Dear CCEP colleagues, partners and friends:
Welcome to the February edition of Engage!
In this edition you will read about upcoming events, you will learn about some of the latest research in the field of civic engagement, and will find out the latest civic engagement news for California and the United States.
In addition, you will
read about the Florida high school students who are engaging our political structure by organizing a march on Washington in order to make their voices heard for the safety of young people in their community and around the United States.
In partnership,
Mindy Romero, Ph.D.
CCEP Director
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Vote Centers are Coming to California: What Do We Need to Know to Help Ensure Successful and Equitable Implementation?
February 23rd
Now available through Facebook Live!
California passed the Voter's Choice Act in 2016 which introduced a new vote center election model. This year, five California counties have decided to opt-in to the new model.
CCEP director Mindy Romero will be presenting CCEP research on California voters' perceptions of Vote Centers on Friday, February 23rd at the California
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We would like to thank the California Latino Legislative Caucus for sponsoring this presentation. |
State Capitol.
This research identifies some of the opportunities and challenges that could arise during the transition from neighborhood polling places to Vote Centers, particularly for electorally underrepresented populations.
In addition, Dr. Romero will preview a new mapping tool developed by the CCEP, which will help California county election offices decide where to locate the new Vote Centers and Vote-By-Mail drop boxes, while meeting the VCA criteria and minimizing the risk of voter confusion and decreased participation.
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Lead Learn 2018: Education for Civic Responsibility
February 27-28th
The California Subject Matter Project will be hosting the forum Lead Learn 2018 at the UC Davis Conference Center, February 27-28th.
This forum will inform California K-12 educators on how they can use content across all disciplines to help students develop into engaged citizens in their schools and community.
CCEP director Mindy Romero will be a speaker at this event, sharing CCEP research on the state of youth civic engagement.
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Policy Meets Practice: Implementing California's New Election Laws | 2018 Conference
March 8th
The Future of California Elections (FoCE) will be hosting its 2018 conference "Policy Meets Practice: Implementing California's New Election Laws" on Thursday, March 8th in Los Angeles.
This event will bring together election administrators, advocates, and civil rights organizations to discuss modernizing elections and expanding voter participation, while examining the challenges and opportunities of some of California's latest election reforms.
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2018 Latina Action Day
May 23rd
HOPE will be hosting Latina Action Day Sacramento on May 23rd.
This annual conference will facilitate dialogue between corporate, community, and elected leaders on public policy issues affecting Latinas. Latina Action Day gives participants a chance to advocate on issues that impact their lives and their communities.
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Voting in 2018 and Beyond: Ensuring Access and Accountability of the Ballot in America
On January 26th,
CCEP
director Mindy Romero
served as a panelist at the
UC Hastings
Constitutional Law Quarterly event titled "Voting in 2018 and Beyond: Ensuring Access and Accountability of the Ballot in America."
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, and Ann Ravel, former Chair of the Federal Elections Commission, served as the event's keynote speakers.
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CCEP director Mindy Romero (panelist), California Secretary of State Alex Padilla (keynote speaker), and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro (special guest), at UC Hastings College of the Law.
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New Civic Engagement Research
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The State and Local Election Cybersecurity Playbook
The Defending Digital Democracy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center has released three new guides to help election administrators defend elections against cyber attacks and information operations.
They are as follows:
These releases come at a time when the CIA director and two other top U.S. intelligence officials informed the U.S. Senate on February 13th, that they have already seen indications that Russian agents are preparing a new round of election subterfuge. For more on this story, check out the
Associated Press article here.
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California's Future: Political Landscape
The report finds that Californians support state action on climate change, immigration, and health care, that only in the Bay Area are Californians strongly liberal on both social and fiscal issues, and that California voter turnout during presidential and gubernatorial elections has dropped over the past 15 years.
In addition, the study found that California has one of the most polarized legislatures in the country.
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Projecting Confidence: How the Probabilistic Horse Race Confuses and Demobilizes the Public
A new study produced by researchers from Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, and Pew Research Center, found that probability forecasts in U.S. elections can give potential voters the impression that one candidate will win more decisively, and that this could even lower the chance that they vote.
The study presented participants with hypothetical election projections in three different forms: vote share, probability forecast, and both. Participants were asked to determine the share of votes they expected the candidate to win, how likely it was that they would win, and how certain they were the candidate would win or lose.
Participants who received the probability forecast were more certain in their judgement of which candidate would win. These findings indicate that media coverage featuring probabilistic forecasting could cause viewers to hold stronger expectations that the leading candidate will win.
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Election Security in All 50 States
For instance, the report finds that California's post-election audits are lacking important criteria. One example given was of Assembly Bill 840 passed in 2017, which the report says will weaken California's post-election audit procedures due to provisional ballots being excluded from post-election audits.
