Miles Rapoport on the Re-election of the President, and the Work Ahead

NEW YORK - In response to last night’s election, Miles Rapoport, President of Demos, released the following statement:

"Now that the election is over, the next phase of critically important work begins. We hope the President will resist the calls to ‘govern from the center’, which really means not fighting for economic equality, a strong role for government, investing in our people and economy. We hope instead he will lead in molding public opinion and building public will for the kind of economic and social policies ordinary Americans still desperately need. This doesn’t require harsh partisanship, but it does require a willingness to really fight for a just way forward.

Now that the election is over, the next phase of critically important work begins. 

"For advocates of democracy, the broadening of the electorate evident in last night’s returns was heartening at every level. But there can be no complacency in the fact that the outrageous sums of unaccountable money spent in the campaign, efforts to limit access to voting, and egregious administrative failures did not result in a regressive result or a chaotic finish to the election. This election illustrated profound problems in our election process. From running out of provisional ballots and illegal voter ID requests in Pennsylvania to the ongoing collection of problems in Florida, we saw a system that falls well short of the democracy this country and its citizens deserve.

"If we are going to ensure that all eligible Americans have the freedom to vote, economic equality and an equal voice in deciding the future of the country, we must remove the bureaucratic red tape that blocks potential voters from registering and casting their ballots. This means implementing sensible reforms like Same Day Registration, automatic registration, and portable registration – and it means we must repeal the remaining voter ID laws that threaten to disenfranchise too many Americans.

"We congratulate President Obama on his victories, and all the candidates who worked so hard in this year’s election, win or lose. But the fight to fulfill the promise of this victory now belongs to all of us."