Embedded Files
Introduction
Introduction
Before Dr. King was assassinated on Thursday, April 4, 1968, he was preparing to preach a Sunday sermon entitled “Why America May Go to Hell.” While he was never able to preach that sermon, he did leave us some context clues. He said:
“Now more than ever before, America is challenged to realize its dream, for the shape of the world today does not permit our nation the luxury of an anemic democracy. And the price that America must pay for the continued oppression of [African-Americans] and other minority groups is the price of its own destruction. For the hour is late. And the clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now before it is too late.”
Just look around: the rising costs of living, healthcare, and housing; the existential threats of unjust wars, gun violence and that of police, immigrant, and criminal injustice; the roller coaster of racial and gender inequity; the future of work looking more bleak than ever with the rise of AI and the digital economy; and the climate and environmental destruction we’re already experiencing through the phenomenon of what is now being called “global boiling." And of course, in our current political system, any vote for a third party or independent candidate at the national level tricks the voter into thinking it's a moral "protest vote" when it actually helps the party you least agree with. These are the symptoms of an immoral or "anemic" democracy, as Dr. King put it. And if this isn't the "destruction" that he prophetically admonished would come as the price for maintaining such an immoral democracy, what further signs do we need?
Indeed, the American Dream, or at least Dr. King’s dream, has become a nightmare. And while no one can be sure how long this nightmare will last, we can be certain that by the time you finish reading this framework you'll agree that this nightmare won't end until we redeem our nation of what author Renaldo Pearson calls “The 7 Deadly Sins of American Democracy.”
In a religious context, a sin is considered a transgression against divine law. "The 7 Deadly Sins of American Democracy" framework uses the notion of sin here trilaterally to refer to the transgressions of the foundational principles in domestic law (the United States democratic system), international law, and religious law across the Abrahamic faiths (or three major religions of the world).
The transgression against the foundational principles of the United States democratic system, best articulated by President Abraham Lincoln as a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," is interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court as "one person, one vote" by way of the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause (14th Amendment). That transgression extends to any violation of the 13th and 15th Amendments, which protect equal citizenship and voting rights for all. Even the U.S. Office of Government Ethics requires all public officials "to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws and ethical principles above private gain."
The transgression against the proper functioning of the administration of democracy in international law is enshrined in Articles 1, 7, and 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The articles uphold universal equal rights and protections, and fair and equally accessible elections.
With the understanding that the vote is a civic sacrament and a form of public prayer for "the Beloved Community," the religious transgression across the Abrahamic faiths and their shared ethic of empowering and standing with the disenfranchised is canonized in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam:
The Jewish scriptures and tradition emphasize the importance of pursuing justice, defending the oppressed, and caring for the vulnerable in society who are disenfranchised or excluded from power. Key principles include not oppressing the stranger, foreigners, widows, orphans, or the poor (Exodus 22:21-22), and pursuing justice and righteousness (Proverbs 21:3). The prophets regularly condemned those who exploit or fail to defend the disempowered. Isaiah proclaimed "learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression..." (Isaiah 1:17).
In Christianity, Jesus showed special concern for the disenfranchised, including the poor, sick, and social outcasts. He taught care for the marginalized, like the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25-37). He also said he came "to proclaim good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18), and blessed those who hunger, weep, and are hated or excluded (Luke 6:20-23). In identifying with the marginalized and disenfranchised, he says to their oppressors and the bystanders who do nothing about their oppression: “inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:35-46).
In Islam, The Quran calls for social justice and condemns exploitation of the weak and vulnerable: "And do not deprive people of what is rightfully theirs." (Quran 11:85). The Quran also condemns oppression and commands Muslims to stand up for justice and the oppressed. "Be upholders of justice, bearing witness for Allah alone" (Quran 4:135); "Do good to...those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer..." (Quran 4:36).
Specifically, this framework outlines the disenfranchising machinations of our immoral democracy (voter suppression, voter erasure, felony disenfranchisement, the corrupting influence of big money in politics, gerrymandering, vulnerable voting systems & Trojan media, and the Electoral College – with the numeric impact of each) that account for the continued existential obstruction in government and the discrepancy between the public interest and public policy.
But there is hope, Pearson concludes this framework with the redeeming countermeasures for each sin that combine to finally make the promise of democracy (multiracial democracy) real in America and give us all the revolutionary foundation necessary to dismantle what Allan Aubrey Boesek and Wendell L. Griffen rightly call "the death-dealing systems that rule over [us]," in order to save the nation and the world -- before it's too late. Importantly, this framework centers the people (our communities) as the protagonists in this unfolding chapter of American history, where we finally prioritize the more-empowering election of a new political system over the less-empowering election of any single politician who operates within our current immoral and corrupt political system.
Historical Context
Historical Context
Though America loves to boast of her long marriage to democracy, those who keep her honest acknowledge the fact that America’s storied romance with democracy has been overshadowed by her adulterous and abominable relationship with disenfranchisement from the start. Just consider the following facts:
How voter suppression can trace its roots to the founding of our democracy when white male landowners adopted the Constitution in 1788 granting them and other white male landowners voting rights and delegating voting “standards” to each individual state. And how the Naturalization Act of 1790 specifically excluded any “non-white” immigrants from citizenship, only permitting naturalization for “free White person(s).”
How it took a Civil War to expand voting rights through two constitutional amendments – the 14th Amendment with its citizenship and equal protection clauses, and the 15th Amendment codifying racial equality in voting – and discriminatory and deliberate barriers to voting still persisted.
How Immigrant-origin communities deemed “non-white” continued to also be systematically denied voting rights and citizenship even after the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments, and even their descendants born in America were denied voting rights. And how the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 Immigration Act specifically banned Asians already in America and their children from naturalization and access to voting rights.
How Native Americans were not recognized by the U.S. as citizens until 1924 and even when recognized Native communities were still denied their freedom to vote. (In Arizona, the state constitution kept Native Americans from voting until 1948 when Arizona’s Supreme Court struck down the provision. And in Maine, Native Americans were denied the right to vote until the 1930s.)
