects with Vote.org.

So kind of pairing from that, so if somebody’s not registered to vote, they’re not going to vote, but if someone is registered to vote, I think we often in the political science field and in the pro-democracy and voter advocacy field talk about lowering the barriers to participation, assuming that the reason why somebody doesn’t participate in an election is because of some sort of an inconvenience measure, or at least that’s what we’re focused on, maybe because we feel we have agency over that. Is that really the reason why some people don’t vote or why do some, always at least 20% of registered voters will not vote in a presidential election? What do you hear from these voters about why they don’t vote?

Archon Fung: Yeah, especially the young ones who can be kind of turned off by the parties and the whole deal, right?

Andrea Hailey: We hear from voters a few different things, especially among younger voters, some of them feel like the system doesn’t work for them. Younger voters are increasingly registering as independent. They don’t really identify with either national party. They’re swinging wildly back and forth, when they do vote, between conservative or Democrat. In the last 18 months, their thoughts about leadership in this country have swung back and forth wildly. I think that a lot of people feel that the system just isn’t working for them, isn’t addressing their concerns, the things they care about, substantive things on student debt and other issues aren’t getting addressed comprehensively. I think that they start to feel like they want something new, and there is this idea that staying home is a protest of sorts. I would caution people against that because they think when your voice isn’t heard, then people, politicians don’t have to take into account anything that you care about because you’re not their voters. I think that’s a self-defeating perspective, but I do think it’s very real and understandable why people don’t think that the system’s working for them.

Other people cite that they feel like they don’t have enough information and that’s the problem that we try to solve at Vote.org, making sure everybody has the election information that they need. Other people say their lives are just very, very busy. So if you have more than one job, you’re looking for childcare, it’s one more thing to go out and do and participate in. And that’s where it becomes important that people have options like being able to mail in their vote or in Texas they had in one of the counties back in, I think this was 2020, they had 24-hour voting locations where people could go no matter what time of day or night, in between shifts or you were going to your next job and it was a drive through so you could drive through and vote, and that all of a sudden really increased turnout. And then of course what happened, it got a lot of use, people got really excited about it and so they shut it down.

We have ways of getting more people through the system enthusiastically, but we just need to have all of the political will to make it happen. We need to make it so that it’s accessible and then we need to really address once people are elected to office, government needs to deliver for people on the things that they care about so that they understand that it really does make a difference.

Stephen Richer: Quick, quick follow-up. On the informational bit, you said, some people don’t feel like they have the information. Is it on the process how to vote or is it on the candidates who is on the ballot?

Andrea Hailey: I think it’s both and the process by which you can vote sometimes confuses people, especially younger people when they go away to school or things like that, they’re always like, “Do I vote here? Do I need to vote absentee? How do I get through this process?” It’s also about candidates though. I hear often, “Well, I don’t know who these judicial candidates are.”

Archon Fung: And a local election.

Andrea Hailey: And local election and I don’t know, I don’t understand what this ballot initiative means. This language is really tricky here. So I think it becomes important to have robust voter guides and then it’s important to help people to access the information about some of those hyper local races so they don’t feel like they’re playing a guessing game, but they actually know what the values are of the candidates that they’re voting for.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Andrea, I wanted to shift topics a little bit because I really want to hear your views about this, about the ways in which the act of encouraging people to vote has itself become, at least in my perception, a little bit controversial. So I first got into it at a very local level around Harvard Votes Challenge and talking to people at University of Michigan and other campuses to try to encourage students to vote.

And then later on we got hooked up and tried to talk to companies. Many of them a few cycles ago were doing things like giving employees time off to maybe go vote or work at the polls or some of the internet companies would still kind of have, oh, go vote messages and banners and ads on there. And it felt like it was just a feel good activity and everyone wanted to chip into, “Yeah, can’t we get voting up two points or five points? Wouldn’t that be great for America?”

And I certainly felt like that. I felt like everybody I talked to felt like that. But these days, I guess I’m detecting more of a reticence from university leaders and from CEOs to engage in that kind of apple pie thing of let’s get on the bandwagon and encourage a bunch of people to vote. So I don’t know, what’s Vote.org’s experience been in terms of that vibe?