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Dispelling Myths: CSG Overseas Voting Initiative's Report on 2016 Military Ballot Tracking Pilot
The Council of State Governments examined the obstacles that U.S. military and overseas citizens face when participating in the election process, and have released a report titled, "Overseas Voting Initiative's Report on 2016 Military Ballot Tracking Pilot," which outlines their recommendations to improve the election process.
The Military Ballot Tracking Project worked with the U.S. Department of Defense's Federal Voting Assistance Program, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), and the U.S. Military Postal Service Agency (MPS) in order to track military ballots during the 2016 election.
The report found that approximately 80 to 90 percent of all ballots were successfully delivered to their Military Post Offices. In addition, the report called for more business processing improvement due to variability in the application of parcel scans within the USPS and MPS.
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Civic Engagement Success Story
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Photo Credit: Joe Raedle | Getty Images
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Students are rising up against gun violence in the aftermath of the Florida shooting
After a shooting at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School killed at least 17 people, the surviving students have called for action, and created a march on Washington.
March for Our Lives will take place on March 24th, nationwide. This march is created by, inspired by, and led by students across the country who want Congress to pass legislation that will address gun violence issues.
While many of the students calling for action are not yet of voting age, they are not letting that stop them from being civically engaged. According to Amy Campbell-Oates, a 16-year-old protest organizer, "Some of us can't vote yet, but we want to get to the people that can."
Check out the
TIME article here for more on this story, and to learn about the history of Americans that were too young to vote, yet helped change the national conversation of social and political issues.
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California Civic Engagement News
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Photo Credit: University of California
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The 10 UC Fellows chosen to help study free speech, activism, and civic engagement
On February 8th, the University of California's new National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement announced its inaugural class of fellows.
10 fellows were chosen from 75 applicants nationwide:
- Robert Cohen, professor at New York University.
- Carlos Cortes, professor emeritus at UC Riverside.
- Ellis Cose, best-selling author and speaker.
- Justin McClinton, Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Barbara
- Candace McCoy, director of policy analysis in the Office of the Inspector General for the New York Police Department, and professor at City University of New York.
- Elizabeth Meyer, associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.
- William Morrow, former UC Berkeley student body president.
- Gamelyn Oduardo-Sierra, legal counsel to the University of Puerto Rico chancellor.
- Carlin Romano, professor at Ursinus College and the University of Pennsylvania.
- Keith Whittington, the William Nelson Cromwell professor at Princeton University.
The fellows will spend a year researching First Amendment issues, and will present their work at a national conference to be held later this year.
For more on this story and to find out what each fellow will be studying, check out the
UC press release here.
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Dominican, Novato team up on youth civic engagement
This fall, Dominican University students will have the opportunity to participate in "Reimagining Citizenship" program.
The program, created in partnership between the City of Novato and Dominican University, allows students to earn a bachelor's degree while interning at Novato City Hall where they can pursue civic engagement through public service. In addition, participants can receive up to $100,000 in scholarship funds over four years.
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National Civic Engagement News
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Photo Credit: The National Atlas of the U.S.
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Pennsylvania's gerrymandered House map was struck down - with huge implications for 2018
Last month, the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the Pennsylvania U.S. House of Representatives map violated the state's constitution as it was drawn based on a Republican partisan
gerrymander.
The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling means that Pennsylvania has until February 15th to pass a new map through the state legislature. Should the state fail to do so, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will institute a new map.
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2017 National Voter Registration Day Report
On National Voter Registration, held the fourth Tuesday of September, 2017 saw 124,290 voters either register or update their registration.
National Voter Registration Day has seen over 1.6 million people register to vote since this holiday was founded in 2012.
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FoCE Executive Director, Astrid Ochoa
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New Executive Director | Future of California Elections
The Future of California Elections (FoCE) has appointed Astrid Ochoa as their new Executive Director. Ochoa will use her policy expertise and leadership to lead FoCE and their project Voter's Choice California
Before becoming executive director, Ochoa served as the Deputy Director of FoCE since 2013.
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Orange County Election Academy
The Registrar of Voters is accepting applications for the 2018 Orange County Election Academy program.
This election program is open to the public at no cost, and will teach participants about all election management functions such as: candidate filing, campaign finance, election security and more. The program will begin on March 28th.
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Share Your Civic Engagement Research 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 Jennifer Puza at [email protected] for consideration. Thanks for reading and staying engaged!
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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, Department of Political Science
Professor, Department 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
Professor, Department of Sociology University of California, Davis
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Jongho Lee
Professor
Department of Political Science
Western Illinois University
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Peter Levine
Associate Dean for Research
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, Department of Political Science
University of Notre Dame
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Jason Reece
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
American Jewish Committee
Los Angeles Region
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Shakari Byerly
Partner and Lead Researcher
EVITARUS
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Samuel Molina
California State Director
Mi Familia Vota
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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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