How The 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920 and, on paper, aimed to enfranchise all American women, but, in practice, did little to stop states from passing discriminatory laws aimed at disenfranchising women of color.
And how it wasn’t until 1965 that the voting rights of Black, Indigenous, and people of color would move from being written in law to protected in fact, thanks to the sustained and committed efforts of the Civil Rights Movement enduring constant police and vigilante violence as it pressured the federal government for change, ultimately securing the revolutionary Voting Rights Act of 1965. But even that sacred law was gutted by Supreme Court in its 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, which made the critical federal oversight provision of the law unenforceable, which not only made the 2016 election the first presidential election without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act, but, in so doing, unleashed (with continuing impunity) the most anti-voter bills in states across the country since the Jim Crow era, causing America to recently be added to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) annual list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time.
America and disenfranchisement – strange bedfellows indeed.
1. Voter Suppression
1. Voter Suppression
Broad attempts to systematically discourage or restrict access to registration and voting.
More Context:
As a result of the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, we have seen a marked increase in voter suppression schemes nationwide and are now living with the effects of this increase as we become the first generation to witness America becoming less democratic. Within hours of the controversial decision – in which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that discrimination still exists, but not “sufficiently” to warrant the “extraordinary” remediation measures that the Voting Rights Act imposed on the states of the former Confederacy – Texas announced a strict new voter ID law. Mississippi and Alabama shortly followed suit with similar laws that had been previously blocked.
Voter turnout in the US is low in comparison to our international peer democracies (31st out of 50). Voter fraud is statistically non-existent with incident rates between 0.0003% and 0.0025%. Despite these facts, in the decade since the 2013 Shelby decision, 29 states have passed nearly 100 restrictive voting laws that have one or more provisions that would make it harder for eligible Americans to register, stay on the voter rolls, or vote as compared to existing state law. And these restrictive state voting laws, which have been incontrovertibly proven to have an outsized racially discriminatory impact on voters of color, will continue to go unabated without reenacting federal legislation like the 1965 Voting Rights Act to set baseline nationwide standards for voting.
(Recap: 92 restrictive voting bills that were introduced in 33 states in 2013; 83 restrictive voting bills introduced in 29 states in 2014; 113 restrictive voting bills introduced in 2015; 77 restrictive voting bills introduced in 2016; at least 99 restrictive voting bills introduced in 2017; at least 70 restrictive voting bills introduced or carried over in 2018; at least 87 restrictive voting bills introduced or carried over in 2019; and despite a global pandemic which saw 29 states and DC enact 79 bills to expand voting access [mostly around eligibility and access to mail voting], 6 states actually enacted laws that restricted voting access in 2020; followed by a post-January 6th criminal insurrection inspired wildfire of more than 440 restrictive voting bills introduced in 49 states [where 34 of those bills were enacted in 19 states] in 2021; in 2022, there were at least 408 restrictive bills considered by lawmakers in 39 states [where 12 of those states enacted over 20 restrictive or election interference laws]; and as of January 25, 2023, state lawmakers in at least 32 states pre-filed or introduced 150 restrictive voting bills, representing an increase from the number of restrictive bills introduced at the same time in 2021 and 2022.)
Examples/Forms:
Strict Photo/Voter ID Requirements
Native/Tribal Resident Discrimination
Arbitrary Polling Place Closures/Consolidations
Early Voting Cutbacks
Voter Mobilization Restrictions/Penalties
Limits to Mail-in/Provisional/Absentee Ballots
Election Police/Integrity Units
Census Discrimination & Suppression
Lifetime U.S. Supreme Court Appointments
U.S. Senate (Jim Crow) Filibuster
Presidential Primary Suppression (Location/Order/Caucuses/Closed Primaries/Superdelegates)
D.C. & U.S. Territory Disenfranchisement
Impact:
As expected, the pervasive impact of voter suppression in our politics has had a direct impact on voter turnout. A 2014 Government Accountability Office study found that strict photo ID laws reduce turnout by 2-3%, which can translate into tens of thousands of votes lost in a single state (note: the 2020 presidential election was determined by less than 2% in most swing states, and just 44,000 votes across 3 of those swing states prevented a tie in the Electoral College).
A 2017 Civis Analytics study found that states where voting ID laws became more strict between 2012 and 2016 saw voter turnout decrease by -1.7%, while those that changed to relax their laws increased by +0.7%. In Wisconsin alone, one of 14 states with new restrictive voting laws in place by November 2016, Trump’s margin of victory was about 23,000. A University of Wisconsin-Madison study reports that as many as 45,000 voters statewide were deterred from voting by Wisconsin’s Voter ID law.
In North Dakota, where former Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp won her senate seat by fewer than 3,000 votes despite strong Native American support, a U.S. District Court said that roughly 5,000 Native Americans did not possess the qualifying voter ID required by a new voting law passed by the state legislature.
A California study showed that polling station closures decreased voter turnout by at least 1.85%. Early voting cutbacks, like polling station closures, can also lead to longer lines which may very well simply be an inconvenience for some, but for others with childcare concerns and an unyielding work schedule, may mean the difference between voting and being unable to do so.
As the carousel of maps below illustrates -- showing the states with the worst voter suppression laws are the same states with the worst poverty rates, minimum wages, healthcare coverage, and non-discrimination laws -- it's not until we attack the anti-democracy policy that suppresses us that we can finally attack the anti-public interest policy that oppresses us.
(Carousel of a 2010-2017 Map of States that passed or proposed voter suppression laws, followed by an overlay of 6 maps showing these are the same states with the worst poverty rates, minimum wages, healthcare coverage, and non-discrimination laws.)
2. Voter Erasure/Purging
2. Voter Erasure/Purging
Any scheme that has the systematic effect of illegitimately erasing or purging individuals from voting rolls.
More Context:
Voter erasure might otherwise be subsumed as just another form of rabid voter suppression that resulted from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision – and, more recently, its 2018 Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute decision. However, given its unprecedented scope and prominent role in tipping the scales in the 2016 election, this tactic of disenfranchisement deserves special attention. Furthermore, while voter suppression reduces both individual and mass voter turnout, this specific tactic does not merely discourage voters, it erases them from the electoral system altogether.
