COVID-19, partisan gridlock, and Donald Trump have joined forces to create the potential for disaster in this year's election. This week, the author of "Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Electoral Meltdown in 2020: joins us to explain what could happen and what we might be able to do about it.
In this episode, we review the mechanics of how election results are certified and the work of the Electoral College between Election Day and Inauguration Day. Most of their work has historically happened behind the scenes, but it could become very public this fall if results are contested. We also look at what elections in 2000 and 1876 can tell us about what might play out over the next few months, and why the act of conceding an election is important for democratic legitimacy.
Our guest is Lawrence Douglas, the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought at Amherst College. He is the author of seven books and a regular contributor to The Guardian.
Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020
Lawrence Douglas in The Guardian
The people who choose the President
Andrew Sullivan on democracy's double-edged sword
This is a crossover episode with WPSU, the NPR station in central Pennsylvania and our partner on Democracy Works. WPSU's Anne Danahy interviews Michael Berkman and Candis Watts Smith about several factors impacting the 2020 election — including polls, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and even the prevalence of yard signs this fall.
We really enjoy collaborating with the team at WPSU on Democracy Works and were happy to give the interviewer's chair to WPSU News reporter Anne Danahy for an episode that also aired on the station's interview show Take Note.
This interview was recorded on Tuesday, September 30, 2020, before the first presidential debate and President Trump's diagnosis with COVID-19.
In some ways, the fight for democracy in Hong Kong is unique to the region and its relationship with China. However, the protests also feel familiar to anyone who's been watching the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. or what's happening in countries like Hungary and Brazil.
This week, we examine what's driving Hong Kongers into the streets, the generational divides that are emerging over issues like universal suffrage and income inequality, and what Hong Kong's relationship with China might look like moving forward.
Our guest is On-cho Ng, head of the Asian Studies Program at Penn State and Professor of History, Asian Studies, and Philosophy. He is a native Hong Konger and received both his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Hong Kong.
China's threat to democracies around the world
Have you ever walked into a voting booth and seen a sheriff's race on the ballot and not known who the candidates were, or even what they do once elected? You're not alone, which is why we wanted to make this episode.
Our guest is Mirya R. Holman is an associate professor of political science at Tulane University. She was drawn to researching sheriffs after growing up in rural Oregon, where sheriffs were the only type of law enforcement, and identifying a lack of research about them once she got to graduate school.
In this conversation. Holman discusses what sheriffs do, how those responsibilities have changed in light of COVID-19 and ongoing civil unrest, the difference between sheriffs and police, and where to go to find information about sheriff elections that might be happening in your city or town this fall.
National Voter Registration Day is September 22. In a normal election year on a college campus, that would mean lots of canvassers with clipboards and pizza parties to encourage students to register. Those activities can't happen the same way this fall, but our guest this week argues that the pandemic should not detract colleges and universities from their civic missions.
Nancy Thomas is director of the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education, an applied research center at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. Over the past decade, the IDHE has worked to understand how college students vote and make recommendations to university leaders about both short-term voting challenges and long-term obligations to creating democratic citizens. This conversations covers both of those areas, as well as what role faculty can play in fostering democracy and civic engagement in their courses.
Institute for Democracy and Higher Education
National Voter Registration Day
Faculty Network for Student Voting Rights
The promise and peril of early voting
Are land-grant universities still democracy's colleges?
Citizenship, patriotism, and democracy in the classroom
The phrase "laboratories of democracy," coined by former U.S. Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, is typically used to describe experiments with new social and economic policies that occur at the state level — things like voting systems and public financing of elections. This week's episode explores a different side of that approach when state and local systems are used to disadvantage poor communities and prevent people from accessing social services.
Virginia Eubanks examines the relationship between technology and society in her book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor and joins us this week for a discussion about who matters in a democracy and the empathy gap between the people who develop the technology for social systems and the people who use those systems.
