Media

Election Day is a crucial time to reflect on the fact that our elected officials, and candidates running for office, don’t look like America.

The biggest campaign donors and spenders have long played an outsized role in most U.S. elections—for legislators, governors, right on up to the president. But, this year there’s an extra twist, showing that judicial elections are no longer an exception.

City council races seldom get the attention of their up-ballot brethren, especially on a day like today when the fate of the U.S. Senate is up for grabs. But local elected officials probably hold greater sway over decisions that directly affect your life. And their ranks tell us something important about who holds power in any community — and, equally important, who doesn't. [...]

Over the last three decades, the class bias of the voting public has increased dramatically.

In the wake of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the Aug. 9 shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson, there has been a focus on racial disparities in representation. A recent study found that while people of color make up 37.2 percent of the U.S. population, they account for only 10 percent of elected officials at the federal, state and county levels. By contrast, white men, who make up 31 percent of the population, account for 65 percent of representatives.

When many think of 21st century voter suppression, the first thing that might come to mind is the network of unnecessary voter ID laws that disproportionately affect the young, the elderly and voters of color. There is, however, a minefield of other voter suppression tactics at work, many of which are on display in the great state of Georgia.

My new study out this week from Demos and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) looks at credit card debt in the Latino community. But it isn’t ultimately about credit cards at all.

With Election Day approaching on November 4th, Americans are faced with a perennial question: to vote or not to vote? In the last midterm election, in 2010, only 47 percent of the eligible population voted. Voting patterns typically break down along clear demographic lines: Non-voters tend to be low-income, young and people of color, while those who vote tend to older, whiter and richer than the population at large.

Last week, Demos and U.S. PIRG released a report, Big Money Dominates in Congressional Primaries, which shows how a small number of large donors play an outsized role in the candidate-selection process.