In the run up to the 2016 presidential election, then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, in collaboration with dozens of other secretaries of state, devised a list of 7.2 million potential duplicate registrations as part of a flawed data collection program known as the Interstate Crosscheck System, or simply “Crosscheck.” According to award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast, the program only used first and last names – excluding Social Security Numbers, middle names, and birth dates which were supposed to be cross-checked in order to properly identify suspect voters. By November 8, 2016, Kobach and other Secretaries of State using Crosscheck had erased an estimated 1.1 million individuals – disproportionately minority and low-income voters – from the rolls using a “purge by postcard” scheme in which a non-forwardable postcard resembling junk mail was sent to the alleged double-voter’s residence and, if not returned, resulted in them being purged from the rolls. Making matters worse, those who were purged did not find out about their voting status until they showed up at the polls, at which point, if not turned away by officials, they were given a provisional ballot – which, according to Palast, were not counted 25% of the time in some recent presidential elections as recently as 2008.
A 2017 statistical analysis of Interstate Crosscheck conducted by researchers at Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft found that of 240,000 voter registrations in Iowa that shared a name and date of birth with a voter in another state, only 6 were instances where the individual was actually registered and voted in two different states. In other words, the anti-voter fraud program incorrectly identified duplicate registrations over 99% of the time and “would eliminate about 200 registrations used to cast legitimate votes for every one registration used to cast a double vote.”
More recently, a 2018 study from the Brennan Center for Justice report detailed that approximately 16 million voters were removed from the rolls nationwide between 2014 and 2016 – an increase of nearly four million from between 2006 and 2008.
Examples/Forms:
Voter Caging/Purging
Voter Eligibility/"Vigilante" Challenges
“Placebo” Provisional Ballots
Spoiled Ballots/Mail-in Ballot Disqualification
Local Preemption & Referendum Reversals
Authoritarian Election Subversion/Sabotage
Our national "plurality voting" system
EagleAI NETwork
Impact:
When looking to measure the widespread impact of voter purging on national politics as a whole, the 2016 presidential election paints a very troubling picture. According to investigative journalist Greg Palast, Donald Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan during the 2016 general election was 13,107; Michigan’s Crosscheck purge list was 449,922. In Arizona, Trump’s margin of victory was 85,257; Arizona’s Crosscheck purge list was 270,824. As for North Carolina, Trump’s victory margin was 177,008; North Carolina’s Crosscheck purge list was 589,393.
These three states alone -- totaling 42 Electoral College votes altogether – helped tip the scales of the election in Trump’s favor, according to Palast.
In 2023, Mississippi came the closest it’s come since 1999 to electing a progressive governor (which, among other things, could've expanded affordable healthcare/Medicaid coverage to over 200,000 Mississippians and kept dozens of Mississippi hospitals open, including one-third of its rural hospitals). The 2023 gubernatorial election was decided by approximately 26,619 votes. According to the Associated Press, from April 1 through Oct. 1, roughly 33,000 people filled out voter registration forms. About 300 were rejected, and more than 32,000 other voters were moved from active to inactive status, essentially purging and reversing the cycle’s entire voter registration effort. Another 40,000 voters were purged from the rolls altogether.
And in the 2024 election, if not for the voter erasure of mass voter purges, the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, and the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Vice-President Harris would have won the presidential election with at least an additional 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million votes, according to the latest analysis by investigative journalist Greg Palast.
3. Felony Disenfranchisement
3. Felony Disenfranchisement
The practice of barring individuals from voting based on prior felony convictions.
More Context:
As of 2022, laws in 48 states, many of which date back to the post-Reconstruction era, ban approximately 4.6 million Americans from voting in the United States due to a felony conviction. This translates to 2%, or 1 out of 50 adult citizens, of the voting-age population that are disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction. Of this number, 3 out of 4 people disenfranchised are actually living in their communities, having fully completed their sentences or remaining supervised while on probation or parole.
In three states – Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee – more than 8% of the adult population, one of every 13 adults, is disenfranchised. Florida remains the nation’s disenfranchisement leader in absolute numbers, with over 1.1 million people currently banned from voting, often because they cannot afford to pay court-ordered monetary sanctions. An estimated 934,500 Floridians who have completed their sentences remain disenfranchised, despite a 2018 ballot referendum (Amendment 4, which voters passed with 65% of the vote, led by my friend Desmond Meade – a returning citizen with a past felony conviction – and the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition) that aimed to restore their voting rights (until Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature and Governor Ron DeSantis passed a countermeasure overriding the will of the people and imposing a Jim Crow-esque poll tax, forcing these newly re-enfranchised returning citizens to pay at least $1 billion in outstanding fines and court fees before being allowed to vote).
According to a 2020 Washington Post report, 2.2 million (1 in 19) Black voters are disenfranchised or banned from voting in America -- that's 4 times the rate of all other racial groups combined. Among the adult African American population, 5.3% is disenfranchised compared to 1.5% of the adult non-African American population. More than 1 in 10 African American adults is disenfranchised in eight states – Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia. And although data on ethnicity in correctional populations are unevenly reported and undercounted in some states, a conservative estimate is that at least 506,000 Latinx Americans, or 1.7% of the voting eligible population, are disenfranchised. Finally, approximately 1 million women are disenfranchised, comprising over one-fifth of the total disenfranchised population.
Impact:
With the 2018 Florida gubernatorial election that put Governor Ron DeSantis in office being decided by under 40,000 votes, it’s not hard to imagine the difference 1,000,000 (MILLION) more votes would’ve made. Indeed, this might explain why Governor DeSantis and the Republican-controlled state legislature continue to uphold felony disenfranchisement in Florida.
4. The Corrupting Influence of Big Money in Politics
4. The Corrupting Influence of Big Money in Politics
The outsized influence that corporate money and affluent donors have on policy-making and increasingly expensive political campaigns.
