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Thanks to a 2019 law, New Jersey voters who request a mail-in ballot one time continue to receive them in perpetuity for future elections without needing to submit another request. The state has seen mail-in voting rates increase in off-year elections since the perpetual vote-by-mail list was created, with 22 percent of votes cast in 2021 attributed to mail-in ballots compared to 16.7 percent in 2019.

Following the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon created a mandate requiring all service members to receive a one-day training on domestic extremism. But military members report that the “stand-down” trainings were half-hearted and disorganized, and two years later, few of the recommendations developed by the Pentagon’s working group on extremism have been implemented.

Ahead of a ballot measure to guarantee access to abortion and reproductive health care in Ohio, the Black-led Ohio Women’s Alliance spoke with more than 1.3 million young female BIPOC voters, framing the campaign as a fight for a wide range of reproductive services. Residents approved the constitutional amendment with 60 percent of female voters and 83 percent of Black voters voting in favor.

The Gonzales Youth Council, which allows young people to advise local government on issues that affect them, has inspired other youth councils to sprout up in neighboring communities. Youth commissioners participate in a paid summer fellowship to learn about city and school district processes, and the council has made several recommendations that have gone on to become ordinances, including fines for adults who facilitate underage drinking.

GARViS, Georgia’s new system for documenting voter records, stores information on roughly 7 million active voters and hundreds of thousands of inactive voters, including their addresses, assigned polling places, sample ballots, and early voting schedules. The George Secretary of State’s Office reports that the new system has helped cut down check-in time on election day from about a minute and a half per voter to about 47 seconds per voter, streamlining the process for both poll workers and residents.

After Michiganders approved a constitutional amendment allowing residents to vote early in federal and statewide elections, municipal clerks reported that the state’s first test of early voting in November 2023 was a success with nearly 4,600 people casting ballots.

Residents who participated in Michigan’s first year of early in-person voting say they appreciated the shorter lines, the convenience to vote on their own schedules, and the ability to feed their ballots into polling place tabulators themselves. Nearly 4,600 voters cast their ballots early in-person across the state.

A new standard was implemented in 2021 requiring all U.S. service members to receive training on extremist movements that target troops and veterans. But soldiers describe the briefings, which were largely left to individual commanders to develop, as haphazard and lacking crucial information about preventing radicalization.

Indiana’s Hoosier Hall Pass program allows 16- and 17-year-olds to miss a day of school to pitch in as poll workers, helping to fill staffing shortages while also giving youth an up-close-and-personal look at the election process. In 2020, about 4.3 percent of poll workers in the state were under the age of 18.

At the first Connected Dallas anchor site, South Dallas residents can get access to high-speed internet, technology education from trained professionals, help applying for local and federal benefits, and more. Since opening in August 2023, the site has served 47 residents so far.

Funding from the American Rescue Plan Act is being used to combat homelessness and housing insecurity by using federal dollars to provide affordable rental housing — like Desert Hope apartments — rental assistance for tenants and other supportive services for those experiencing homelessness.

Ahead of Nigeria’s general election, a group of 12 media platforms and civil society organizations worked together as the Nigeria Factcheckers Coalition to debunk false information targeting voters. The coalition, which provided training and tools to participating journalists, fact-checked 127 during the week of the elections.

After the COVID-19 pandemic weakened an already fragile child-care industry, Iowa created an incentive program offering grants to help businesses build their own child-care centers or purchase slots in existing facilities. So far, the state has awarded more than $75 million, which has helped create nearly 11,000 new child-care slots.

By organizing on nights and weekends through their union, Child Care Providers United, home-based child care providers in California were able to secure a landmark contract creating the country’s first retirement fund for unionized child care workers.

Through Youth Voice Youth Vote, nearly 800 young people in Portland took part in a participatory budgeting process to decide how to spend $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding. The winning projects, including a paid internship program, expanded access to menstrual products, and a job resource fair, are now in the process of being implemented.

Local authorities in Spain are introducing restoration measures to clean up the Mar Menor lagoon, which is suffering from years of nitrate and phosphate contamination. Their methods include mandating hedges are planted as barriers on farmland, collecting rain on farms so it doesn’t flow into the water, and limiting fertilizer use.

Schools operated by the United States Department of Defense, which serve the children of military members, are well-funded compared to most public schools, share a centralized structure and curriculum, and have diverse, integrated student populations. Amid pandemic-era learning loss, these schools saw standardized test scores improve while scores in public school districts have for the most part declined.

As their workforces age, states across the United States are offering student loan repayment to incentivize college graduates to stick around. Now Maine and Vermont are the first to offer it to those with degrees in any field with very few caveats.

The concept of “sponge cities” is taking off as a way to prevent flooding. This style of urban design focuses on creating environments that absorb more water with plants and open ground as opposed to pipes and concrete.

Local legislature passed Driver’s Licenses for All in February, which ended the 20-year requirement that driver's license applicants must show proof of legal residency. This new legislation, which recently went into effect October 1, opens the door to the estimated 81,000 undocumented individuals living in the state to apply for their driver’s licenses.

After years of population decline, leadership in states across the Midwest United States are leveraging their climate change resilience to attract new businesses and residents.

Since 2018, three Vermont cities have passed measures allowing noncitizen voters to participate in municipal elections. This gives them the opportunity to weigh in on matters that affect all local residents regardless of their immigration status, from school budgets to road projects.

The United States-based nonprofit Miles4Migrants has flown over 43,000 migrants around the world to safety by pooling donated frequent flyer miles, credit card points, and cash.

In Maine, one of only two states where people in prison retain their right to vote, the Maine State Prison branch of the NAACP engages incarcerated voters through flyers, posters, guest speakers, and group discussions about political issues. Over the past two decades, the organization has helped more than 1,000 people register to vote in Maine prisons.

The $10 a Day initiative, which started in British Columbia and is now being expanded throughout Canada, subsidizes child care centers so that tuition for families can be capped at a more affordable rate. Between 2021 and 2022, the government helped fund 1,271 child care spaces in the province.