voting

Marginalized patient populations in the United States use emergency rooms at disproportionately higher rates than the average patient population. This high rate of utilization is due largely to a lack of accessible alternative options rather than an actual increased need of critical care. In other words, patients who are young, people of color, and have […]

Congress is polarized. So polarized, in fact, that one would have to go all the way back to the Reconstruction era to find a similar level of discord. But perhaps more surprising is that while Congress has become more polarized, the American public has not: its dispersion of views has remained generally stable for decades. […]

BY MICHAEL AUSLEN Indiana is hardly the poster child for voting rights. In 2005, it became the first state in the country to pass a strict photo identification (ID) requirement for voting—a measure criticized as an unfair barrier to participation for poor and minority communities.[1] When the US Supreme Court refused to throw out the […]

BY DANIELA PHILIPSON In 2017, the average proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments was barely above 23% (World Bank). In Latin America this proportion is a little higher at 29%. While the representation of women in legislative bodies around the world is not predicted by GDP per capita or any other economic […]

BY BEN MCGUIRE Fresh on the heels of a disastrous G7 summit, Mexico is poised to elect a President whose aggressive approach may scorch as much earth as his northern counterparts. A victory for Andrés Manuel López Obrador (also known as AMLO) will immediately impact negotiations over NAFTA and immigration. Regardless of how the race […]

BY ROBERT REYNOLDS In 1840, Abraham Lincoln authored a plan for the Whig party to win the upcoming election: “watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence.” Democrats need a similar plan today. If liberals and conservatives voted at the […]

BY BRYNNA QUILLIN For almost a month after Election Day 2016, the race between incumbent North Carolina Republican governor Pat McCrory and his Democratic rival Roy Cooper remained contested. The race was tight, with just over ten thousand votes separating the two candidates. In a desperate attempt to hang on, McCrory cried fraud. McCrory’s campaign […]

BY AROHI SHARMA At 5:52 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, November 3, I put down the phone with the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office, devastated. After spending more than forty minutes waiting for someone to answer my call, I was told that the registrar’s office had not received my vote-by-mail application. I mailed my application […]

BY MICHAEL ALTER Americans are bad at voting. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but the U.S. ranked 27th among developed countries with only 53.6 percent of its voting-age population casting votes in the 2012 presidential election. Meanwhile, Belgium, the top-ranked country, had 87.2 percent of its voting-age population vote in its 2014 election. This […]

In 2012, a record 11.2 million Latinos voted in the presidential election. Despite the record turnout, another 12.1 million eligible Latinos still chose not to vote. The 48% voter turnout rate amongst Latinos is no small feat, but it paled in comparison to the 66.6% voter turnout rate of Blacks and the 64.1% of Whites.[i] […]

Across the country, we all hear the trumpeting of Hispanic Heritage Month. Elected officials, from local leaders to the highest office in the land, have released messages of inspiration, praising the contributions of our Latina/o community. Unfortunately, the media pays less attention to one group of voices, because it is a small group when compared […]

BY SARAH ALLIN The nation’s political system was designed as a counterweight to economic inequality, but what happens when inequality enters the democratic sphere that we perceived to be immune? Alex Keyssar, professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, posed this question last week during the taping of WBUR’s On Point. […]