Helping Tenants Register to Vote

B. Godihal is one of the thousands of communities in Karnataka that have worked to hold clean elections, stirred by a confluence of awareness campaigns by nongovernmental organizations and rising public frustration with candidates’ broken promises.

In Takoma Park, Maryland, the voting age for local elections is 16. Lowering the age has increased turnout among youth—and studies show that the sooner people start to vote, the more likely they are to be lifetime voters.

In the U.S. the electorate skews white, wealthy, and old because such demographics are more likely to vote. Creating mandatory voting laws would increase voter turnout and thus increase voting equity.

Voters tend to know a lot about presidential and local candidates but little about those in between. In Sierra Leone, an organization hosted, filmed, and then projected the debates in villages, increasing voters’ knowledge of the candidates and issues, and changing the way people voted.

Low voter turnouts, populists offering half-truths, corporate interests, and the blurring of facts in the media are signs that democracy around the world is in turmoil. Internationally, citizens have assembled different programs and initiatives that arm ordinary people with information about policy and their elected officials, as well as distinctive ways to reform the electoral system.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins and Berkeley say that Connecticut’s “permit-to-purchase” law requiring people to get a purchasing license before buying a handgun - despite early criticism - was actually a huge success for public safety in reducing gun homicides, especially relative to other states.

Voter turnout is a problem around the world, especially in local elections and among minority groups. But a small group of academics and activists in the US are experimenting with a new way to encourage people to turn up to vote: a lottery. Every voter is entered and one lucky winner gets a big cash prize, eliminating the risk of bribery and bought votes.

Low voter turnout has affected the results of numerous elections across the country. Oregon gave its residents the choice to opt in instead of out when receiving government services, in the hopes of increasing voter turnout.

Hospitals in Omaha are creating “medical-legal partnerships” for their patients: teams of doctors, social workers and lawyers that work collaboratively with patients to help them navigate challenges like fighting to get Medicaid coverage for a cat scan, or getting a security deposit back and moving out of an apartment that’s making them sicker.

To address the increasing unaffordability of housing in Berlin, the city introduced a new rent control law to prevent rates from exponential growth. The city has also outlawed vacation rentals in certain zones of the city and created a program that aims to have 30,000 new rental properties available over the next decade.