This was originally published on Democracy Docket.

There’s one trend election observers can be confident of year after year: Record turnout will always be swiftly followed by a tidal wave of voter suppression efforts.

The 2008 election was the first presidential election in American history in which voters of color constituted one quarter of the nation’s eligible electorate. That election also saw a massive shift in the racial composition of early in-person voting, with Black voters casting their votes early in person more frequently than white voters (an estimated 24 percent to 17 percent nationally). This record turnout was followed by an unprecedented effort to cut back early in-person voting in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida — which notoriously tried to ban voting on Sundays, a move that would have effectively eliminated Souls to the Polls efforts by Black churches.

We are now witnessing a rerun. The 2020 presidential election saw more than 159 million votes cast — shattering the record for the most voters to ever participate in an election in American history by more than 20 million voters. The 2020 election had the highest turnout rate since the 1900 presidential election. Seven of the 10 states where turnout rose the most conducted their elections entirely or mostly by mail. The percentage of Black voters casting their ballots by mail more than doubled from about 18 percent of Black voters in 2016, to an estimated 38 percent in 2020.

And like clockwork, we are now seeing an onslaught of proposed legislation to cut back voting by mail, including in states like Arizona, Iowa, Florida, Wisconsin — and most notoriously, Georgia. In Georgia, pending legislation would require voters to submit photocopies of their identification twice when seeking to vote by mail; bar elections officials from affirmatively mailing absentee ballot applications to voters; reduce the window for requesting absentee ballots; place restrictions on drop boxes for returning ballots; and eliminate no-excuse absentee voting altogether.

It’s not just absentee balloting that’s under attack — invoking the Big Lie, legislators throughout the country have proposed not only a staggering array of other restrictions on registration and voting, but even restrictions on citizen-led ballot initiatives and bans on donations for elections administration resources like PPE.

The single reform that would do the most to fight back against the voter suppression efforts sweeping the country is Election Day Registration (EDR), which allows eligible voters to register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time on Election Day, effectively eliminating earlier registration deadlines. The 10 states with the highest turnout in 2020 all had same-day registration, with nine of the top 10 offering same-day registration on Election Day (one of the top 10, North Carolina, only offers same-day registration during its early voting period). The consensus among political scientists is that EDR boosts turnout by two to 10 percentage points, with particularly strong gains among historically lower-turnout or disenfranchised groups like young, lower-income, and Black voters.

Allowing registration and voting on the same day reduces the logistical hurdles associated with voting by simplifying a two-step process into a single trip to a polling location. EDR also allows voters to update or correct their registrations on Election Day, which prevents the disenfranchisement of those who have recently moved or who have been erroneously purged from the rolls. And perhaps most significantly, voter interest is at its highest once voting has commenced; EDR capitalizes on that interest to bring new voters into the process.

The good news is that 21 states and the District of Columbia have already enacted some form of same-day registration, as set forth on this map from the National Conference of State Legislatures:

These states are a mix of “blue” states (for example, California, Colorado); “red” states (Idaho, Utah, Wyoming); and “purple” states (Maine and Wisconsin). EDR is not just popular across the ideological spectrum, it is increasingly so, as six states have adopted it since the beginning of 2018: Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington.

Efforts to expand EDR should focus on states that currently lack it and where the political environment would seem to make it a no-brainer, such as Massachusetts and New York which are both currently considering EDR. Let’s hope they find the political will, because the absence of EDR in these two states is a common talking point by opponents of expanding voting rights in other states.

We also need to fight back against an effort this year to eliminate EDR in Montana; if successful, it would make Montana the first state in the country to repeal EDR. And ultimately, national legislation for EDR, as is contained in H.R. 1 — which passed the House in early March — would establish a national standard so that all Americans can share in the same registration and voting opportunities enjoyed by people in states like Utah and Wyoming.

But there’s an important caveat. While EDR and other reforms aimed at increasing voter turnout are absolutely essential to fighting back against voter suppression, they are insufficient to cure all that ails our democracy today. The very structures of our political system are conspiring to prevent the will of the majority from translating into representative self-government.