More Context:
Perhaps no other deadly sin outlined here more demonstrably captures how unresponsive and futile corruption makes our government than that of big money in politics. Political campaigns are becoming increasingly expensive, with a total of $8.7 billion spent on Congressional campaigns in 2020, up from $4.4 billion in 2016. Candidates who spend the most money on their campaigns overwhelmingly win their elections, at the rate of nearly 89% for House candidates in 2018 and nearly 83% of Senate candidates in 2019.
To keep up with their fundraising needs, members of Congress are spending between 30 and 70% of their time calling potential donors, which often means focusing on the wealthy donors who will give large sums of money. Almost half of the seed money raised in support of candidates for the 2016 election came from just 158 families, The New York Times reported. Wealthy donors, like the 158 families, are unrepresentative of the country as a whole, not just in economic status, but in race and other important demographics. The Times found the families to be “overwhelmingly white, rich, older, and male in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by Black and brown voters.” The ultra-wealthy donor class spends their money across the political spectrum, though, of the 158 families, only 20 backed Democrats. Their voices are amplified through their personal wealth.
Impact:
According to a Princeton University study that examined over 20-years of data from over 1,800 different public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law (what the public wanted versus what the government actually did), the opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all, due to current campaign finance laws. The study found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page concluded that the rich elites and big money businesses that can afford lobbyists now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters – transforming America into more of an oligarchy than a democracy over the past few decades.
One of the most illustrative examples of this is with the existential issue of climate change, where nearly two-thirds of Americans think the government needs to do more to reverse global warming. According to a recent study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the fossil fuel industry has been using positive reinforcement over the past 3 decades, by increasing campaign contributions when legislators vote in their favor. In 2016, Big Oil ramped up campaign contributions to the tune of $103 million, according to OpenSecrets. But the companies didn't simply hand out the cash indiscriminately to candidates it believed had its interests in mind — instead, it seemed to actively reward those who had already shown loyalty to the oil and gas industry in prior votes. The study found that for every additional 10% of votes against environmental rules and regulations cast in 2014, the legislator would receive an additional $5,400 in campaign contributions for the 2016 election cycle. By another measure, researchers found that candidates would receive an additional $1,700 for every 10% drop to a legislator's environmental score, as provided by the League of Conservation Voters. Essentially, the more votes a person casts in favor of the industry and against environmental protections, the more cash they would have for their re-election campaign. While this trend was most clear in 2016, researchers found it to be evident throughout basically every election cycle, as candidates found themselves rewarded for keeping Big Oil's interests in mind while casting their votes. The result of this cycle, of course, is producing legislators who vote against the environment at every occasion.
If you follow the money, you’ll see a similar phenomenon cyclically playing out on the uniquely American issue of gun control, and virtually every other issue where there is gridlock and public policy doesn’t reflect the public interest or will.
5. Gerrymandering
5. Gerrymandering
Drawing legislative districts to advantage one party or political interest.
More Context:
According to The New York Times, gerrymandering is a way that governing parties try to cement themselves in power by tilting the political map steeply in their favor. The goal is to draw boundaries of legislative districts so that as many seats as possible are likely to be won by the party’s candidates. Drafters accomplish it mainly through two practices commonly called packing and cracking.
A packed district is drawn to include as many of the opposing party’s voters as possible. That helps the governing party win surrounding districts where the opposition’s strength has been diluted to create the packed district.
Cracking does the opposite: It splits up clusters of opposition voters among several districts, so that they will be outnumbered in each district.
An efficiently gerrymandered map has a maximum number of districts that each contain just enough governing-party supporters to let the party’s candidates win and hold the seat safely, even during “wave” elections when the opposition does especially well. And it packs the opposition’s supporters into a minimum number of districts that the opposition will win overwhelmingly.
Impact:
According to the Brennan Center, if Congress ended the Jim Crow filibuster and passed the landmark anti-gerrymandering reforms in the pro-democracy Freedom to Vote: John Lewis Act before the 2022 midterm election, congressional maps originally passed in 9 states (5 drawn by Republicans, 3 by Dems, 1 by political appointee commission) would have required significant changes to bring them into compliance with the John Lewis Act, and an additional 13 states would have triggered judicial review under the John Lewis Act as possible partisan gerrymanders ahead of the election. Given these numbers, it’s not hard to imagine how gerrymandering potentially tipped the scales of congressional control, which House Republicans secured with a 7-seat majority.
6. Vulnerable Voting Systems & Trojan Media
6. Vulnerable Voting Systems & Trojan Media
An elections and media ecosystem susceptible to cyber attacks, malfunctions, manipulation, and disinformation.
More Context:
Trust in the electoral process and broader media ecosystem is vital to democratic participation and is based in part on confidence in the voting and media ecosystems themselves. In places where people have more trust in these ecosystems, voter turnout is higher and political division is lower, but where people perceive these systems as unfair or inaccurate, voter turnout is lower and political division is higher. When voting machines and media platforms are vulnerable to hacking, disinformation, cyber attack, or have basic functionality problems, electoral integrity and trust in the democratic process are threatened.
Vulnerable voting systems via outdated machines suffer frequent breakdowns and create long lines at polling places. They are also more susceptible to error and fraud, risking public confidence in elections. Like any computerized system, voting machines age into obsolescence. For electronic voting machines purchased since 2000, experts agree that the expected lifespan for the core components is between 10 and 20 years. For most systems, however, it is probably closer to 10 than 20, according to the Brennan Center.
Vulnerable Voting Systems by the Numbers (as of March 2022):
There are 24 states, home to 41 million registered voters, that use voting machines first fielded more than a decade ago as their principal voting equipment (the technology used by most voters on Election Day in an election jurisdiction).
There are 23 states with nearly 21 million registered voters that use voting machines that are no longer manufactured as their principal voting equipment.
Approximately 40 million voters live in 26 states and two territories relying on assistive voting equipment that has been discontinued.
