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The California Civic Engagement Project (CCEP)
at the UC Davis Center for Regional Change
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Engage!
CCEP Newsletter
November 22, 2016
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Dear CCEP colleagues, partners and friends:
As we process and begin to move forward following the presidential election, many Americans are still feeling distressed over the polarization of the nation. Voter turnout data show us that the president-elect was not chosen by half the country; only about a quarter of all Americans eligible to vote chose Trump. Putting aside partisanship, a less than fully participating electorate does not make a strong democracy, particularly when we know that those who voted do not fully represent the diversity of this country.
Now more than ever, there is an urgency to work for the inclusion of all Americans in our democratic and civic structures. Lack of participation has real consequences, not just at the presidential level but also in state and local outcomes.
While remaining steadfast in our support for the political rights of unrepresented groups and against a racialized discourse, we must all work together to address the concerns of the many disaffected voters in this country and offer them credible alternatives to policies of exclusion. We must begin to listen to each other and find common ground where possible. Marginalizing and dismissing those with whom we do not agree results in growing resentment and frustration, as we saw on November 8th.
The CCEP is committed to conducting research that helps inform the realization of a fully representative system of governance. And we stand with our partners in an unwavering commitment against the possible dismantling of programs and policies for equity.
We look forward to serving alongside all of you as we, together, meet the challenge before us.
In partnership,
Mindy Romero, Ph.D.
CCEP Director
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California Community Engagement Spotlight
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Yolo Teens Learn About Elections
The Yolo County Elections office hosted a Presidential Elections Bash on the night of the election to give area teens a peek behind the scenes at how the elections process works.
The Woodland Public Library, the Yolo County Office of Education and the League of Women Voters all collaborated to produce the event, but members of the Woodland Teen Advisory Board (pictured) took the lead on planning and promoting the event for their peers.
"We wanted to be able to have something to celebrate and to show the youth you can learn firsthand how it really works," said Yolo County Registrar Jesse Salinas. About 75 young people attended the inaugural event.
Read all about it in the Davis Enterprise.
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Spotlight on California Event 11/30
California Common Cause is hosting a post-election roundup discussion and reception on Wednesday, November 30th at the UC Berkeley School of Law. The purpose is to recognize and celebrate the successes that Common Cause and their partners have achieved this year.
Speakers include Senate Elections Committee Chair Ben Allen, Common Cause National President Karen Hobert Flynn and California Common Cause Executive Director Kathay Feng.
Click Here for tickets and additional information.
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Northern California Grantmakers Post Election Special Event 11/30 in S.F.
Next Wednesday November 30th in San Francisco,
Northern California Grantmakers is hosting a post-election debrief. The event will begin at 10:30 AM with a community conversation about what the election means to each of us personally, for the people on your team, and for the communities with whom you work. This will be followed by a noon webinar and then a panel discussion from 1:15 until 2:30.
Panelists Karen Hobert Flynn (President, Common Cause), Anne Johnson (Managing Principal, Grassroots Solutions) and CCEP Director Mindy Romero will explore voter turnout and behavior among key voting blocks, moneyed interests, electoral reforms and other democratic trends in California and nationally.
This program is open to members of both Northern California Grantmakers and Bay Area Democracy Funders Group. If you are not an NCG member, contact the Registrar at registrar@ncg.org.
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California Leadership Forum 12/6 in Sacramento
The Governing California Leadership Forum will take place on Tuesday, December 6th in Sacramento.
Now in its sixth year, the California Leadership Forum convenes thought leaders from state and local government across the Golden State. Join us to meet colleagues, be inspired, and leave with a renewed commitment and new ideas for providing the best service to your community and constituents.
CCEP Director Mindy Romero will be one of the featured panelists at the Leadership Forum for an 11 AM session titled,
Demographic Shifts and What They Mean for Our Economy, Politics, and Society.
Click here to learn more and to register for this free day long learning and networking opportunity.
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California Civic Engagement News
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Future of California Elections Launches Voter's Choice California
With the recent enactment of the California Voter's Choice Act (VCA), Senate Bill 450 of 2016, Future of California Elections has begun organizing a statewide collaboration of election reform and voter engagement organizations to help prepare voters for significant changes to their election system. The new network will be known as Voter's Choice California (coming soon to voterschoice.org). Fourteen California counties are authorized to migrate to the new system as early as June 2018, with the remaining counties having the option to make the change in 2020.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla sponsored the new law, which creates a new opt-in model for how elections will be conducted in California. In counties that choose to adopt the vote center model, all registered voters will be mailed a ballot 28 days before the election. Voters will have the option to return their ballot by mail, take it to a drop-off location, or cast it in-person at any vote center in their county. SB 450 will also expand early voting, allowing voters to cast a vote in person at a vote center or receive assistance during the 10 days leading up to Election Day. The bill was jointly authored by Senators Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) and Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys).
