Webinar On-Demand: Combating Disenfranchisement and Building Transparency

Part of the Electoral Frontiers webinar series, including "Political Engagement in the Digital Age" and "Democracy's Challenge to Rising Authoritarianism."

The right to vote has become a contentious issue in the United States. Hasty, politically motivated changes to voting rules and procedures pose significant challenges. In particular, they can undermine the ability of people of color, rural residents, low-income individuals, and non-native English speakers to fully participate in the democratic process.

The Pulitzer Center hosted a conversation on efforts to boost voter participation by enhancing transparency and accessibility across all communities, despite growing challenges to election systems. Panelists discussed systemic disenfranchisement, including changing voter identification and mail-in ballot procedures, arcane polling information, and legislation limiting voter registration drives. Pulitzer Center grantee Brittany Gibson moderated the discussion with Arlyssa Becenti, Aaron Mendelson, and Ashton Pittman.

Key Highlights:

• “​​[Everyone] can read the stories about who's polling what one day, or what the candidates are saying about one another,” Pittman said. “But a lot of people just really want basic election information.”
• “In the United States, voting is a two-step process. You have to first be registered and then you have to actually vote. The laws about registration vary significantly from state to state,” Mendelson said. “These registration laws, they don't always get the same attention as voting laws, but they can make for great stories throughout the political calendar and throughout the election cycle.”
• “Go into [election coverage] foremost with a democracy-centered mindset. Not centered on just the politics and the polls, center it on democracy, on voters, on what they care about. Do coverage that focuses on issues and focuses on the stakes of elections for people," Pittman said. "Because I think something we often find is that people know kind of the sports like play by play–who's up, who's down in the polls–but a lot of people don't know what the stakes are on their lives… how these things affect their lives. Not just who are the personalities running, but what does the office that you're voting for actually do? What is its function?”
• "When it comes to voter registration drives, one reason we thought this merited more coverage than it was receiving was that there was a really disproportionate impact on young voters and voters of color," Mendelson said. "If you think back historically, voter registration drives have been a huge piece of expanding the franchise in this country: the women's suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, and more recently, things like Rock the Vote… Any law changing how this method of registration works was [going to] disproportionately burden those groups that were using it the most.”
• “Especially since what happened in 2020, Native votes are being seen as important when it wasn't before as much as before,” Becenti said. “We've all heard that Native voters are Democrats. That's not the case anymore. We're not a monolith… Republicans are trying to sway the vote… because they saw how powerful these votes are. So being able to hone in on these propositions that are suppressing native votes is important because when we show up in numbers, it's very strong… [There are] resources to teach people about why they need to vote, why they need to be up to date with these propositions, and what could be the ramifications if people vote on these propositions.”
• “Voter fraud is a real thing, but it's just vanishingly rare. It's so infrequent. There will no doubt be scattered instances of voter fraud in the general election this year. But it's important to contextualize those,” Mendelson said. "And when it comes to people making claims, especially demonstrably untrue claims about voter fraud, it's important that when we're quoting those people talking about other things that we let our audiences know that they are not able to get the facts straight about elections and that you should be considering that when they're talking about any other issue.”