We appreciate your continuing interest and support, and we’re proud to provide this update on the changing landscape and increasing receptivity towards universal voting.
If you have questions about the initiatives highlighted here, or want to learn more,
Internationally, the UK’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is a proponent of electoral reform,and compulsory voting is included in several new proposals being seriously considered by senior advisers.
Compulsory voting has been advocated by numerous think tanks in Labour policy circles as a way of creating a more representative government that will work to balance the UK’s unequal electorate and mitigate low election turnout and the economic failure that has resulted from it.
Recent articles on the prospects of the UK adopting compulsory voting:
The annual Summit conference of the National Association of State Legislatures was held in Chicago in August. 100% Democracy had a solid advocacy presence, hundreds of conversations at our booth, and significant interest expressed by legislators from states in every region of the country.
In part driven by concern about efforts to limit voting, we expect to see bills moving toward universal voting introduced in a number of legislative sessions next year. This will build on legislation introduced in the last three years in Washington State, Massachusetts, Utah, New York, Connecticut, and Illinois.
A Legislative Victory in Connecticut
Three years of steady work in the state culminated in May with the legislative establishment of a Task Force to study how Connecticut can get closer to 100% participation in elections. A broad coalition of organizations supported the effort and testified at two public hearings.
▪ A nine member Task Force, which held its first meeting this month, will study ways to dramatically increase voting participation, specifically including “studying the experience of jurisdictions where voting is a required civic duty”.
▪ The Task Force will recommend policies to the 2027 session of the legislature. The legislation also created the ability for municipalities to undertake pilot projects moving toward full participation.
▪ 100% Democracy’s Director, Miles Rapoport, has been appointed to the Task Force and will serve as Co-Chair along with Representative Hilda Santiago, the prime sponsor of the Task Force and a strong supporter of universal voting.
Examples of recent news articles about universal voting in Connecticut:
An Op-Ed prominently featured by the Chicago Sun-Times in August 2024 attracted the interest of several democracy organizations and leading democracy advocate and lobbyist, Dan Johnson, in the Illinois legislature.
▪ An array of grassroots organizations – including Illinois Citizen Action, Rainbow/PUSH, Chicago Votes, the League of Women Voters of Chicago - came together to advance a bill moving the state toward universal voting. There were
strong legislative champions as well.
▪ Two potential policies were discussed. One bill hadIllinois making a declaration (without defined implementation) that voting will be a required civic duty. A second proposed the creation of a Task Force similar to the one in Connecticut. A subject matter hearing on the universal voting bill featured Professor Ekow Yankah of the University of Michigan, the author of Compulsory Voting and Black Citizenship. Both approaches were the focus of serious discussion until the final days of the legislative session, but did not pass.
▪ After the session, 100% Democracy co-sponsored a July 6 webinar with Illinois Citizen Action on the Future of Voting Rights as part of the America 250 celebrations. It featured Senator Adriane Johnson (sponsor of the legislation) and Representative La Shawn Ford. Our coalition and our legislative sponsors are already drafting a new bill for next year.
One aspect of advancing a new idea is to simply get people to start talking about it. Without overstating, that is happening in regard to universal voting in a significant number of venues, including and beyond those already highlighted:
▪ Nationally, the concept of universal voting has been endorsed by a number of organizations, including the NAACP, State Voices, Public Citizen, Voto Latino, Black Voters Matter, the Working Families Party, the Scherman Foundation, and Community Change.
▪ The idea of universal voting has been featured in national publications including The New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Harvard International Review, Harvard Law Review, Wall Street Journal, The American Prospect, Chicago Sun-Times, and many more.
▪ Recent research and polling on the idea of universal voting has been published by the Harvard Kennedy School and in the UMass Poll.
Examples of recent news articles supporting the concept of universal voting:
If you are interested in learning more, please visit our website. If you are interested in having a speaker to discuss universal voting at an event, endorsing universal voting publicly, or supporting the work financially, please contact Executive Director Miles Rapoport.
100% Democracy, c/o State Democracy Project, 77 Sands St, Brooklyn, New York 11201
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