For one thing, extreme gerrymandering has largely locked up the political process in many states, distorting elections results. After the 2017 and 2018 elections, five state legislatures were controlled by parties that had lost a majority of the statewide vote (Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina). The next round of redistricting, which starts later this year, presents opportunities to address these distortions. But failure to reform these maps could entrench another decade of minority rule in these and other states.

At the national level, the anti-majoritarian problems facing our democracy are likely to grow even worse. People of color already constitute a majority of children in the U.S., and are projected by 2045 to be a majority of the total U.S. population. But at roughly the same time, about 70 percent of the population will live in just 15 states — which means that just 30 percent of the country will choose 70 percent of Senators and a super-majority of the Electoral College. To compound matters, Americans across the ideological spectrum are increasingly falling prey to disinformation, finding difficulty agreeing on basic facts, and losing confidence in democracy itself.

Ultimately, we need to make registration and voting simpler and easier, and to boost turnout to respectable levels. But doing so will not solve everything. We need a renewed commitment to democracy itself, and to the basic principle that every individual should count equally in our political processes. That will be the work not of lawyers, but of all of us as Americans.

Over the last year, the criminal legal system’s many injustices dominated mainstream discourse as people took to the streets to grieve and protest the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police, and COVID-19 took a devastating toll on people in jails and prisons. These events galvanized many people into action — in the streets, at statehouses, and online — inspiring them to join activists who have challenged the criminal legal system’s disproportionate and often tragic impact on communities of color.

One of the organizations at the forefront of this movement is the Youth Justice Coalition (YJC), a grassroots organization based in Los Angeles led by activists who have been incarcerated or otherwise entangled with the criminal legal system. The ACLU is part of a coalition representing YJC and impacted individuals in a lawsuit against LA County for its failure to adequately address the COVID-19 crisis in jails and prisons, and in protecting the health of incarcerated people.

We spoke with two YJC members, Nalya Rodriguez and Michael Saavedra, about how the past year has affected their work and how their personal experiences help to shape this movement for change. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Justin Hamilton

MICHAEL: I spent close to 20 years in prison, and 15 of that was in solitary confinement. While I was incarcerated, I worked with a group of outside organizers on a hunger strike. It was one of the largest prisoner hunger strikes in this nation’s history. One of the things we asked for was access to higher education in solitary confinement. That’s how I was able to take some courses and later, enroll in community college.

I learned a lot about the legal system during my time locked up, including when I successfully sued the Department of Corrections several times over my solitary confinement, which violated my constitutional due process rights. Once I was out, I applied for a job as a paralegal and was hired on the spot. They discovered I was formerly incarcerated about six months later, and fired me. At that same time a position opened up at YJC and my roommate Anthony, who was also incarcerated, told me about it. I applied and got the job.

NALYA: I only recently got involved with the Youth Justice Coalition, but I was familiar with the work because I was a part of an organization in undergrad called Underground Scholars, which had an reentry program for formerly incarcerated and system-impacted students. During the pandemic, I’ve also been working with UCI 4 COLA and other partner organizations in North Orange County on an initiative to put together “solidarity packs” for formerly incarcerated people. One of those partners was YJC, and that’s how I met Michael.

Justin Hamilton

NALYA: In high school, I was involved with gangs and didn’t really think I was going to college, even though I was already taking advanced classes. I hated school. I was always getting kicked out of class and spent a lot of time in the dean or principal’s office, and I was constantly told that I was either going to end up a teen parent or end up in jail or dead. It made school a negative experience. One day, literally the same day I was planning to drop out, a teacher intervened and asked, ‘Is this what you want to do with your life?’ That was the first time anybody had ever asked me that. I took a moment to pause and asked myself if I wanted to continue my life the way it is, or make a change. And I decided to make a change. I finished high school, got into Berkeley, and now I’m at UC Irvine studying for a PhD in sociology. Those experiences and seeing all of my friends go to court as teenagers, and just constantly being arrested and harassed by police officers — that’s what pushed me to get into this work.

MICHAEL: If you’ve been incarcerated for a long time, there are multiple turning points, starting with your public defender, who tries to get you to take a plea bargain even though you’re innocent. They don’t warn you that it will stay on your record for the rest of your life and harm you when it comes to housing and employment. That and many other experiences made me want to do the work that I do now, and also to become a lawyer and help people like myself to not have to rely on a classist and racist system.

