NOTE: This site is dormant (for the time being). It was focused on the 2022 midterm elections.
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This is not a normal year. This is not a normal time. This moment needs you. This moment needs us all.
“We do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”— Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States
What YOU Can Do
SIGN (right now): The Democracy Promise
“I promise to support, protect, and strengthen democracy as necessary and possible.”
HOST: A Democracy Dinner
Host a democracy dinner event in your home…or in your backyard… or at a restaurant (…or even at your own restaurant, if you have one!). Facilitate meaningful conversations about democracy and the current threats to it; learn about strategies to help protect democracy; and hear about the substantive opportunities we offer that help encourage voter registration. We provide guidelines, conversation topics, and the technology platform to pull off the most impactful and enjoyable gathering possible.
REGISTER: To Vote OR Check Your Registration Status
Through our partnership with Vote.org, we have made it easy for you to check your voter registration status in your state (all states run election processes separately). Or, if you’d like to register, we can make it as easy as possible to do so, including in many states, to register online immediately.
VOLUNTEER: For Voter Registration (Become a “Democracy Leader” or a “Democracy Volunteer”)
Our site has made it VERY easy for you: (A) to become a voter registration team captain, a Democracy Leader, that supervises your own team of voter registration volunteers (in sort of a walk-a-thon model), or (B) an individual Democracy Volunteer. You can easily invite your friends, family, and others to check their registration status or register to vote, ensuring that we all turn out on election day. In a nation where in many elections the outcome can come down to a few hundred votes, Democracy Leaders and Democracy Volunteers such as yourself will make a crucial difference in the 2022 Midterm Elections.
VOLUNTEER: To Fundraise for Democracy
It is not only voter registration that will determine the success or failure of valiant efforts to support, protect, and strengthen democracy. We must together ensure that those efforts (including our own organization’s) have the funding they need. You can volunteer to help raise money for Democracy Dinner or lead a team of fundraising volunteers. These donations will allow us to promote more grassroots organization in swing districts and states. You can rest assured that your money will be directly supporting voter registration in the most important districts and states for the 2022 Midterm Elections!
DONATE: To Defend Democracy
We need your support. We cannot put it more directly. We invite you to please donate to help us reach more citizens and facilitate more dinners, voter registration, and overall grassroots efforts.
We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
This is not a normal year. This is not a normal time. This moment needs you. This moment needs us all.
REGISTER TO VOTE
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Am I Already Registered?
Do a quick and easy check by clicking the button below!
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I Need to Register!
GOOD. It takes 30 seconds—do it now!
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REQUEST: To Vote by Mail/Absentee Ballot
Fill out the short form by clicking the button below to request your ballot today!
WHO We Are
We are a national civic engagement movement mobilizing citizens to support, protect, and strengthen American democracy through active voter participation.
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Joan Blades (Founding Advisor)
Joan Blades is the co-founder of MoveOn.org and MomsRising.org. She is a co-author of The Custom-Fit Workplace, winner of a Nautilus book award in 2011, and The Motherhood Manifesto, which won the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize in 2007.
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Karen Finney (Founding Advisor)
Karen Finney has over 25 years of experience in politics, media, and cultural change. Finney was the first African American spokeswoman and Communications Director for the Democratic Party and rebranded the party, resulting in the successful 2006 midterm election.
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Larry Diamond (Founding Advisor)
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and serves as a senior consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy.
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Celinda Lake (Founding Advisor)
Celinda Lake was one of two leading pollsters for the Biden campaign and is the only Democratic pollster to play a critical role in defeating two incumbent presidents. She guided former Senator Mark Begich to victory, making him the first Senate candidate in Alaska to oust an incumbent in 50 years.
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Sterling Speirn (Founding Advisor)
Sterling is a Senior Fellow and former CEO of the National Conference on Citizenship (chartered by the U.S. Congress). He is also the former President and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Additionally, he served as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. He is currently the sixth president of the Maine Community Foundation.
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Martin Wallace (Founding Advisor)
Martin is dedicated to advising transpartisan efforts to fight polarization through relationship building. He has been CTO for Living Room Conversations and The Listen First Project. He is currently a doctoral student researching moral psychology, philosophy, and AI issues.
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Jorge Neri (Founding Advisor)
During the 2012 election cycle, Neri worked in Nevada to organize for President Barack Obama's re-election. Obama won the state, receiving 70% support from Latino voters in the state. Neri later joined the Obama administration as the associate director of public engagement.
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Jim Clark (Executive Director)
Before founding the Global Partnership for Civic Engagement, Clark was best known as the founder of the World Technology Network & Awards, a global association of the world’s top sci-tech innovators, in collaboration with TIME, Fortune, CNN, Science, and Nature, among others. Since then, he’s been involved in various pro-democracy efforts.
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Blair Fitzgibbon (Media Relations)
Blair Fitzgibbon is the Founder of Slipstream PR. He began his career in media marketing 25 years ago and managed global PR campaigns with the United Nations, the Vatican, Presidential candidates, European Parliament, Nobel Prize winners, Fortune 500 companies, foundations, and governments by providing strategy, crisis communications, and news coverage.
WHY We Do What We Do
The Democracy Dinners movement is based on the idea that maintaining a healthy and vital democracy requires continual re-commitment to core principles. Those cherished (and often aspirational) principles include free and fair elections, active participation of the citizenry in politics and civic life, protection of civil rights, and, equal application of the law to all citizens. Unfortunately, democracy in America is currently under serious assault by those who seek to manipulate the norms of democracy, weaken its systemic foundations, and even block the participation of many citizens in the elections that define democracy in action. And, things have gotten so bad that two-thirds of Americans believe democracy in the US is under threat (PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll, 2021).
We in this movement understand that throughout history, positive change so often has been achieved by thoughtful people gathering over a good meal in the name of a worthy, shared cause. Our cause is safeguarding democracy. In practical terms—both via a national movement of volunteer-hosted dinners and through the features on our website—we encourage meaningful conversations among citizens about the threats to democracy; provide opportunities for people to commit to protecting democracy; and, even more specifically, facilitate the process of voter registration and voter turnout.
And, we want you to be involved! SIGN, HOST, REGISTER, VOLUNTEER, DONATE for democracy. Click the links at the top of the page to learn what you can do to help save democracy!