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This collection on American democracy challenges and complements blog posts and opinion pieces that are typical staples of the 24/7 news cycle in the lead up to US elections. You'll find reports about election and campaign administration, voting access and participation, government performance and perceptions, the role of the media in civil society, and more.

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"VOTE!" by Paul Sableman licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Featured

Digital Risks to the 2024 Elections: Safeguarding Democracy in the Era of Disinformation

February 16, 2024

Elections in the U.S. and around the world in 2024 face daunting digital risks.A new report from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights argues that the leading tech-related threat to this year's elections stems not from the creation of content with artificial intelligence but from a more familiar source: the distribution of false, hateful, and violent content via social media platforms.

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Field in Focus: The State of Pro-Democracy Institutional Philanthropy

January 22, 2024

Philanthropic support for promoting a healthy democracy has grown in recent years, marking a period of transformation for the field. Since 2016, an influx of funding, actors, and philanthropic infrastructure has amplified the impact of pro-democracy efforts while infusing the movement with needed dynamism.At the same time, from a funder perspective these developments mean that today's ecosystem is increasingly complex, confusing, and difficult to navigate. Sustaining the benefits of this transformation while avoiding the pitfalls of rapid growth requires a full understanding of funder capacities and needs.Drawing insights from interviews and surveys conducted with 70 institutional funders, this report sheds new light on the state and direction of the democracy funding landscape. It describes:1. Field Magnitude and Growth — estimates of the size, scope, and directionality of democracy-related philanthropic funding.2. Field Focal Areas — insights on major focal areas for funding today, how that has changed over time, and where additional funding may be needed in the future.3. New Actors and Infrastructure — lessons on the experiences of newer funders and the evolving field of funding intermediaries.4. Looking Ahead — outstanding questions for future research and opportunities to strengthen the funding field. 

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Democracy is Indigenous: Five Year Impact Report

January 14, 2024

Over the past five years, the National Urban Indian Family Coalition has been building urban Native civic engagement infrastructure by investing in the capacity of our member organizations of American Indian-led, community-based nonprofit organizations located in the largest Native communities in the country. These investments have allowed these critically important organizations to foster local community capacity to engage in civic and electoral work and build a foundation for independent political and policy influence. The NUIFC and our member organizations recognize that in order to transform and improve the lives of our urban Native communities that we must become dedicated to increasing civic participation and work towards policies that level the playing field, provide equitable redistribution of resources and recognize that we all need a government that works for all citizens.In 2018, NUIFC and its members spearheaded a groundbreaking initiative to mobilize the American Indian and Alaska Native populations residing off-reservation. These populations represent over 70% of the total AI/AN population and are usually overlooked by conventional voter turnout campaigns. In the last five years, this initiative has empowered these Native communities to have a significant impact on multiple electoral outcomes.We are thrilled to share the five-year Democracy is Indigenous Native Vote Report, which celebrates the impact of NUIFC's Native civic and electoral work. The report showcases the results of our efforts in the last three major elections and Census, explains our ambitious plan behind the creation of our member cohort and its rapid growth, and highlights a few of the organizations that demonstrate the power of these investments.

Featured

Election Budgeting: A Deeper Dive Into the Cost of State Elections

November 9, 2023

This report expands upon aspects of MIT's The Cost of Conducting Elections by looking at budgeting from the state and county budgeting perspective.The report covers how states and local governments choose to fund their elections, the role of private and public grants, and the differences between states and some of their counties. For this report, we parsed through the budgets of eight states, and within each of those states, two counties, for a total of 24 entities.The baseline funding of the elections systems of states and localities, while difficult to uncover and parse through, is available on public government websites or through public records requests filed with the appropriate parties.After a deep dive into the way these states and counties fund their elections, several themes emerged, but even more importantly, several big questions about what is next for the election system in our country.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964: 60 Years Later (2024 State of Black America Executive Summary)

February 28, 2024

The National Urban League's annual publication, now in its 48th edition, is the highly anticipated source for thought leaders focusing on racial equality in America. The 2024 State of Black America report examines the impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, marking the first significant effort by the U.S. to address the racial caste system. Sixty years later, the publication highlights that the struggle for equality persists, emphasizing the ongoing challenges and progress made in the pursuit of a more just and equitable future.

Defending Democracy: The Charles F. Kettering Foundation 2023 Annual Report

February 12, 2024

Throughout its history, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation's focus has always been on innovation. Our founder, Charles F. Kettering, believed that "our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future."In summer 2023, Kettering announced its new strategic plan, In Defense of Democracy, the result of the foundation's staff flexing their imagination to better meet the needs of democracy. It introduced our new vision, mission, guiding beliefs and values, and outlined five new strategic focus areas that are designed to utilize our resources effectively in the defense and advancement of democracy.Defending Democracy: The Charles F. Kettering Foundation 2023 Annual Report chronicles this journey of transformation, highlighting a year of reflection, dialogue, and action. It is our answer to the question, "What can the Charles F. Kettering Foundation uniquely offer the democracy field at this moment of crisis?" In 2023, we took the first step in our commitment to strengthening existing partnerships, forging new collaborations, broadening our reach and influence through innovative communication strategies, and exploring new lines of research.

