Are You Liberal? Are You Sure?

The domestic worker advocacy group, Care in Action, fell short in their goal to elect Stacey Abrams in 2018, which motivated them to mobilize an effective GOTV campaign in 2020. Over 250 of their members canvassed local neighborhoods each day, knocking on over 1 million doors. Overall, the group contacted 5.85 million voters by phone, mail, or in person. The group prioritized making connections with people historically overlooked in the political process and the member organizers make meaningful connections as canvassers because they share similar challenges and concerns as the people whose homes they visit.

Grassroots movements made up of ordinary citizens can go a long way in creating change. This article details several initiatives across Ohio that were led by citizens using a combination of lobbying, education, persistence, knowledge of government practices, and organization. Some things that were achieved using these methods are wage reimbursements and increased bus access.

Leaders from Lancaster Stands Up, an independent political organization, are bridging the gap between Democrats and Republicans in small, rural, conservative towns. They are building a progressive base by going back to the basics: door knocking and having conversations with voters. Their membership has grown to 800 people, and they’ve closed the gap between a progressive candidate and the Republican incumbent.

To prevent politicians from drawing districts to further their best interests, some areas in the state have independent and bipartisan citizen commissions that draw the boundaries for congressional, legislative and local government seats, as well as school districts. Areas with independent redistricting see districts that are more representative of the communities they serve, as well as higher levels of public participation and less gerrymandering.

Efforts aimed at recruiting student poll workers, some of whom aren’t yet eligible to vote, increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Monterey County ran registration drives, spoke in classrooms and other student-oriented events, and participated in California’s High School Voter Education Weeks, ultimately recruiting 107 students. The Georgia Youth Poll Worker Project used social media to recruit 1,000 young poll workers across the state. The organization is compiling “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Starting a Poll Worker Project” to help other organizations similarly recruit and train young poll workers.

A team of young people helped Kirsten Harris-Talley win a seat in the Washington state legislature. The 63 young people, ages 12 to 22, did more than the traditional behind the scenes work, like phone banking and door knocking. Rather, the young campaign workers participated in strategy meetings, ran the campaign’s Instagram account, and shaped the campaign’s climate justice and youth rights platforms. Ten of the young people were given paid fellowships and carried out responsibilities in all aspects of the campaign, such as voter engagement and fundraising.

In 2014, activists enlisted the help of attorneys and filed a lawsuit against the city of Santa Barbara for violating the California Voting Rights Act by diluting Latino votes. To avoid a costly legal battle, the city agreed to switch to district-based elections where local officials are selected by the actual neighborhoods they will represent rather than the city at-large. These elections ensure neighborhoods will be represented by officials that have intimate knowledge of the area’s needs and have led to dramatic increases in the diversity of elected officials in terms of ethnicity, age and gender.

Collective, or shared, candidacies, where groups of candidates to run for a single elected position in Brazil, has helped elevate women and other marginalized groups with progressive platforms to rise to power. From 2016 and 2018, 22 of the 98 groups that ran were elected. In 2020, 41% of the joint candidacies were led by women. A national bill to formalize collective candidacies has stalled since 2017, so one member of the group is formally elected, and is the one to cast votes and give formal speeches, while the others are hired as advisers but still are empowered to write and propose bills.

The LBJ Women’s Campaign School at the University of Texas at Austin provides nonpartisan support for women running for political office and seeks to recruit more center-right women into the pipeline of political candidates. The inaugural class had 50 women - 33 Democrats, 12 Republicans, and 5 Independents/Other. The group was racially diverse, 58% identified as women of color, but there is room for improvement when it comes to recruiting Republican women. The LBJ program received a financial award from the Women’s Public Leadership Network, which helps center-right women get involved in politics.

Voters Not Politicians (VPN) is a grassroots initiative that, with the help over 4,000 volunteers who knocked on 125,000 doors and canvassed at public events, collected the 400,000 signatures needed to get an anti-gerrymandering initiative on the statewide ballot. The initiative passed with 61% of the vote in 2018 and requires district boundaries be drawn by average citizens. The group’s founder also started The People, another group to help residents in other states apply VPNs model to stop gerrymandering. So far, residents in Florida, Virginia, and New Hampshire are at various stages of applying the model.