"If every registered millennial voted, their turnout rate would still be lower than those 65 or older," Sean McElwee, a policy analyst at the progressive think tank Demos who studies voting patterns and behaviors, said in an interview. "Registration barriers disproportionately affect youth, who are more mobile and more likely to be renters. The result is that policy doesn't reflect their preferences." [...]
Addressing the needs of these drop-off voters and young non-voters, while reducing structural and political barriers to voting, are critical steps for the Democrats going forward, far more so than trying to win back Obama-to-Trump voters.
Amy Traub for Demos: If you want to make crime pay — and get a lighter penalty if you're caught — you're better off cheating your employees out of their fair wages than trying to nick the latest video game console or pair of designer shoes off the shelves of your local retailer. [...]
This difference stems largely from the historical advantages built into whiteness, and the severe historical economic cost of blackness. Many of these advantages were covered in the Demos and IASP report titled "The Asset Value of Whiteness."
New York should be expanding voters’ rights, demonstrating what real democracy looks like. We should ensure working moms and dads, immigrants and people of color have equal access and voice in our electoral system. In the face of an imminent federal onslaught, we should be saying unequivocally that we stand for good government of the people, by the people and for the people. [...]
"The CHOICE Act would lead our nation in the wrong direction, further skewing our public policies towards the interests of top donors and away from the needs of working families and people of color as a whole", Demos associate policy director Amy Traub said in a statement prior to the vote.
"One thing driving Labour’s over performance was youth turnouts," Sean McElwee, a policy analyst who studies voter attitudes and behavior at the progressive think tank Demos, said in an interview.
McElwee thinks that Labour’s success could be a model for progressives in the United States provided they learn some key lessons about how to enlist and galvanize voters.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gives America’s infrastructure a D+ grade. No doubt, if they focused on just the infrastructure serving majority African American communities, America’s “black infrastructure” would receive a failing grade. A key purpose of racial segregation is to allow the dominant group to under-invest and under-develop the infrastructure serving the minority group. [...]
Kathy Culliton-Gonzalez, a lawyer who works on automatic voter registration at Demos, a progressive think tank, said some of the momentum toward automatic voter registration was born out of the controversy surrounding the results of the 2000 election, long lines to vote across the country in the 2012 election and efforts to pass voter ID laws to make it more difficult to vote.
Employers’ growing interest in helping workers pay back their student loans “reflects that many, if not most, workers entering the workforce have to contend with their student loans,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. [...]
A group of civil-rights organizations, including the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the think tank Demos, and the ACLU of Ohio, filed a lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted challenging the supplemental process’s legality in early 2016.
“It doesn’t do anything to address the root problems of college affordability and of rising student debt,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. Those include state disinvestment in higher education, a trend that the federal government could help reverse, according to Huelsman, by using federal money to encourage states to up their investment in their public colleges. [...]
"From coast to coast, American families are trapped between the need to provide care for their young children or sick loved ones and the necessity of earning income. Our nation has a responsibility to address this crisis, and yet, the Trump administration’s proposal falls far short. An adequate plan would provide paid leave to working people recovering from temporary disability, offer at least 12 weeks of paid leave to new parents, and enable Americans caring for aging parents to take leave as well.
Whites are far more optimistic about progress toward equality, and I suspect it's due to that faith in a generational change among millennials.
But that idea does not hold up, according to research by Sean McElwee for Demos, a public policy organization focused on equality. "Age," McElwee concluded, "has little effect on the likelihood that whites hold racially biased feelings about blacks. ... Waiting for old whites to die out won't solve the problem, as these attitudes are equally prevalent among youth." [...]
Demos President Heather McGhee is a national leader in the fight for working families. Demos is a public policy organization working for an America where “we all have an equal say in our democracy and an equal chance in our economy.” McGhee’s opinions, writing and research have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Hill, Meet the Press, among other publications.
Senate Republicans on Thursday advanced President Trump’s first lower court nominee, setting up a floor vote. [...]
A coalition of 24 groups, including Demos, Every Voice Center, End Citizens United and Free Speech for People, wrote to the committee this week to urge members to reject Thapar’s nomination. The groups claim Thapar's record shows he will exacerbate the growing role of big money in American politics.
You may have first seen Heather McGhee on Meet the Press or Real Time with Bill Maher or Hardball with Chris Matthews, but on Saturday, May 6, the progressive pundit made an appearance at All Souls hosted by the Women’s Alliance. As the featured speaker at the Alliance’s Spring Event, she covered a wide range of topics from the economy to last fall’s election to immigration and racial prejudice.
Summary
Priorities USA is in the midst of a research project analyzing “swing voters” and “turnout voters” in the 2016 election in order to glean lessons that can be applied to strengthen Democrats in elections in 2018, 2020 and beyond. The initial analysis, conducted via polling and focus groups, has now continued with an examination of the impact of voter identification laws.
A 2015 report by Demosfound that California had one of the country’s the lowest ratios of DMV voter registration applications to DMV transactions, between 0.01 and 0.1. [...]