2023 Indiana Civic Health Index

January 23, 2024

This sixth edition of the Indiana Bar Foundation's Indiana Civic Health Index (INCHI) begins a new chapter in the decade of past research undertaken to explore Indiana's overall civic health. This report examines some of Indiana's successes and shortcomings during the past few years and continues to use this data to examine future opportunities for improvement in our collective civic health. In this latest INCHI we look at new data from the 2022 election cycle as well as additional data demonstrating other areas of our state's civic health as we look forward to the national elections in 2024. The insights gained by examining Hoosiers' participation in civic life from 2010 to the present will inform and motivate citizens and leaders alike to build a culture of civic engagement that enhances our economic, social, and political wellbeing.Building on the recommendations outlined in past INCHIs, the report details progress in advancing the goals of enhancing civic education in schools and promoting citizen participation in the election process, goals that are profoundly intertwined. Studies show a consistent and robust relationship between school experiences with voting education and civic participation later in life. As cornerstones of representative democracy, civic education and participation are crucial to advancing our civic health.The report incorporates earlier analyses and current data, examining additional measures of Indiana's civic activity, identifying areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. The 2023 INCHI is meant to further stimulate discussion and inspire a renewed commitment to advancing Indiana's civic health. Strengthening Hoosiers' civic health vitality will require a concerted effort of all stakeholders interested in supporting citizen participation in its many forms; the result will be a more vibrant, successful, and engaged Indiana and nation.

Growing Voters in Rural Communities: Supporting Youth, Creating Opportunity, and Strengthening Democracy

January 9, 2024

Starting in the spring of 2023, CIRCLE and Rural Youth Catalyst kicked off a nonpartisan learning community with anchor organizations from a diversity of rural places that provide support to young people. The goals of the learning community were to learn from one another about experiences working with youth in rural communities, wrestle with the systemic challenges in rural communities and elections, and to co-create a vision for efforts to increase civic participation, including voting, across diverse rural communities in the United States.This brief, produced in partnership with the Rural Youth Catalyst Project, is informed largely by the Learning Community's insights and reflections. It outlines our collective findings and offers ideas for rural organizations to begin to center youth civic engagement as an integral part of their work.

The Realistic Promise of Multiparty Democracy in the United States

January 8, 2024

In April 2023, New America, the Center for Ballot Freedom, Protect Democracy, Lyceum Labs, and Stanford University's Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law convened a conference at Stanford University on the future of political parties in the United States. The conference, titled "More Parties, Better Parties," focused on the idea that U.S. democracy would benefit from stronger and more representative parties and that essential to that vision was opportunity for more parties beyond the current party duopoly to emerge. The essays in this collection, derived from papers prepared for the conference, trace the following argument: Parties are essential institutions in a democracy; there is an unjustified hostility to parties in much American political discourse; and fluid and overlapping coalitions of a multiparty system can improve governance and confidence. We then look at the promise of fusion voting, a practice once widespread and now prohibited in most states, which could allow new parties to gain a foothold by cross-endorsing candidates from established parties.

8 Ways To Protect American Democracy: Safeguarding Elections in 2024 and Beyond

January 4, 2024

This report provides a roadmap to help heal and strengthen American democracy. It explains some of the most pressing challenges that the 2024 U.S. elections will bring and how states, election officials, and the public must not only counter these challenges but also improve election safety, accessibility, and security. The report also looks beyond the horizon of the next election to the long-term challenges that lay at the very root of the crisis facing free and fair elections.

Democracy Hypocrisy: Examining America’s Fragile Democratic Convictions

January 4, 2024

Will Americans stand up for democracy even when it works against their party?Seven years ago, two of the three authors of this report began a research study to understand American support for democracy and the potential appeal of authoritarian alternatives. Since then, we have surveyed thousands of Americans using multiple survey instruments. Over the course of this project, we have gone beyond an initial battery of questions and pursued multiple avenues to understand and explain what people really believe and why. To do so, we:re-interviewed the same individuals over time to check for consistency in responses to original questions,examined depth of support by asking respondents how strongly they felt about their answers and by testing alternative language to ensure that question wording is not being misunderstood,used focus groups and interviews to develop scenarios that are responsive to the reasons people give for supporting democratic alternatives, andcompared views about abstract principles with reactions to real-world circumstances.Our most recent survey in November 2022 offers us the chance to explore the most important uncertainty emerging from our earlier research. Namely, to what extent were responses to our previous questions an artifact of the Trump presidency? Are Republicans really more supportive of authoritarian actions than Democrats? Or, are Democrats just as willing to support abuses of power in a polarized environment when they control the executive branch?Following the 2020 election, we can understand how views shifted when control of the White House changed hands — even if we haven't yet emerged from an era in which Donald Trump is at the center of our politics. The results show that support for foundational principles of liberal democracy are discouragingly soft and inconsistent.

When She Ascends: State Pilot Report 2023

January 1, 2024

In 2021, The Ascend Fund launched a three-state pilot to increase the number of women serving in Michigan, Mississippi, and Washington legislatures. This effort was specifically intended to help the fund understand how to propel more women into leadership positions.This report is a summary of our key learnings from the multi-year effort. This report is designed as a resource not only for The Ascend Fund's current state partners but also for state and national organizations pursuing gender parity in politics across the country.