Perhaps most importantly, nearly 26 million registered voters in 16 states live in jurisdictions that still use direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines for some or all voters. And of those, more than 13 million registered voters live in 6 states (Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Texas) that use DREs without a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). Security experts have long identified DREs, which generally require a voter to use a touch-screen monitor to vote, as a unique security risk, especially in light of these models flipping votes in recent years, with the touch screen incorrectly registering voters’ choices due to calibration errors associated with aging hardware. That, in turn, has led to viral videos and conspiracy theories of machines “stealing votes.”
The Center for Secure and Modern Elections has estimated that the full cost of replacing outdated voting machines over the next decade will amount to $1.8 billion.
New voting machines that produce a paper ballot for each vote cast make it possible for election officials to conduct post-election audits. Approximately half of all states and the District of Columbia conduct post-election audits, which require a review of paper ballots to check the accuracy of the votes cast. With partisan actors fueled by the Big Lie conducting partisan reviews that undermine confidence in our elections, it is becoming increasingly important for qualified election officials to conduct legitimate audits of their own.
Trojan media via online and/or social media disinformation perpetrated by bots like those detailed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Election” and by surveillance advertising gatekeepers like Facebook, Google, and adtech middlemen as detailed in critically acclaimed 2020 Netflix docudrama The Social Dilemma orchestrate social media campaigns and microtargeted ads designed to provoke and amplify discord on and offline – a threat that exponentially rises with the advent of unregulated artificial intelligence (AI).
Trojan Media by the Numbers:
In 2017, Facebook estimated that as many as 126 million Americans had been exposed to Russian-backed material on its platform during the 2016 election campaign.
In 2018, Twitter admitted than more than 50,000 Russia-linked accounts used its service to post automated material about the 2016 election.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report found that “the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” through its Internet Research Agency (IRA), ultimately reaching hundreds of millions of Americans in the 2016 election cycle.
And, due to the surveillance advertising “disinformation-for-profit business model” described in The Social Dilemma, an MIT study found that falsehoods or “fake news” is 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth, and reach their first 1,500 people six times faster – an effect more pronounced with political news than other categories.
Impact:
In one of the most dramatic examples of the impact of Trojan Media, a fake Black Lives Matter Facebook page (called “Blacktivist”) which was part of Russia’s covert efforts to stoke racial tensions and influence the 2016 U.S. election (and created real, in-person politically-charged Facebook events and marches), had 360,000 likes/followers on Facebook, surpassing an official Black Lives Matter account’s 301,000.
7. The Electoral College
7. The Electoral College
A vestige of our nation’s original sin of slavery and its “three-fifths compromise” specifically, the electoral college is America’s most enduring entitlement of white supremacy; it bypasses “1-person:1-vote”-democracy for an undemocratically filtered and skewed process to elect the President, in which each state is assigned a certain number of electors (538 total) whose votes decide the election (270 electors needed to win).
More Context:
Delegate Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut proposed a system of “electors appointed by state legislatures at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Ellsworth planned for these electors to be apportioned on the basis of population, so small states would have no special advantage in electing the President. But delegates from the slaveholding South had another rationale for opposing the direct election method: doing so would be to their disadvantage. As the most influential delegate, James Madison, a slaveholder from Virginia, argued: “the people at large” were “the fittest” body to choose a president, except for “one difficulty…of a serious nature” that made election by the people impossible. “The right of suffrage was more broadly diffused in the Northern States than in the Southern States,” he said. And “the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes,” he concluded, capturing the sentiment of what would later become the slaveholding Confederacy.
Behind Madison’s statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. Because of its considerable, nonvoting enslaved population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system. The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president, one that could leverage the infamous three-fifths compromise – the inhumane bargain of counting five enslaved African-Americans as equal to three free people they’d already made to determine how congressional seats would be apportioned. With about 93% of the country’s enslaved African-Americans toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South’s congressional delegation by 42% (without the actual vote of African-Americans). When the time came to agree on a system for choosing the president, it was all too easy for the delegates to resort to the three-fifths compromise as the foundation. The peculiar system that emerged was the Electoral College.
What’s clear is that, more than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern whites, the Electoral College continues to do just that. And the current system has a distinct, adverse impact on black voters, diluting their political equality.
By the Numbers:
Though President Biden won the 2020 election by nearly 7 million votes with historic turnout (74 votes in the Electoral College), his victory was really determined by just 44,000 votes across 3 states (Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin) that separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College.
In 2016, voters across America favored Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump by some 3 million votes more, but Clinton received 74 fewer Electoral College votes than Trump, who received 306 of 270 needed to win the election.
The 2016 election was the fifth time in American history when the candidate with the most popular votes lost the election. Before Clinton, Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election by 5 electoral votes despite winning the popular vote by about 500,000.
In 2016, Clinton received more than 42% of the vote in slightly more Republican states, including Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina, and more than 33% of the vote in far more Republican states. In Alabama, over one-third of votes went to Clinton, but all nine of the state’s electoral votes went to Trump. The votes of nearly 750,000 Alabamians were lost in the electoral college process. Under the winner-take-all system used by Alabama and all but two other states, the candidate with over 50% of each state’s popular vote wins 100% of each state’s electoral votes, instead of the proportion of votes they actually received.
In the 2000 presidential election, the result was as if Black voters and other people of color in the South had not voted at all. Minority votes of all kinds were negated in overwhelmingly white Republican states like Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, the Dakotas, Montana, and Texas.
According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Electoral College’s distribution of votes gives undue influence to white voters such that states like Wyoming and North Dakota, where upwards of 80% of the population are white, are overrepresented in the Electoral College. “Based on the weight of each vote in each state and given the fact that most minority voters reside in states where each person’s vote counts less in the Electoral College,” the center’s research found, “the result is minority voters are grossly underrepresented.”
Relative to white voters, African-American votes weigh less in the Electoral College, at a ratio of 1 to .95 – eerily reminiscent of the three-fifths compromise upon which the Electoral College was based. The gap is even larger for Hispanic votes, which have a relative weight of 1 to .91. Whereas 70% of the electorate in the 2016 election was white, the “effective electorate” representation, which factors in the Electoral College weight or power of votes, was 75% white.