For more information about Voter's Choice California, contact Future of California Elections at info@futureofcaelections.org.
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Looking Ahead to the 2018
California Governor Race
Now that the 2016 election is behind us, it is time to start thinking about the 2018 election and who will replace Jerry Brown and become California's next Governor. An
article in last week's LA Times takes a look at who is already running, and who other potential candidates may be.
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National Civic Engagement News
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Voters Faced Myriad Obstacles to Casting a Ballot in the 2016 Presidential Election
The New York Times has created a throwback video game that you can play to explore the impacts of voter suppression efforts on the 2016 election.
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Federal Court Rules Wisconsin Partisan Redistricting Illegal
Yesterday a panel of three federal judges ruled that the Wisconsin Legislature's 2011 redistricting of State Assembly districts is illegally partisan. The case will now be heard by the Supreme Court, where it could set an important legal precedent that could impact the next round of state redistricting in 2021 for congressional and state elections across the country.
Partisan gerrymandering is the drawing of electoral districts for partisan or individual gain. This ruling is a victory for those who feel that this practice is detrimental to our democracy and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
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Barbara Boxer Takes Aim at the Electoral College
2016 marks only the fifth time that a presidential candidate has won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College. The last time was in 2000, when Al Gore Beat George W. Bush by over half a million votes nationally but lost to Bush after the disputed Florida recount. The three other occasions were the elections of 1888, 1876 and 1824.
The Electoral College system allows states with smaller populations to have a meaningful say in elections. However, this system gives voters in low population states like Alaska and Montana more political influence than voters in populous states like California.
If the bill amending the constitution to end the electoral college system were to be approved by Congress, it would have to be ratified by three fourths of the states within seven years to become law. Similar legislation introduced in the past failed to gather enough support to gain any momentum.
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Facebook Under Fire for Fake News
Facebook is facing criticism following the election for the spread of false news stories on their platform that could have misinformed voters. CEO Mark Zukerberg initially played down the role that false news stories played in shaping the public narrative around the election, saying that only around 1% of news stories on the site are fake. Nonetheless, early last week the company blocked fake-news sites from buying advertising. Later in the week,
Zukerberg announced additional steps that the company will be taking to address the issue.
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Dr. Romero and Assembly Member Susan Eggman Discuss Youth Civic Engagement with Lincoln High School Students in Stockton
Students at Lincoln High School in Stockton had an opportunity to learn about the importance of youth civic engagement last week. This event came to be after a teacher at the school, Mrs. King, showed her class a video of Dr. Romero's "
Power of the Youth Vote" TEDx talk, and her students were interested in learning more. Mrs. King invited Dr. Romero to come speak to her students in person. Assembly Member Susan Eggman, who represents that district and chairs the Assembly Select Committee on Civic Engagement, also joined to speak with the students. The result was a very inspirational assembly encouraging the teens to take an active role in improving their community by encouraging civic participation. Creative teachers like Mrs. King who seek out innovative ways to engage young people in elections are making a difference for our state. Lincoln students are becoming more politically aware and active, and they are ready to make their voices heard in the next election.
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CCEP Advisory Committee Spotlight
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CCEP Advisory Board Member's App Forshadowed Trump's Surprising Victory
The polls famously and spectacularly got it wrong on the 2016 presidential election. Nobody foresaw Trump's surprising victories in key swing states. Well, almost nobody. CCEP advisory board member Matt Mahon designed an App called
Brigade that successfully prognosticated the outcome.
Brigade is a startup that bills itself as the world's first network for voters. It asks users who they plan to vote for. Brigade collected data from nearly 200,000 people, and the results were surprising. Among registered voters on Brigade, Mahon reports that 94.5% of Republicans pledged to vote for Trump, while only 55% of Democrats pledged to vote for Clinton. Even more surprising, most of the Democratic voters crossing over to vote for Trump were women, according to the app. While this result was thought to be the result of a user-base that skewed conservative, in the end it appeared that Brigade's data foreshadowed the outcome in key battleground states where Trump outperformed other predictions, according to National Public Radio.
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CCEP Outreach: In the Media
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CCEP Director Featured in NY Times California Election Coverage
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CCEP Data on Latino Voter Turnout Cited in LA Times
An election day article in the Los Angeles Times
predicting record Latino turnout for California's 2016 general election cited CCEP data on Latino voter turnout in the 2016 primary election. Twenty percent of voters participating in California's last primary were Latino. Final data from the recent general election are not yet available, as Vote-by-Mail and provisional ballots are still being counted.
