Increasing Voter Turnout for 2018 and Beyond

The Green Revolution in Asia and Latin America never spread to Africa, due to the continent's varied climate, degraded soil and lack of infrastructure. Now, scientists look to develop a high grossing wheat seed to bring a new green revolution to Africa. The seeds are extremely promising, but there are still some challenges to getting farmers to implement the seeds.

In China, rampant sales tax fraud was addressed with a unique solution. In an attempt to increase transparent sales and receipt use, the government implemented a scratch lottery system on receipts. This solution, using lottery systems to increase turnout and engagement, is being used across the globe, even in the United States to help increase voter turnout.

Copenhagen is a highly livable city, thanks to policies that focus on making streets safe and convenient to walk. The bigger the city, the worse it is to design urban spaces only with cars in mind, says planner and architect Jan Gehl. His top advice is to gather data about people and their movements, making pedestrians as visible in city planning as automobile traffic.

Over two million baby boomers own their own companies, and with retirement looming, the government stepped in with a solution. A portion of a 2018 federal bill included language that will push the Small Business Administration to help baby boomers transition ownership of their companies to their employees if they wish. This will mitigate job loss often associated with a retiring business owner putting the company up for sale. Employee owners on average make a higher salary and have higher job stability, supporting the idea that employee ownership is beneficial for everyone involved, as well as for the econom

Voter registration groups, such as Next Gen and the Florida Federation of Young Republicans, were the second most common method of getting new voters to register in Florida. To grab young voters, these organizations showed up in classrooms and club meetings and focused on issues that youth care about, including the cost of college and gun violence.

The first Human Library emerged in 2000 in Copenhagen, and has since exploded in popularity to the point of operating chapters in more than 70 different countries. The concept is that readers should not judge a book by its cover, so in this library, actual people are the books available to read with titles like "Polyamorous", "Soldier (PTSD)", and "Refugee". The 30-minute "reading sessions" (face-to-face conversations) allow people to learn in a judgement-free zone and put a real person behind the story they are hearing.

Ameelio is a technology startup launched by Yale students to facilitate free communication between people who are incarcerated and loved ones. In their first six months, the group went from sending 300 to over 4,000 letters a week to facilities in the United States. Their initial goal was to provide a not-for-profit alternative to the oftentimes predatory prison telecommunications industry. Recently they began a voter registration initiative where they send registration instructions, a blank voter registration application, and ballot request form to people who are incarcerated and eligible to vote.

Bronx shelters have teamed up with industry professionals to put together an after-school program offering students an opportunity to receive mentorship. In the program, which is based around video game-themed writing workshops, students are able to practice their writing skills, while being able to manage pandemic-induced isolation by connecting with other students and instructors.

“UNDSCVRD SF," funded by the SOMA Community Stabilization Fund and produced by the nonprofit Kultivate Labs, is a night market held once a month from July to November that features a range of Filipino vendors. There were over 35,000 attendees in 2019 and it generated $300,000 in sales. It also serves as a testing ground to select businesses for Kultivate Labs’ SEED Accelerator Program and grantees for the SOMA Fund. The former provides bootcamps and one-on-one support for Filipino-owned businesses that are located in, or would like to be located in, a permanent space within the SOMA cultural district.

Illinois’ 2018 automatic voter registration law resulted in 111,000 additional voter registration applications. Under the automatic system, eligible voters are automatically registered to vote with their most up-to-date address and information every time they interact with state agencies, like the DMV. Each time there is a new interaction with a state agency, voter rolls are updated and individuals who don’t want to be registered can proactively opt-out.