Myths Debunked:
Contrary to what some may think, the way the Electoral College currently rewards electoral votes decreases the political clout of small states in presidential elections: The eight smallest states (i.e., those with three electoral votes, including DC) together received only one of the nation’s 952 general-election campaign events in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections. In contrast, the closely divided battleground state of Wisconsin (with about the same population as the eight smallest states) received 40 events. Wisconsin received more attention despite having only 10 electoral votes—compared to 24 electoral votes for the eight states.
In terms of the Electoral College acting as a buffer to mob rule, popular passions, or a demagogue, as 2016 proves, the Electoral College has never operated as a buffer largely because it simply does not function as a deliberative body. Moreover, in terms of the notion of “faithless presidential electors” specifically, there have only been 17 deviant votes for President out of the 22,991 electoral votes cast in the nation’s 57 presidential elections between 1789 and 2012, and only one of them, in 1796, was a true faithless elector.
So with antiquated racial entitlements and myths aside, perhaps it’s time to reexamine James Madison’s original statement: “The people at large” are “the fittest'' to choose the president, because “the people generally could only know and vote for some citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention and esteem.”
Redeeming Countermeasures
Redeeming Countermeasures
These are the redeeming anti-corruption and pro-democracy countermeasures needed at the local and federal level (which the President can also immediately appoint a special Commission on Electoral Reform to investigate):
Universal Civic Duty Voting
Automatic Voter Registration
Same Day Registration
Online Voter Registration
Early Voting
Pre-Registration of 16 & 17-year-olds
Vote by Mail
Proportional Representation/Mixed-Member Proportional/Ranked Choice Voting
Election Day National Holiday
End Jim Crow Filibuster (which requires 51 U.S. Senators who support changing the filibuster rule to allow voting rights legislation to pass with a simple majority)
Universal Civic Duty Voting
Online Voter Registration
Same Day Registration
DC Statehood
Felony Re-Enfranchisement
Voting while Incarcerated
Small-Donor Matching
Democracy Vouchers
Banning Congressmembers from Owning Individual Stock
Independent Redistricting Commissions
Proportional Representation/Mixed-Member Proportional/Ranked Choice Voting
Vote by Mail
Social Media Ad Disclosure Legislation
Social Media Safeguards Against Disinformation & Hate Speech
Banning Surveillance Advertising
Proportional Representation/Ranked Choice Voting
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact
Current Federal/National Legislation:
For the People Act (HR1/S1)
John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
Freedom to Vote John R. Lewis Act
Native American Voting Rights Act
Democracy Restoration Act
Ban Conflicting Trading Act
Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act
Fair Representation Act
Banning Surveillance Advertising Act
Online Civil Rights Act
Washington DC Admission Act (HR51/S51)
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (via state legislatures)
Impact of Electoral Reforms at State Level:
[Selected excerpt from Nonprofit VOTE's "America Goes to the Polls 2020" report]
Reminder from Section 1 (Voter Suppression):
[Voting Rights Lab map of 2024 swing states with 2020 margin of victory (excerpt from "Battleground 2024" report)]
Concluding Letter from the Author: "Democracy or Destruction"
Concluding Letter from the Author: "Democracy or Destruction"
As referenced in the introduction, before Dr. King was assassinated on Thursday, April 4, 1968, he was preparing to preach a Sunday sermon entitled “Why America May Go to Hell.” But that sermon is more relevant today not just because of “The 7 Deadly Sins of American Democracy” that I outlined above, but because these sins (aided and abetted by the age-old race-exploiting trick of “Divide & Conquer” politics that benefit the few at the expense of the many) are literally preventing us from addressing the time-sensitive colorblind emergency that the existential threat of climate change poses to the survival of the human race — not to mention the subordinate existential threats of world war and nuclear proliferation, the next mass shooting, mass incarceration, economic inequality, the lack of universal healthcare, repeal of abortion protections, or the qualified immunity of lethal police brutality.
Again, Dr. King wasn’t able to preach that sermon, but he did leave us some clues:
He said, “Now more than ever before, America is challenged to realize its dream, for the shape of the world today does not permit our nation the luxury of an anemic democracy. And the price that America must pay for the continued oppression of [African-Americans] and other minority groups is the price of its own destruction. For the hour is late. And the clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now before it is too late.”
He also said that “all life is interrelated,” that all of us “are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,” that “whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly,” (as the pandemic grimly showed us) and he said that “we must learn to live together as brothers [and sisters], or perish together as fools.”
Surely, Dr. King’s prophetic admonition is more prescient today than ever before. Whether you view his ultimatum of community or catastrophe through the lens of the Doomsday Clock that atomic scientists say is now closer to midnight’s “civilization-ending apocalypse” than it has ever been. Or whether you view his ultimatum of democracy or destruction through the lens of the latest report from the internationally accepted authority on climate change, the United Nations IPCC, where climate scientists have given the final warning last year that it’s “now or never” to reverse our carbon trajectory in order for Greenhouse gas emissions to peak in 1 year (2025), be cut in half in 6 years (2030), and reach net zero by 2050 in order to avert climate disaster this century — humanity’s first globally acknowledged existential deadline. Yes, in a real and soberingly apocalyptic sense, America may indeed go to Hell.
This is why I argue that fixing our corrupted democracy (or establishing real democracy in America) is the Goliath that David’s army of egalitarians must focus its slingshot on if we’re all to advance in earnest. Otherwise, we’ll keep yielding diminishing returns in our respective silos — just at the time when the clock of destiny is literally running out.
Yes, if I’ve learned anything in the decade that I’ve been in this democracy fight, it’s that it will be an uphill battle.
Indeed, my generation is the first to witness America become less democratic, as a result of an anti-democracy decade that started with the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision and continued with its 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, which, of course, unleashed the most voter suppression since the Jim Crow era. This made 2016 the first presidential election without the full protection of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and 2020 the second. And this was all before a white supremacist mob, urged on by a sitting President and carrying confederate flags, stormed the Capitol, forced Congress to halt the counting of Electoral College votes, and left 5 dead (making it the first time since the Civil War that a violent insurrection prevented the United States from holding a peaceful transfer of power). And even after that, 147 Members of Congress voted not to certify an election that the loser's own Department of Homeland Security called the “most secure in American history.”
