Dear Friends,
Our democracy works best when everyone’s voice is heard. That is why we work to defend and expand access to the ballot box year-round, every year.
Too many people can’t exercise their right to vote or must overcome significant obstacles to do so. In 2023, we continued our work to overcome these barriers and, in turn, saw major growth and wins on behalf of voters nationwide. We won important court decisions to protect access to the ballot in Arizona and Wisconsin. We helped boost student turnout in statewide elections that may well affect the outcomes of the 2024 presidential election. These include state Supreme Court elections in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as the statewide legislative elections in Virginia. We helped students navigate complicated special elections and initiatives in Ohio, where reproductive rights were on the ballot. We laid the groundwork for recruiting robust pools of poll workers ahead of 2024 by continuing to build relationships with state and local election officials. And so much more…
Defending democracy is not easy, but we are focused and engaged. We do not back down when state and federal lawmakers push to pass rules that impede citizens’ right to choose who best represents them at the polls.
Our team accomplished so much last year, and I am excited to share the highlights with you in this report. Thank you for your unwavering support of our work. As we enter our 18th year, we recognize our success is because of the work of our student fellows, campus administrators, grassroots partners, donors and grantmakers, pro bono counsel, election officials, and all those who know that our country and communities are successful when our democracy is strong. Here’s to building a stronger democracy,
FEC’s staff attorneys do more than litigate–they draw on their deep expertise in voting rights law to track legislation in 17 key states that has the potential to impact voting. The team works closely with local coalitions, grassroots partners, and legislators to support or oppose policies by providing analysis, talking points, toolkits, and direct testimony.
For example, in 2023, FEC supported provoter legislation in Michigan and Minnesota to strengthen voter registration and turnout. We opposed harmful legislation in Ohio, and provided information to federal agencies to inform their policies.
FEC provided key information to US Department of Education staff for their “Toolkit for the Promotion of Voter Participation for Students,” which shares resources with schools to help support students with voter registration and civic engagement opportunities and makes recommendations that mirror our own approach. The department also released guidance clarifying that students who do civic engagement work with a federal, state, local, or tribal public agency can use federal work-study funds.
“We are thrilled that the U.S. Department of Education has released such a comprehensive guide of resources for schools to support student voters…Young voter participation is essential to the health of our democracy. Students are our nation’s future leaders, and research shows that when young people start voting early on, it becomes a lifelong habit. Our institutions, from the federal government to our local schools, have a civic purpose to fulfill by providing students with the resources necessary to help them build informed civic habits that benefit us all.”
— Mike Burns, National Director of Campus Vote Project.
Michigan signed into law HB 4569, which allows 16-year-olds to preregister to vote. The bill was signed into law as part of a larger set of reforms to reduce barriers to voting in the state. FEC helped provide policy advice to our partners in Michigan and collaborated with their Secretary of State to promote strong pro-student voting laws and policies.
“Preregistration has been shown to consistently improve voter registration rates and increase the likelihood that young citizens—who are the future of our democracy—will vote and stay engaged in elections upon reaching voting age…It will prepare our young people for a future with fewer barriers to voting, expand opportunities for teens to organize in their communities, and assist students in developing voting habits that will last a lifetime.”
— Michelle Kanter Cohen, FEC Senior Counsel and Policy Director
“In an echo of the Jim Crow era, the ‘reason to believe’ law gave election officials license to discriminate against naturalized citizens by subjecting them to baseless citizenship checks and registration cancellation whenever they merely suspected a voter was not a U.S. citizen. The court’s decision should be a wake-up call for Arizona lawmakers, who need to stop targeting naturalized citizens and instead focus on reforms that will increase participation in the democratic process.”
— Jon Sherman, Litigation Director and Senior Counsel
Our rights restoration litigation work aims to move states away from the subjective personal choices of individual governors and towards an objective and clear process for individuals who have completed their felony sentences to seek the return of their rights.
Since 2019, we have worked with the Kentucky Equal Justice Center to fight for voting rights restoration on behalf of seven people with felony convictions, setting a precedent for future rights restoration. This case has been an uphill battle. Much of 2023 was spent bringing an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and then asking the US Supreme Court to hear the case, which they declined. We will continue to fight for rights restoration for people in Kentucky, a fight that now turns to the legislature.
