As our team at Responsive Gov works towards progress on all things elections — from improving voter registration to supporting election administration to funding our elections — we have a lot we can gain by hearing from other thinkers in the realm of democracy, as well as lessons to learn from other sectors.

Each year, the Responsive Gov team takes a week in summer to focus on the books, articles, and research that could help inform our work. Reading Week is a time for us to step back from the noise and urgency of day to day, and consider what new ideas, approaches, and thinking could help us reach our goals.

2024’s Reading Week was a success. Our team met up in Chicago, Illinois at the end of August to delve into what we learned. Here are five things we read during this year’s Reading Week and our big takeaways:

1. Fragmented Democracy by Jamila Michener
Summary: Medicaid covers upwards of 70 million Americans, making it the single largest public health insurer in the U.S. In the book Fragmented Democracy, Jamila Michener breaks down how disparities in how this massive program is designed and implemented across the country creates a system of inequality impacting millions of Americans struggling with poverty. Importantly, Michener examines what lessons people learn about politics from their experiences with Medicaid, and how those lessons affect their political engagement.

What We Learned:

• The value of health: We were struck by the different ways in which states value – or devalue – health. This shows up in the coverage that states offer, the eligibility requirements across states, the administrative processes that recipients must navigate, etc.
• The good and the bad: The administrative burdens that Medicaid recipients must endure shape their perception of, and desire to interact with, the government as a whole – including their desire to civically participate. However, despite Medicaid’s many shortcomings, those who received any care under Medicaid recalled those positive health impacts on their immediate well-being.

Info to Action:

• Feedback loops: This book further emphasized to Responsive Gov the importance of user experience and collecting feedback. What are the feedback loops from Medicaid recipients to policy makers? How can we make sure we are achieving our intended impacts with different Medicaid-related reforms?
• Considering federalism: As an organization that primarily works at the state-level, we thought about how Responsive Gov must be conscious of, and intentional, in mitigating the consequences of federalism on democratic participation.

2. Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
Summary: Drawing on behavioral science and economic research, in Scarcity, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explore how scarcity creates a similar psychology for people struggling to manage with less than they need, whether that is time or material resources. Mullainathan and Shafir examine how scarcity affects our daily lives, provide a new framework of understanding why the poor stay poor, and discuss how individuals and organizations can better manage and overcome scarcity.

What We Learned:

• Psychological cycles: Beyond physical and material challenges, both the scarcity of lacking time and resources involve psychological challenges that can leave people feeling entrenched in cycles of inaction.

Info to Action:

• Time and AVR: The authors addressed one of the core strengths of Secure Automatic Voter Registration – people who are in a scarcity mindset may simply be unable to think about voter registration when they are in the middle of complex government transactions with the DMV and Medicaid. By automatically registering eligible people to vote, you avoid asking people – particularly those facing resource or time constraints – to answer redundant questions.
• Incorporating psychology into policies: This reading sparked our curiosity to dig deeper into how policies like guaranteed basic income, universal childcare, and tax policies can take into account and/or impact these behavioral and economic findings about scarcity.
• Leading with energy: In today’s society and workplaces, we tend to scrutinize time over energy or bandwidth. What would it look like to prioritize people’s energy in how we manage organizations?

3. Voting in Indian Country: A View from the Trenches by Jean Reith Schroedel
Summary: In Voting in Indian Country, Jean Reith Schroedel paints the historical context that shapes the state of Native American voter access and participation in today’s America. Weaving together history, politics, and law, Schroedel uses conflicts over voting rights as a lens for understanding the centuries-long fight for Native self-determination.

