How Young Voters Helped Make Brandon Johnson Chicago's Next Mayor

The Sequim Good Governance League (SGGL) formed in response to right-wing agitators taking over positions of power and spreading misinformation. SGGL recruited progressive and moderately conservative candidates who successfully defeated incumbents with the help of dozens of volunteers they trained. Volunteers worked around the clock, sent out emails, put up signs around the town, and used their most effective tool: having one-on-one conversations with other residents. SGGL-backed candidates now hold the majority of government offices.

Faith leaders from communities of color mobilized voters to support candidates and policies that empower Black and Brown people. Events such as “Souls to the Polls” and the coalition-run Black Church 75 initiative, registered new voters and urged them to the polls around issues such as police brutality and racial injustices. Support from Black church members is credited with helping elect Democratic candidates, including Democratic senators in Georgia, as well as passing ballot initiatives, such as Measure J in Los Angeles that would decrease police funding in favor of mental health and housing resources.

Including Native Americans in the political process requires sustained efforts in redistricting by communities. The success of the 2018 mid-term election in bringing the first Native American women into Congress was made possible by the creation of legislative districts that gave Native American communities a voice. A comparison of the US states of Montana and North Dakota illustrates the importance of long-term collaboration, legal action, and community organization in redistricting efforts.

In its efforts to oust authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s Tisza Party established “Tisza Islands” across the country to recruit and engage volunteers, with more than 20,000 members as of January 2025. Through these outposts, the party was able to staff its campaign stalls with volunteers, distribute an independent newspaper highlighting information not reported in pro-Orbán media, and deploy election monitors to polling stations on election day. Tisza’s candidate, Péter Magyar, defeated Orbán with more than 53 percent of the vote.

Ahead of a ballot measure to guarantee access to abortion and reproductive health care in Ohio, the Black-led Ohio Women’s Alliance spoke with more than 1.3 million young female BIPOC voters, framing the campaign as a fight for a wide range of reproductive services. Residents approved the constitutional amendment with 60 percent of female voters and 83 percent of Black voters voting in favor.

Following violent disruption during campus elections in 2021, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, implemented an electronic voting process which allowed students to cast their ballots online via a university portal. Some students who had previously abstained from participating in elections due to safety concerns were able to vote, but the platform also experienced technical glitches and fears around cyberattacks, which left some students unable to cast their ballots.

Estonia's e-governance system allows citizens to register for social programs, access health records, and complete most government business digitally. In March 2023, more than half of the country's voters cast their ballots via the internet for the first time.

Non-citizen residents of Takoma Park, Maryland have been able to vote in municipal elections since 1993, and 16- and 17-year-olds there have had access to the ballot since 2013. Residents of the city, where roughly 30% of the population was born outside of the United States, say participating in city elections makes them feel more welcome in the community and helps them get invested in local issues.

Thanks in part to increased activism in light of COVID-19-related racism and targeted, multilingual outreach by voter advocacy organizations, turnout among Asian American voters increased by roughly 47 percent between 2016 and 2020.

Though voter turnout for municipal elections dropped about 4 percent across Ontario in 2022, a handful of communities in the northwestern part of the province bucked that trend by switching to online voting or telephone voting and a focus on outreach with younger residents. In the town of Atikokan, about 56 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, compared to 34 percent throughout the province as a whole.