More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Most pundits insisted abortion wouldn’t drive many votes, but inflation would. How wrong they were.
If you put together the sheer size of the women’s vote, the intensity of the issue and the fact that, unlike inflation or the economy, the two parties have stark differences on the issue, you get a powerful driver of the vote.
Young people can play a crucial role in saving U.S. democracy and defeating candidates that threaten our future of free and fair elections.
A recent surge of women candidates gives the misleading impression that significant change is afoot. The fact is, women are still very unlikely to run or consider running for elected office, according a new study which shows the political ambition gap between men and women interested in running for office is virtually unchanged in the 20 years.
If the status quo is to change, the strategy for building a pipeline of women willing to run must change.
According to a new analysis of 2018 mail-in absentee ballot data from the State Board of Elections, ballots mailed by Black voters during the midterms were more than twice as likely as those sent in by white voters to be rejected. This disparity—similar to gaps in other states—raises concerns about the equity of ballot counting and whether systemic racism and voter disenfranchisement may be tainting elections.
So far, 2020 shows a similar pattern.
Black women have never been apathetic to the marginalization that their families and their communities face, to the marginalization that they face themselves. Their resolve to confront that marginalization fuels Black women’s political participation. We saw that in 2018. We’ll see it again in 2020.
The 2018 election delivered key points of progress that will shape the terrain that candidates are navigating in 2020 and beyond, and it left those of us committed to more equitable political institutions with a reminder that we have unfinished business left to address.
Conservative pundits and Republican officials predicted that Democrats who took a stand against the Supreme Court nominee would be punished at the polls. This take is dramatically flawed —and we have the polling to show it.
The four women in Knock Down the House are not running because they have been told they deserve to run, and they aren’t competing because they were bred to pursue higher office. They ran because their communities were invisible, because their families were suffering—and because nobody else was standing up for them.
Stacey Abrams’ speech reminded us that when Black women lead and vote, problems get solved.
In advance of of the 2020 elections—and the 100th year of women’s right to vote—I spoke to Katherine Spillar, executive editor of Ms., about the role feminists played in the last election, and how we can continue expanding on our victories.