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"VotaVan" Helps Get Rural California Voters to the Polls
An
election day article in the Riverside County newspaper the Press-Enterprise featured CCEP data and analysis of the Latino Vote in California. The article describes an effort to remove obstacles to voting for residents of rural inland farming communities by providing group rides to voters.
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Dr. Romero on Impacts of District Based Elections
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KPCC Examines Voter Turnout in Los Angeles County
Los Angeles Public Radio station KPCC asked CCEP Director Mindy Romero to share her
early analysis of voter turnout across the state and in the LA region the day following the election. Results from the November election won't be final and certified by the California Secretary of State until December 16th. Over one million ballots remained to be counted in Los Angeles County as of November 9th.
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Mindy Romero Pens Op-Eds Following Surprising Election
While the CCEP remains steadfast in our commitment to a nonpartisan stance and to provide an unbiased source of information, Dr. Romero felt moved to share her personal take on the available election results.
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| Internship/ Volunteer Opportunity |
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Mi Familia Vota Seeking Youth Leaders and Adult Volunteers
Mi Familia Vota registered over 90,000 citizens to vote over the past year leading up to the general election, nearly 9,500 of those in California. Now that the election is over, Mi Familia Vota will continue to register voters, provide citizenship assistance, and work to ensure that
Latino communities are staying engaged and are fairly represented.
Mi Familia Vota is currently recruiting students for it's Youth Leadership and Civic Engagement program. This program is designed to encourage youth to become more engaged in the political process by working on the issues they care about and meeting their local elected officials
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The next YLCEP program will be conducted from January-June 2017. Please contact the CA State Director Samuel Molina if you are interested in the program (559) 473-6096 or via e-mail
Samuelm@mifamiliavota.org
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If you are interested in volunteering with Mi Familia Vota, they would love to have you join them! Volunteer
here
for future events and learn about how you can make a difference. Follow Mi Familia Vota on Facebook/Twitter
@MiFamiliaVotaCA
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| Share Your Civic Engagement Story with the CCEP |
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Are you working to promote inclusive civic engagement? Do you have a civic engagement success story to share? Share your story with CCEP and you could be featured in an upcoming issue of Engage! Please send your short write-up to Greg Keidan at gkedian@ucdavis.edu for consideration.
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UC Davis California Civic Engagement Project
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Kim Alexander
President and Founder
California Voter Foundation
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Matt A. Barreto
Professor, Dept. of Political Science
Professor, Dept. of Chicana/o Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
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Jonathan Fox
Professor,
School of International Service
American University
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Luis R. Fraga
Arthur Foundation Endowed Professor of Transformative Latino Leadership
Professor of Political Science University of Notre Dame
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Lisa Garcia Bedolla
Chancellor's Professor of Education and Political Science
University of California, Berkeley
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Bruce Haynes
Associate Professor, Dept. of Sociology University of California, Davis
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Jongho Lee
Professor
Dept. of Political Science
Western Illinois University
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Peter Levine
Associate Dean for Research and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs,
Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts University
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Matt Mahan
Cofounder and CEO
Brigade
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James Muldavin
Executive Director
California Center for Civic Participation and Youth Development
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Karthick Ramakrishnan
Professor of Public Policy
University of California, Riverside
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Ricardo Ramirez
Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science
University of Notre Dame
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Assistant Professor of Land Use Planning and Law
The Ohio State University
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Cruz Reynoso
Professor of Law Emeritus
University of California, Davis
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Dan Schnur
Director
Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics
University of Southern California
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Shakari Byerly
Partner and Lead Researcher
EVITARUS
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California Civic Engagement Project
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The California Civic Engagement Project (CCEP) is housed at the UC Davis Center for Regional Change and was established to inform the public dialogue on representative governance in California. The CCEP is engaging in pioneering research to identify disparities in civic participation across place and population. It is well positioned to inform and empower a wide range of policy and organizing efforts in California to reduce disparities in state and regional patterns of well-being and opportunity. Key audiences include public officials, advocacy groups, political researchers and communities themselves.
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UC Davis Center for Regional Change
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The UC Davis Center for Regional Change (CRC). The CRC is a catalyst for innovative, collaborative, and action-oriented research. It brings together faculty and students from different disciplines, and builds bridges between university, policy, advocacy, business, philanthropy and other sectors. The CRC's goal is to support the building of healthy, equitable, prosperous, and sustainable regions in California and beyond.
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