Andrea Hailey: We’ve also seen the same thing that you’re describing. We’ve seen that some institutions are afraid in this moment in time. I think that’s a wild thing because this is something that this is a fundamental piece of American society is our belief in a shared democracy. And so the idea that that would become controversial is very difficult.
For companies, I talk to them a lot about the idea that democracy, they’ve done very well in democracy, they’ve had record returns and do they really want to chance being one of the one or two companies that does well in some sort of authoritarian model? I don’t think so. So they have to start to take a longer term vision. For institutions like schools and things, you have seen less energy put towards voter registration and all that. And so we’re really working with schools to try to get them excited and participating in these midterm elections.

What I have seen is that the students themselves pick up the slack. I’ve also seen the same thing with companies, employees putting together things for their fellow employees. So while institutions may be reticent, we’re seeing that it actually doesn’t matter. I was just up at Columbia the other day and the student group there was so insanely impressive and they had registered more voters than the institution had in the previous years. So I think that what we’re starting to see is individuals coming together in groups, finding belonging together in groups around shared civic activities and they’re starting to form their own thoughts about voter registration and get out the vote. I mean, we did see this in 2020 as well. Athletic teams really started a lot of the energy and then they would go challenge the rest of the campuses to join them in registration and participation.

So I think that while the institutions themselves may be having this moment of fear, the people involved in all of those institutions are not reflecting that same thing back. And I do want to say the only way to preserve a democracy is for all of these different stakeholders and institutions to come together and to, when everybody participates and when everybody encourages voting, then there’s nothing to be worried or concerned about. The fear is the point. The whole point of people who want to see a different system, maybe like a more authoritarian system, is to try to scare people out the process and that’s a dangerous place to be in. So we just all have to find our collective bravery and move forward.

Stephen Richer: Responding to this, to your remarks, Wildest Future said something that sort of hits home a little bit and makes me feel a little awkward to be honest, says, I can see how “get out the vote” is to civic engagement as recycling is to combating climate change. And I got to admit in some of my past workplaces, recycling okay, but when we started composting at one of my law firms and we walked in there, I was just like, I would roll my eyes sort of thing. And I wonder, I would hope I would never do that, taking me out of this world and my lived experiences, but I guess I can see as someone just being like, “Oh, the goody two-shoers of the corporation are out again. One day it’s composting, the next day it’s-”

Archon Fung: The next day it’s get out the vote.

Stephen Richer: “… marching up to the polls.” Yeah.

Andrea Hailey: Well, I mean, I think what’s happening though is here almost every issue anyone cares about at all rests on the idea that you have, fundamental idea of having free and fair elections. Without that foundation, everything falls. And so I think that the adverse to that is showing people what does catastrophic realization then look like? What does a society look like on the other side of losing free and fair elections? And it’s not going to run very smoothly and it’s not going to be some grand utopia. And so I think that that is what can keep people together and keep people not sort of rolling their eyes at the idea of it. And I think kind of reaching people in a different way through the places and spaces they want to be reached about it instead of me going out there just saying, “Hey, go vote.” It’s better to have an integration.

We have a partnership, we had a partnership last election cycle with Snapchat for instance. And so people get prompts to register to vote and that registered people in record numbers. So they did it in their own time in the moment they wanted to. Or we had a partnership where SNAP beneficiaries when they were checking their balance would get a prompt, “Do you want to register to vote?” And that registered in the pilot program, registered 80,000 people right away, but it was in the places and spaces that people want to. So I’m not necessarily just showing up at somebody’s house saying, “Go vote,” or sitting in somebody’s entrance to their work and saying it. And I think that when people self-organize inside these institutions, then it probably comes across in more authentic ways than not.

Archon Fung: Yeah. And I guess I’ve always thought about, I mean, I think that Wildest Future, your comment about like recycling is to combating climate change. I guess I think of recycling as a kind of gateway drug into environmentalism or combating climate change and voting as a gateway drug into civic and democratic life and other forms of participation. Like you begin to talk about it with other people and maybe you begin to do other things. But yeah, voting itself is an important act but one of many acts in the Democratic and civic sphere.

