global solidarity for voting rights

When we kicked off the 100% Democracy Celebration in March with a book talk about universal civic duty voting, Miles Rapoport reflected on the moment he decided to write a book on this topic:

I had been involved in democracy reform efforts in the United States for more than 30 years and not once had I heard anyone even raise the possibility of trying universal civic duty voting.

This is a remarkable statement. Miles was Secretary of State of Connecticut. He led Common Cause and Demos, leading advocacy and policy organizations working on democracy reform in the United States. If Miles wasn’t hearing about universal civic duty voting, it means this idea was almost entirely off the radar of the American democracy reform movement.

How could this be? Forms of universal civic duty voting are used in twenty-six nations around the world. Universal civic duty voting has an incredible track record of creating more equitable electorates. In spite of this reality, U.S. based activists were either unaware of the policy, did not sense that it was possible, or both.

As the example of universal civic duty voting shows, voting rights activists in the U.S. have a lot to gain from building relationships with peers around the world. So what does it look to build global solidarity for voting rights?

JHU International Relations Professor Nina Hall offers some important insights into this question in her forthcoming book, Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era. Dr. Hall studied the Online Progressive Engagement Network and generated some important learning that those of us committed to voting rights in the United States and around the world can take to heart.

One principal benefit of being part of a global network which she observed was the development of a sense of solidarity and expanded imagination. The organizations and activists she observed very rarely found that it made sense to launch common campaigns with the same target - rather they almost always targeted their campaigns at decision-makers within individual national contexts. These groups also shared technical skills, and learned from each other's successes and failures.  What was clearly powerful was the sense of a movement and the possibilities that came from connecting with peers around the world.

How do we bring that sense of movement and possibility to US based voting rights work? How do Americans get beyond the kind of isolation that Miles described that prevents us from pursuing more bold ideas to move America towards full participation?

One emerging effort giving me a lot of hope and energy right now is the Vote 16 World movement connecting activists all across the globe working to lower the voting age to sixteen as twenty-two nations and five American cities have done. Vote 16 World is a delightful group including youth activists leading campaigns, scholars studying what happens when we lower the voting age, and policy makers figuring out how to pass and implement Vote 16 laws.

As Dr. Hall’s book would predict, there are few opportunities to actually run shared campaigns within the Vote 16 World Network. Each national context is so unique with different political systems, different election administration structures, and different social conditions. There are few cases where what happens in one country can really directly be a model for another.

And yet, in spite of these differences, I’m struck by how being a part of this network affects my own energy as an organizer and my sense of what’s possible for the Vote 16 movement in the United States. When I see data that suggests that only one third of Americans support Vote 16 when first asked, I now know that in Scotland support for Vote 16 jumped from one third to over 50% of all voters once the policy was implemented. When I hear skepticism that Vote 16 policy will be seen as a power play by one political party, I now see the Vote 16 Canada movement introducing a bill in the Canadian House of Commons with support from 4 (!!) political parties.

Even if these examples won’t translate directly into our epically idiosyncratic and complex and challenging US voting rights landscape, knowing about global examples can change our organizing in the United States in powerful ways. Being aware of our global peers creates a sense of momentum for our movement even when things feel stuck. Being aware of our global peers can keep us optimistic and reanalyzing our home political landscape for new opportunities. In doing this we expand our strategic capacity to see and seize opportunities in America that we couldn’t perceive before.

Social movements are powered by hope in the plausibility of the possible - the sense that things could be different if we all worked together to make change. Global solidarity is an amazing source of hope. I wonder what might be possible for the voting rights movement in the United States if all of us had the chance to feel it more often.

Best,

Sam