In 2023, we filed a similar First Amendment case in Virginia. Virginia’s last three governors utilized specific, objective, and neutral criteria, such as sentence completion, for restoring voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Virginians with previous felony convictions. But Gov. Glenn Youngkin ended this policy, exercising his unlimited discretion under the Virginia Constitution to grant or deny each individual’s application for regaining their right to vote. Without laws, rules, or specific criteria, Gov. Youngkin’s absolute power to decide which Virginians may regain their voting rights opens the door to viewpoint discrimination and violates the First Amendment. FEC filed the suit on behalf of Nolef Turns, Inc.–a non-profit advocacy for returning citizens–and George Hawkins, a lifelong Virginia resident who is disenfranchised due to a past felony conviction.
The Fair Elections Center’s Work Elections project has sought to improve election administration by broadening and diversifying the country’s pool of poll workers since its launch in 2016. We have collected data from more than 5,000 jurisdictions in 47 states to match people with information about being a poll worker in their community, including application links, training requirements, compensation, hours, and more. Our data has been provided to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and helps drive Power the Polls, an organization we helped launch in 2020 and that uses WorkElections’ data and its API to power their poll worker recruitment efforts. During the week of National Poll Worker Recruitment Day, more than 8,600 people requested information about being a poll worker through Power the Polls, and, throughout the year, 265,000 potential poll workers were connected to the local jurisdictions to apply.
2023 marked Campus Vote Project’s (CVP) 12th year working nationwide to institutionalize access to voting and voter information for college students. Our motto, “Every Year, Every Vote” underscores the importance of bolstering democracy on college campuses even in years without national high-profile elections. We focused on state-level elections, such as state Supreme Court races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania; statewide legislative races in Virginia; ballot initiatives in Ohio; plus local races in Houston, Texas. We also expanded our campus partnerships with HBCUs in Alabama, Maryland, Louisiana, and Washington, D.C. CVP ended the year with more than 340 campus partners where more than 4 million students are enrolled.
We worked directly with administrators and faculty, disseminating voting guidance through a trusted source (research shows that students trust campus administrators, faculty, and staff more than almost anyone besides their parents for election information). We provided essential resources to school administrators to create campus-wide emails, social media content, and other tactics to inform every registered student. This included voter registration deadlines; integrating online or paper registration into campus activities, such as orientation and class registration; distributing state-specific rules on registration and voting, such as options for casting a ballot and voter ID; and campus-sponsored “make a plan to vote” campaigns.
In 2023, we designated a record number of 262 institutions as Voter Friendly Campuses (VFC) for their efforts around the 2022 federal election cycle. The VFC program helps institutions write democratic engagement action plans that coordinate campus stakeholders in civic and electoral engagement to boost voter registration and turnout. Campuses, in partnership with CVP staff and Democracy Fellows, implement those plans around critical elections. The institutions then complete thoughtfully written self-evaluations. Campuses that complete all the steps receive the VFC designation, which lasts for two years. Incorporating democratic engagement into the collegiate experience creates structure and stability for students as they explore their political beliefs and their role in the democratic process.
HBCUs have a deep, rich history in our nation’s civil rights and voting rights struggles and a unique educational culture. We can most effectively increase Black student voter participation by recognizing that uniqueness and connecting that historical legacy to present-day institutional engagement and support. Our HBCU Legacy Initiative works to combat specific challenges HBCUs face. We worked with institutions and alumni organizations, including the National PanHellenic Council (the Divine Nine) to support 46 HBCU campuses.
The New York Times | Oct. 16, 2023
The Washington Post | May 15, 2023
The Wall Street Journal | Oct. 5, 2023
Teen Vogue | Aug. 7, 2023
USA Today | Nov. 3, 2023
2024 will be a very busy year for all of our programs, given the presidential election and countless other positions and ballot initiatives in every state.
Our policy staff is hard at work monitoring and responding to legislative sessions and working with our state partners to advance pro-voter reforms and to combat voter suppression.
We continue to fight against the disenfranchisement of voters through impactful litigation in Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Virginia, and elsewhere. The WorkElections.org poll worker recruitment data and website have been updated and we are working with local election officials to ensure they have a robust pool of poll workers, an effort further aided by our continued support of Power the Polls. We will be reaching an impressive 350+ campus partners and more than 4.5 million students with critical information they need to register and vote. Already, at least 350 campuses have signed formal commitment letters to participate and boost student turnout in fall 2024, a new record for the program! Eleven HBCUs and 45 community colleges are in this cohort. A robust 350-400 stipended student Democracy Fellows will carry out our program during both semesters and spend tens of thousands of hours on their campuses working with administrators, faculty and students.
The stakes are high in 2024, and we expect voters to turn out and make their voices heard with Fair Election Center’s support.
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