But don’t just take my word for it that we have a democracy and corruption problem in the U.S, see the indictments on our corrupt democracy from the acknowledged authorities over the past several years:
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s “Democracy Index”: for the first time, in 2017, we were bumped down to no longer a “full democracy”; and for the fifth consecutive year, we were recently rated a “flawed democracy.” In the most recent report, covering 2020, the United States received its lowest score yet (7.92 out of 10), ranking 25th out of 167 countries analyzed.
Freedom House: in 2018, the United States democracy score experienced its sharpest one-year drop since Freedom House began doing its Freedom in the World report more than 40 years ago. And that score dropped by another 3 points in 2020, for a total decline of 11 points on a 100-point scale over the past decade. The report, entitled “US Democracy Has Declined Significantly in the Past Decade, Reforms Urgently Needed,” added that “measures to address racial injustice, special-interest influence, and partisan polarization should be among the top priorities.”
The Electoral Integrity Project: the 2019-2021 Electoral Integrity Global Report asserts that the U.S. is now the lowest ranked “liberal democracy” (the liberal democracy category is the highest of four major regime types cataloged), citing “electoral boundaries, results, campaign finance, and voter registration” as the main areas of weakness.
The Economic Policy Institute: in 2018, an EPI report marking the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Commission found that “civil rights gains of the past half-century have stalled or in some areas gone into reverse.”
The Democracy Project: a 2018 joint project of Freedom House, the George W. Bush Institute, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, this project engaged two polling firms – one Democratic and one Republican – to find that a clear majority (55%) see American democracy as “weak,” 68% believe it is “getting weaker,” and a narrow majority (50-43%) agreed that America is in “real danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country.”
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance: in 2021, the United States was added to the list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time, in IDEA’s annual report on the Global State of Democracy.
To be sure, these report cards on the state of our democracy run counter to the self-aggrandizing “best in class” or “America first” narrative we’ve been conditioned to believe. But, as French sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville said after coming to the United States in 1831 to study “Democracy in America” (one of the most influential books of that century): "The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults."
So let’s get to the work of repairing America’s faults. No, it won’t be easy. We have a lot of heavy lifting to do in a short amount of time (remember that existential deadline). But we still have a fighting chance. As our peer democracies of New Zealand, Italy, and Japan taught us in the 1990s when their political status quos had lost legitimacy: deep electoral system reform (which empowers us to finally advance the public interest and solve the mounting existential problems we face in a fundamental, transpartisan, and, yes, revolutionary way) is not only possible, but necessary for our survival.
Indeed, when I helped lead the 2016 nonviolent #DemocracySpring movement (that kicked off with a 10-day, 140-mile march from Philadelphia to DC and over 1200 arrests after a civil disobedience sit-in on the Capitol steps upon arrival), and initially introduced my “7 Deadly Sins of American Democracy” framework to the cross-partisan democracy movement in my opening speech at the inaugural Unrig the System Summit in 2018, there was no For the People Act or Freedom to Vote John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act (that would provide the federal policy solution to advance the redeeming countermeasures to nearly all of those “7 deadly sins”). When I stood in the halls of Congress in 2019 with the now-late icon and American hero Congressman John Lewis for the introduction of the For the People Act (some 300 pages of which he wrote), we didn’t yet have a President committed to making its signage a top priority. And when I embarked upon my 700-mile #Democracy911 walk in 2019 (helping to secure a record 17 presidential candidate pledges to #FixDemocracyFirst if elected), we didn’t have a Senate Majority Leader who would allow the For the People Act to reach the Senate floor for a debate (let alone a vote) after it passed the House! And though 2 Senators and the Jim Crow filibuster ultimately stopped this progress in the Senate in 2022, we didn’t come this far and get this close to turnaround now.
This is why I thought it was important to outline and publish a framework (“The 7 Deadly Sins of American Democracy”) long enough to be comprehensive, but short enough to be memorable -- so that we have a rubric of sorts to periodically reassess as we advance this intersectional freedom & democracy movement of movements.
The broader question that remains to be seen, of course, is whether we will finally transcend the “divide and conquer” cycle -- of (predominantly racial) backlash for every egalitarian step forward -- in order to build the sustained nonviolent multiracial alliance of roughly 12-million (or 3.5%) of us needed to guarantee our success? (And forgive me if I put more faith on this front into my generation and the generation right behind us, The Revolution Generation. We are the most diverse generation ever and we see the world our elders are bequeathing us and know, just as the Latin root word, revolutio, of the word revolution implies, that it’s time to turn this sinking ship around before it’s too late.)
The fact of the matter is that it's not until we all organize against the anti-democracy policy that suppresses us that we can finally defeat the anti-public interest policy that oppresses us.
Sources & Additional Resources
Sources & Additional Resources
Online:
Brennan Center for Justice
Voting Rights Lab
The Sentencing Project
Pew Research Center
Brave New Films’ Suppressed and Sabotaged Discussion & Action Guide
The New York Times Gerrymander Explainer
DOJ/Mueller Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election
Nonprofit VOTE
Books:
The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert Reich
Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Seal an Election in 9 Easy Steps by Greg Palast
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits by Greg Palast
Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman
One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson
Republic Lost: The Corruption of Equality and the Steps to End It (Version 2.0) by Lawrence Lessig
Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United by Zephyr Teachout
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want by Frances Moore Lappe and Adam Eichen
Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count by David Daley
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer
Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of The Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean
Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblat
How to Steal a Presidential Election by Lawrence Lessig and Matthew Seligman
Documentaries:
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election by Greg Palast
Dark Money by Kimberly Reed
Suppressed: The True Story of Georgia’s 2018 Election by Brave New Films
The People vs The Politicians by ReclaimTheDream.org
Suppressed and Sabotaged: The Fight to Vote by Brave New Films
Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman by Greg Palast
The Social Dilemma on Netflix
Where to Invade Next by Michael Moore
About the Author
About the Author
Renaldo Pearson was born and raised leading praise and worship in the United House of Prayer for All People nationally, to the inimitable sound of its brass shout bands, but he has since found his church home singing the ancestral songs of the freedom struggle at the intersection of the multiracial democracy movement and the church of liberation theology, overthrowing the money changer tables (Matthew 21:12-13) in order to heal the sick and build the beloved community as a Christian practitioner and strategist of Kingian nonviolent civil disobedience (Luke 14:1-6; Matthew 25:35-46).