Stephen Richer: But you could see why a company would be turned off if you phrase it like that. Like, “Wait, you’re telling me it’s a gateway drug to my employees talking about politics of the workplace? That is not what I want,” sort of thing.

Archon Fung: Well, I think the company’s got to do their bit for democracy. If there aren’t any spaces where people are talking about those things, then…

Andrea Hailey: I tell a company it’s just going to be really expensive for you under authoritarianism or government takes over your company. So you might want to help promote the system that’s bringing you all these epic returns. We’ve had a phenomenal GDP. You might want some stability, things like that. There is a self-interest in the democracy space for companies. I mean, I don’t know if they want to bet on being the one that gets to produce military cars or something. So if that’s not what they want, then they are stakeholders-

Stephen Richer: They need to chip in.

Andrea Hailey: There’s a reason why business flourishes in America.

Stephen Richer: Okay. My final question, but you have to keep it short is, do you have a short hot take, hot prediction on something pertaining to voter participation this midterm cycle?

Andrea Hailey: Yeah, hot participation. I think we’re going to see young people showing up to vote at the polls. They’re not going to just register. They’re going to make it all the way from registration to the ballot box. And I think that when that happens, we will see different kinds of candidates make it through the process.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Great. And we didn’t talk about this at all, but I think Vote.org, you’ve been very sensitive and engaged in different studies about what actually works and doesn’t work in getting people to vote. And so what would your advice be to people out there who do want to increase voting? Is it like take a friend to the ballot box or what would your advice be?

Andrea Hailey: My biggest advice is just start and then after that it’s yes, take a friend to the ballot box, become your own vote captain, try to multiply the number of people who are participating. Once you know all the rules and how to participate, make sure you’re bringing people along with you. Then go to your company, then go to your school, then go to places where you can just keep expanding the circle of people who are participating in the election with you. I like thinking about really interesting integrations to you. Vote.org tools are free.

We have both the paid tools and the free tools, but anyone can use them and you can integrate it into what you’re already doing. So if there’s a big civic moment coming up, go ahead and throw those tools on the site for whatever you’re doing. If there are integrations that are tech forward integrations are the really interesting and the partnerships that I quoted earlier, turning record numbers, we could do that on the local level as well.
I think that the other advice I have is don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sometimes just a phone call while we’re doing all of this fancy tech, sometimes a phone call is just as effective as well. Make sure that… We have a radio program at Vote.org. So while radio’s been around since World War II, before. So we use old tactics as well as new tactics to reach people where they are. The biggest thing is just think about how do you get as many people with you across the finish line as possible, even if you have to throw them on your back and get them there.

Stephen Richer: So at the risk of sounding like a sanctimonious recycler, we encourage all of our viewers to participate in this midterm cycle. If you have any questions about how to participate, when your primary is, what you need to do to make sure you’re registered, what’s on the ballot, then you can in fact go to Vote.org to check out that information. And that’s why we wanted to conclude for this season, season two with Andrea, who we appreciate really being here. Again, the website is Vote.org.
Thanks very much for your time and thanks for registering hundreds of thousands of people this cycle and millions over the past years. That’s a lot for democracy. And then thanks to all of our listeners who have joined us for some of our 42 episodes now. And again, we are going on our summer break as the semester wraps up at Harvard Kennedy School, but we will be back on June 30th, June 30th to celebrate the upcoming 250 anniversary of the United States. Archon?

Archon Fung: Great. And when we come back, I guess a bunch of the primaries will be done. So we’ll have some results to talk about, some pretty dramatic stuff happening while we’re on break and today even. And then final thank you to the production team who is Courtney, Colette, Ralph, and Evelyn. And again, you can get this show on wherever you get your podcasts, on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, wherever. And so please have a great break and please come back and join us in June when we’ll have our beginning of season three.

Stephen Richer: Season three.

Archon Fung: Andrea, thank you very much for coming on. It was a great discussion.

Andrea Hailey: Thank you.