What We Learned:

• Understanding the barriers: The book presents a helpful framework for understanding the voting discrimination Tribal Nations face, and how these differ from the voting access barriers we typically think of. Some barriers that uniquely impact or are compounded for Tribal individuals include:
  • Voter ID requirements: Tribal members lack physical addresses or birth certificates at higher rates, some states specifically exclude Tribal IDs as acceptable forms of ID, and members face greater difficulty in obtaining a state-issued ID.
  • Language access: Voting Rights Act language protections were often not extended to historically unwritten languages, and were only restored through costly and lengthy court battles.
  • Lack of voting infrastructure: Tribal members often lack USPS addresses, must travel long distances to voter registration and polling locations, and have a deep distrust in voting by mail.

Info to Action:

• On track with Tribal AVR: For our team, the book reinforced the problems Responsive Gov is trying to address through implementing Tribal Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), such as mail logistics, ease of access to identification, and inclusion of Tribal IDs as acceptable documents for registration and voting.
• Implementation support: In states where Responsive Gov is advocating for Tribal AVR policies, it may also be helpful to include funding to meet some of the implementation challenges Tribal communities face (especially home mail delivery barriers on reservations).
• Native VRAs: The book also provided a strong case for why states should consider Native American Voting Rights Act legislation similar to Colorado and New Mexico.

4. Anthony Comstock Articles

Members of the Responsive Gov team read several articles about “Comstockery” and Anthony Comstock:

• Ollstein, Alice Miranda. “Anger After Trump Says No to Comstock” Politico, August 20, 2024
• Goldberg, Michelle. “The Comstock Act: Trump’s Allies Say They’ll Enforce It: Believe Them” The New York Times, June 21, 2024
• West, Mark I. “The Role of Sexual Repression in Anthony Comstock’s Campaign to Censor Children’s Dime Novels” Journal of American Culture, 2004 Mark I. West
• McGarry, Molly. “Spectral Sexualities: Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism, Moral Panics, and the Making of U.S. Obscenity Law” Journal of Women’s History, Summer 2000

Summary: The passage of the Comstock Act in 1873 marked the first time that the federal government became involved in defining and fighting “vice.” For nearly a century afterward, this law restricted information flow and allowed for state-sponsored censorship of all sorts of things, ranging from reproductions of art to children’s “dime novels.” Recently, the Comstock Act went from long-dormant to being resurrected as a potential tool to limit abortion access.

What We Learned:

• Understanding “moral panic”: “Moral panics” like the ones that ushered in the Comstock Act – and ones that are informing current U.S. political shifts – are largely a symptom of personal and political anxieties related to economic, political, and social changes.
• Political context: Comstock’s lobbying and anti-vice rhetoric happened within the backdrop of women’s suffrage, the “free-love movement” of the 19th century which espoused the idea that there should be equality in relationships, and increased access to education for working class Americans.

Info to Action:

• Understanding today: It’s surprising that a long dormant law like the Comstock Act would be resurrected in the way it has today. Better understanding the socio-political and personal context of Comstock can help us paint a picture that is useful for understanding what is happening politically and culturally in different communities and regions of America today.

5. A Good Tax: Legal and Policy Issues for the Property Tax in the United States by Joan M. Youngman
Summary: California’s Proposition 13 spawned efforts across the country to limit property tax increases. Now, 46 states and Washington D.C. have state-wide controls on local property tax assessments. In A Good Tax, Joan Youngman examines how over 30-40 years, state tax assessment limit laws have created a distorted landscape of tax burdens due to inaccurate assessment practices and state laws limiting property tax assessment increases. As a result, low-income households, particularly in Black communities, shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of funding local services.

What We Learned:

• Taxes are broken: We have a broken property assessment process. The mechanism for an individual to appeal their tax is both a) complex and cumbersome; and b) designed to fail lower-income households due to the effects of decades of bad state policy.
• Outcomes over ideology: Every tax scheme will come with benefits and costs. When we think about designing the right revenue system for government, it’s critical to consider political realities and the outcomes we want to see, rather than solely prioritizing ideology.

Info to Action:

• Time to redesign: The property assessment process should be redesigned to a) use all available information and data to generate accurate assessments, and; b) amend state laws which are further impoverishing low-income communities.