A Morehouse Man, former Harvard Administrator, National Citizen Leadership Award Recipient, Criminal Justice Advocate, Democracy Reformer, “Good-Trouble” and Nonviolent Movement-Building Organizer – Renaldo has distinguished himself professionally over the past decade as a Civic & Social Engineer. A concept born out of the Civil Rights Movement, Renaldo uses the title Social Engineer as a Sankofa tribute to Attorney Charles Hamilton Houston who was not only the most consequential Dean of Howard Law School, but also the chief architect of the legal strategy that dismantled Jim Crow segregation. Houston gave his students (including future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall) an ultimatum: that they could either be a social engineer who works to uplift their community by dismantling systems of oppression, or a social parasite who doesn’t. To that end, highlights from Pearson’s work include:
Led an effort, serving as the youngest member and spokesperson of the historic 200-member #EndMassIncarceration Coalition in 2013, that pushed the Obama administration to take executive action on criminal justice reform – an effort that was recognized as 1 of “10 ways the War on Drugs changed forever in 2013.”
Served as the youngest college administrator at Harvard University, where he co-facilitated a $300M capital renovation and transition from 2015-2017, and ultimately became the inaugural Social Engineer-in-Residence from 2017-2019, developing a new framework for the democracy movement, "The 7 Deadly Sins of American Democracy," which global think tank and government corruption watchdog Transparency International credited for becoming "a touchstone for thousands of anti-corruption and pro-democracy activists around the country."
Achieved a remarkable fundraising appeal where he called for the very first-of-its-kind “reverse scholarships” (to free recent HBCU grads of their crippling student loan debt) that billionaire philanthropist Robert F. Smith historically delivered less than two years later with a $40M gift to the Morehouse College Class of 2019, which became a model for nearly $700M in subsequent mega gifts to Morehouse and other HBCUs.
Led the 2016 protest movement, Democracy Spring, from protest (#FixDemocracyFirst) to the introduction of groundbreaking pro-democracy legislation (HR1/SR1/The For the People Act) in 2019, before ultimately joining forces with RepresentUs later that year.
Earned the 2019 National Citizen Leadership Award, as Director of External Affairs at RepresentUs, in recognition of his 700-mile #Democracy911 walk, which helped secure pledges from a record 17 presidential candidates to #FixDemocracyFirst and push HR1/S1 (The For The People Act, along with the Freedom to Vote/John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Acts) to the forefront of the political agenda.
Advanced RepresentUs’ BIPOC staff diversity by over 1,000%, increased the diversity among program attendees by over 400% in a month, launched first-ever Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), and co-founded the staff union, after stepping up to be the inaugural Chief Diversity Officer for RepresentUs.
Co-led and organized highly impactful campaigns, including #FreedomFriday, #HungerStrikeForVotingRights, #GoodTroubleTuesday (focused on ending the #JimCrowFilibuster to pave the way for democracy-saving legislation), and groundbreaking reparations advocacy with Faith for Black Lives.
Named a 2022 New Leaders Council Fellow
Founded Morehouse College’s newest alumni chapter (the Greater Pittsburgh Morehouse College Alumni Association), scaling it from 4 to over 40 Pittsburgh Morehouse Men in two years with a growth rate of over 1,000%; and gained recognition last year as the first alumni chapter to reach 100% alumni giving in the history of Morehouse College.
Helped to govern or steer nonprofit staffs and coalitions ranging from 10 to over 1,000 members, while managing and/or impacting operating budgets ranging from $300K to $300M for various nonprofit organizations.
Covered and contributed in/to prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Politico, The Hill, HuffPost, The Grio, Democracy Now!, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News.
Featured in Josh Tickell's book and award-winning film, The Revolution Generation: How Millennials Can Save America and the World (Before It's Too Late), which premiered in theaters and across digital platforms on Earth Day, April 22, 2022.
Renaldo was born in DC (Mt.Vernon/Shaw neighborhoods); received his secondary education in Prince George’s County (MD) Public Schools (a member of the Crossland High School Class of 2006); and is a 2011 graduate of Morehouse College (the alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), where he earned his bachelor of arts degree in Political Science — receiving 4 post-graduate trainings and certifications from the James Lawson Institute (Nonviolent Direct Action Organizing), Momentum Community (Building Nonviolent Popular Movements), Human In Common (DEI/Interrupting Racism), and the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance (ACNP/Advanced Certified Nonprofit Professional).
He currently resides in Upper Marlboro, MD with his wife (NBC4 Washington's Emmy-Nominated Meteorologist Jessica Faith), where he splits his time managing the faith, civic, and social impact strategy consulting portfolio at BlueSKY Collaborative Partners when he's not in Summit, New Jersey, serving as Executive Minister of Fountain Baptist Church. He also serves as Author & Project Director of RedeemDemocracy.us (advancing his “7 Deadly Sins of American Democracy” racial and electoral justice narrative change framework), while also serving on the nonprofit boards of Free Speech TV (the only independent/non-corporate/non-profit national progressive news network in 60-million homes) and Get Free (the youth-led movement to repair past harms, remove ongoing barriers to equality, and realize a future where freedom is for all).
In this narrative-shaping chapter of his life, he takes his inspiration from Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness) and Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator of the landmark 1619 Project) – who recently said that she ultimately became a journalist and writer because she “understand[s] one fundamental truth about America and really anywhere in the world, and it’s that narrative drives policy. More than data, more than facts, it’s narrative. And if you can harness that narrative, that means you can determine the direction and fate of our communities and our country. I think those who have a different version and vision for America are being much more successful at harnessing that narrative.”
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