Justin Hamilton

MICHAEL: As far as YJC, my day typically consists of taking calls as the lead on jail litigation. Since the recent announcement of the resentencing policy from [District Attorney] George Gascón, I’ve received a flood of calls and letters from folks inside and from family members out here asking for assistance with petitions for resentencing. I also work on letters from prisoners or calls regarding litigation. And prior to COVID, every other Saturday we would do free legal clinics to help people with immigration questions, expungement, tenants’ rights, debt relief, and things like that. Other than that, a lot of Zoom meetings with the many organizations we work with.

Justin Hamilton

MICHAEL: COVID has drastically changed things. It’s caused us to redirect our resources and take on all these calls from people in prison and their family members, who are sick or scared because of conditions inside. People have not been able to come into our legal clinics and not everybody can access support online. The community we serve in South Central is primarily Spanish-speaking and Black folks reentering society after being incarcerated and they don’t know where to go. We had to shut down our office at the Justice Center, which has affected the ability to work for some of us who don’t have computers or other office equipment at home. COVID has also changed the direction of our work. We usually work on policy impacting youth. Now we’ve been focusing more on incarceration, including women’s jails and prisons.

NALYA: For the legal correspondence program, we are creating self-help guides and informational sheets on rights in regards to the situation with COVID.

Justin Hamilton

NALYA: We need to make sure programs are accessible to non-English speakers. So I’ve worked with a lot of organizations that work with Central American newly-arrived immigrant youth. That’s one of the things that has continuously been an issue in LA and also in Oakland, where I’ve done similar work. There just hasn’t been enough resources for Spanish-speakers or Indigenous people from Central America.

MICHAEL: One thing people fail to realize is that those same people called mafiosos or gang members, the worst of the worst, they’re the ones that actually want to see peace. They have the respect of the community, and could tell the youngsters to kick back and they will respect that. And that’s why we’ve been having this beautiful time of peace right now in South Central LA, which has been unheard of. YJC has led all of those peace treaty meetings taking place. We’re connected to the actual hood where all this stuff takes place, where people are overpoliced.

A lot of peacebuilding efforts have been unsuccessful because they are led by people who are not from the community and who have ties to the Los Angeles Police Department. Some of the biggest social justice organizations are run by people with white privilege, or white saviors. I don’t want to offend anybody, but it’s true. And they’re either working with the probation department, or they have contacts. They also have this thing called mandatory reporters. So whenever they go into a situation, they take down names and give this information to the LAPD, which puts it in its gang database. Now these people are labeled as gang members and that can be used against them if they ever get arrested, or in their housing.

I think we need to come together and educate folks and put formerly incarcerated people, people who are directly impacted, people of color in leadership positions, not just lawyers. And they need to be paid the same. We’re called the experts and we’re tokenized all the time to speak on the issue, but they don’t want to pay us the same.

Justin Hamilton

MICHAEL: For me, 2020 brought bright, beautiful things. I got accepted to UCLA and got a fellowship with Harvard Law School.

NALYA: I haven’t been with YJC for very long, but some of the work I’ve done in Orange County popped off in 2020, which is really awesome. We were able to raise money with collective community funds, which has been redistributed via solidarity packs for formerly incarcerated people. We also started a letter-writing program and mutual aid efforts, like food distribution — with that alone, we’ve raised over $35,000 and over $30,000 for solidarity packs, respectively.

These initiatives came from the need to address what we were seeing in our community in regards to COVID. People are in need of resources, and people are out of jobs. Our food distribution effort was a direct result of COVID, as well as the solidarity packs, which provide people who are just being released with personal hygiene kits, PPE, socks, snacks, gift cards, and other supplies they need.

Justin Hamilton

MICHAEL: Abolitionists say no more jails, no more cops. It’s an ideology about a utopia without prisons or police. But you have to have something to replace all of that. And that’s where we come in as members of the communities that are overpoliced. At YJC, we offer a real solution to no cops — we call it transformative justice and peacebuilding. So when you talk about taking cops off campus, we actually have a solution. We have a school without cops or even security. Instead, we have what we call peacebuilders who are trained on de-escalation and self-defense without any guns or weapons. We try to use our voices rather than violence.