Model and Strategy
Through local, youth-led organizing and advocacy, Democracy Done Right will usher in an era of voting justice reforms to secure all Americans the voting access, security, and convenience we deserve. Our network will do this by passing major voting rights reforms including automatic voter registration (AVR), rights restoration, and other measures that promote or enhance ballot access, making participation in our democracy dramatically more accessible to marginalized communities. For example, when our affiliate in Oregon, the Bus Project, wrote and passed the nation’s first AVR law, we saw the largest growth in registration in communities of color of any state.
Our organizations will work to build robust local democracy coalitions and relationships with local election administrators to ensure policies and best practices are adopted that grow participation among young people. Our groups’ innovative work to bring voting and civic education to currently incarcerated citizens in county jails across three states and their coalition work to restore the rights of formerly incarcerated people in Florida is creating new avenues to participation in democracy for the most disenfranchised.
Impact
Even the most heroic mobilization efforts can be hamstrung by antiquated and oppressive election laws – many of which were specifically designed to exclude people of color and other underrepresented communities from the ballot box. These antiquated and exclusionary laws and newer attacks on the right to vote can can only be prevented by powerful, locally rooted pressure on decision-makers.
These needs brought the Alliance to launch the Democracy Done Right campaign, which focuses on guaranteeing all Americans the voting access, security, and convenience we deserve. Our work has the potential impact of expanding the electorate to include the most marginalized and affected communities which is crucial to eliminating the voter turnout disparity between communities of color and white Americans. One strong example of the potential for impact can be seen in Oregon. After implementing automatic voter registration (AVR), Oregon closed the turnout gap between eligible AAPI and white voters more than any other state in the country – narrowing from a 31 percentage point gap to a 12 percentage point gap. This was driven by double digit increases in AAPI registration and turnout – massive growth, largely unseen elsewhere in the United States.
By passing and successfully implementing AVR and the plethora of other innovative voting rights reforms our network is working on, we will shift the power back to the hands of the people to exercise their power in local, state, and federal elections well into the future.
Leadership
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Sarah Audelo
Executive Director
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Dawn Boudin
Director of Program and Partnerships