Four Things I Love About David Pepper’s New Book, Saving Democracy (And One I’d Add).
Recently, a friend gave me a copy of David Pepper’s new book, Saving Democracy: A User’s Manual for Every American, and it’s one I hope all teens, parents and educators will embrace as a mantra for daily living. Its central message is that the work of making our democracy stronger is for all of us, everywhere, all the time. I couldn’t agree more.
I’m a lawyer, a parent of two young adults, a former law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I’ve spent the last five years telling anyone who will listen about the importance of bringing voter registration to every high school in America.
David Pepper is a lawyer and a law professor. He lives in Ohio. He led a state political party, and he teaches about voting rights. So he knows how power works and the difference that organizing can make.
Here are the top four things I love about Saving Democracy … and one concept for a new chapter I’d add (if he’d let me)!
1. Power
David Pepper understands the sources and dynamics of political power.
Pepper writes that the fundamental reason our democratic institutions feel so vulnerable today is that we have not devoted sufficient attention to the basics. We have not built the social and organizing structures needed everywhere, for democracy itself to flourish.
Voting rights and election administration happen in large part at the state and local level, and so if we want democracy to thrive, we have to invest in developing and supporting state and local leaders who will make democracy a core part of their agenda.
2. Network
David Pepper understands the importance of starting in your own community and telling everyone you know why voting matters to you. We learn by example, and we learn from those we trust.
We can all learn from the story of Ebony DeLoach. She energized three generations of family members in Cincinnati to reach out to their personal networks with stories of why voting mattered to them. They focused on explaining how specific elected offices have the power to shape their lives and how different candidates would support, or not, values they cared about.
David Pepper tells us why the DeLoach family had an impact: “Because their starting point was their own networks and not a top-down political list, the DeLoaches were reaching thousands of ‘unengaged’ voters, otherwise left out of the political conversation. … You can do the same. Everyone you know can do the same.”
3. Ohio
David Pepper understands the importance of community and the importance of place. Throughout the book, he focuses on the state he knows best, his home state of Ohio. He even made Ohio central to the actual production of his book, selecting an Ohio-based St. Helena Press in Cincinnati as his publisher. Nice!
Ohio has been at the center of efforts like extreme voter ID laws and extreme gerrymandering. Right now, Ohio is at the center of another effort designed to make government less responsive, with a ballot measure set for a statewide election on August 8, which seeks to make it hard to amend the state constitution to protect individual rights.
The immediate point of the measure is to make it harder for voters statewide to enshrine access to abortion in the state’s constitution, which is on the ballot in November. Long-term, the effort will make it harder for voters to create other constitutional protections, like those against extreme gerrymandering.
Fundamentally, if we care about democracy, we need to care about Ohio.
4. Feet
David Pepper has found a way to illustrate and personalize the point that making our democracy stronger is for all of us, everywhere, all the time. His analogy has five toes and looks like this.
The point is this: we each have a democracy footprint, and so do our friends. We can make a plan, and we can plan together. We can work within the institutions that are already at the center of our lives, like families, friends, workplaces, neighborhoods, and schools. When we do that, we are grounded, and we are stronger.
5. One thing I would add: High Schools
A core part of David Pepper’s message is that we should be registering voters all the time everywhere. I couldn’t agree more, and that’s why voter registration belongs in high schools.
In Ohio, 17-year-olds can register to vote if they will be 18 by November. The vast majority of the state’s 150,000+ 17-year-olds are old enough to register before they graduate from high school. In Ohio, as in most states across the county, most high schools do little or nothing to help their students register to vote. Most of them lack the training, resources, and simple planning to get this important job done.
The results speak for themselves. Using Cuyahoga County, as an example, as of June 10, 2023, less than 30% of 18-year-olds in Cuyahoga County are registered to vote. Cuyahoga County is home to about 10% of the state’s 18-year-olds and is one of the most populous counties in the country. In Cleveland and East Cleveland, the rate is only 20%, while seven (suburban) districts have rates exceeding 50%.
The Civics Center’s research has consistently shown a strong correlation between high school programs to encourage voter registration and improved voter registration rates for 18-year-olds.
When we take to heart David Pepper’s great advice to register voters all the time, everywhere, we can make sure that includes high school students. Anyone with connections to teens and educators can make sure they have the training and tools they need to register and vote, to help their whole school do the same.
Once we create a joyful, participatory, and self-sustaining tradition within each high school, we can welcome young people into our democracy as they are coming of age. The result can be transformative for the students, as they see the impacts of their own leadership, their voices, their vitality, and their vision. Our democracy and the country as a whole will benefit.
Check out our Volunteer Toolkit to help bring voter registration to your school.