Eubanks is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is also the author of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age; and co-editor, with Alethia Jones, of Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith. Her writing about technology and social justice has appeared in Scientific American, The Nation, Harper’s, and Wired. She was a founding member of the Our Data Bodies Project and a 2016-2017 Fellow at New America.
Automating Inequality: How High-Tech tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
Eubanks will present a lecture on her work for Penn State's Rock Ethics Institute on October 1, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. The event is free and open to anyone. Register here.
We are excited to begin a new school year with a new cohost, Candis Watts Smith, who you may remember from an episode earlier this summer on her book Stay Woke, or from a roundtable discussion on Black politics back in February.
In this episode, Michael, Chris, and Candis discuss:
We are excited to welcome Candis to our team. As you'll hear, she doesn't always agree with Michael and Chris and brings some important perspectives to the table.
The clumsy journey to antiracism
Public health depends on the Census
Free and fair elections during a pandemic
This episode was engineered by Jenna Spinelle, edited by Mark Stitzer, and reviewed by Emily Reddy.
Whether you live in a big city, a suburb, or a small town, one issue tends to stand out from the rest in local government — housing. This week, we talk with author and New York Times reporter Conor Dougherty about the connections between housing and democracy, particularly at the local level. There can be immense power in showing up to make your voice heard, but some of the same forces that corrupt and polarize national politics are present locally, too.
Many of us are spending more time at home these days than we ever have before. In the United States, owning a home has come to symbolize the American Dream and homeowners have more political capital than those who don't. Over the past decade or so, this has led to showdowns at local government meetings between YIMBYs, who want more housing, and NIMBYs, who do not.
Dougherty covers economics and housing for the New York Times and is the author of "Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America." The book focuses on San Francisco, but as you'll hear Dougherty say, he could have written it about just about any major city in the U.S.
We also discuss the role that ballot initiatives play in the fight for housing, particularly in California. Born during the Progressive era to give more power to the people, Dougherty they've become co-opted by money and other influences that plague other areas of our democracy.
Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America
Dougherty's work in the New York Times
As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, this episode traces the history of women's voting behavior and why women voters have never been a monolith — despite efforts to portray them that way.
In their new book A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage, Christina Wolbrecht and Kevin Corder examine women’s (and men’s) voting behavior, and trace how women’s turnout and vote choice evolved across a century of enormous transformation overall and for women in particular.
The work shows that there is no such thing as ‘the woman voter. Instead, there is considerable variation in how different groups of women voted in response to changing political, social, and economic realities. The points Wolbrecht makes in this interview about how women are perceived by pundits and scholars alike are worth reflecting on as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of suffrage and prepare for an election this fall.
Wolbrecht is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and Director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. Her areas of expertise include American politics, political parties, gender and politics, and American political development.
A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage
Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy
Christina Wolbrecht on Twitter
John Gastil and Katherine Knobloch, authors of "Hope for Democracy: How Citizens Can Bring Reason Back Into Politics: join Democracy Works host Jenna Spinelle for a discussion of deliberative democracy, ballot initiatives and the Citizens Initiative Review
"Hope for Democracy" recognizes the primary problems that plague contemporary democracy and offers a solution. It tells the story of one civic innovation, the Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR), which asks a small group of citizens to analyze a ballot measure and then provide recommendations on that measure for the public to use when voting.
It relies on narratives of the civic reformers who developed and implemented the CIR and the citizens who participated in the initial review. Coupled with extensive research, the book uses these stories to describe how the review came into being and what impacts it has on participants and the public.
In this episode, we also discuss the ways that deliberative democracy challenges existing power structures and how it can change participants' thoughts on civic engagement and how they can impact government outside of partisan politics.
Gastil is Distinguished Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences and Political Science and Senior Scholar in the McCourtney Institute. Knobloch is Assistant Professor in the Communication Studies Department at Colorado State University and Associate Director of the university's Center for Public Deliberation.
Hope for Democracy: How Citizens Can Bring Reason Back Into Politics
McCourtney Institute for Democracy Virtual Book Club on Hope for Democracy - August 31, 2020, 4 p.m. ET
We are part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.