Right-wing social media accounts, including “Libs of TikTok,” are sharing a viral post alleging “weird ballot shenanigans” over a photo that appears to show a small printed dot in the box next to Vice President Kamala Harris’s name on a Kentucky ballot.

It is unclear who initially posted the image, but it has been reposted widely without attribution on Facebook as well as X, formerly known as Twitter.

The Kentucky State Board of Elections said in a statement Monday that no one has presented any such ballots to election officials or law enforcement.

“(The) claim that at least one ballot may have had a pre-printed mark in Kentucky, currently only exists in the vacuum of social media,” the elections board said.

The accounts online allege that the dot would automatically invalidate any voter who chose to vote for a candidate other than Harris. Because the picture appears to show a ballot with a crease down the middle, it is likely a mail-in absentee ballot.

The elections board noted that all such ballots come with an instruction sheet, telling voters that they can circle their preferred choice if more than one candidate is marked with ink. Voters can also “spoil” a ballot, and request another.

“Whether they are using a paper mail-in absentee ballot or an in-person paper ballot, Kentucky law allows voters to register their vote should a situation like the one alleged on social media involving a pre-marked ballot actually exist,” the state elections board said.

According to Kentucky Secretary of State spokesperson Michon Lindstrom, the scanner would spit out the ballot as an overvote and inform the voter. For mail-in ballots, the local county board of elections may fill out a new ballot if they can “clearly see voter intent,” like in this case, although each county clerk could act differently.

Several nearly identical posts were shared on Facebook, claiming to have seen the ballot. One such post was shared roughly 23,000 times. The post also claims to have an update — that “someone reported an in-person ballot with the dot” and they had to redo the ballot. Election officials said Monday that is not the case.

The elections board noted that hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians have already voted, either with mail-in or early in-person ballots.

“As of today, the State Board of Elections, nor the Attorney General’s office, has been made aware of any complaints from Kentucky voters regarding their in-person (or mail-in) absentee ballots having pre-printed marks in candidate selection fields.”

Another viral social media video also alleged a voting malfunction in Kentucky this election. Officials said the incident was due to voter error, and the person was able to properly cast their ballot. Posts about that incident are still circulating online.

These latest posts are reminiscent of claims of voter fraud when Trump claimed the election was “stolen” from him after he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. Trump has still refused to acknowledge his loss.

Adams, who was secretary of state in 2020 as well assures Kentuckians the state’s elections are secure.

The State Board of Elections encouraged anyone who encounters a voting error to contact their county clerk and the Attorney General’s office.

Find more information on candidates and how to vote with Louisville Public Media’s interactive voter guide.

State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In a highly competitive presidential election year, candidates for state and local office in rural areas know that every vote counts. While so-called down-ballot races frequently go uncontested, Democrats and Republicans alike are switching their strategies to contest candidates who would otherwise run unopposed in rural districts.

Historically, voters in rural districts in places like Missouri, New York, and North Carolina have had one option as they move down the ballot: a Republican. But this year, Democrats are running their own candidates and contesting Republicans in red rural districts.

Read More

This Year, Investment in Rural Votes Isn’t Just at the Top of the Ticket

Vice presidential candidates with rural bona fides have garnered plenty of attention this election cycle, but political strategists from both parties recognize that down-ballot races may prove just as important when it comes to rural votes. 

There’s one place though, where the reverse is true.

In Massachusetts’ three rural counties, it is the Democrats who typically run for state and local office without opposition. This year, new leadership in the Massachusetts Republican Party – Mass GOP – is working to change that. Among the races the party is paying closest attention to are those in the state’s rural districts. 

“We’re definitely more committed to down-ballot candidates than the party has been in the last two election cycles,” Mass GOP Executive Director John Milligan told the Daily Yonder.

Massachusetts has elected Democrats in every presidential race since 1984, when voters cast their ballots to elect Ronald Reagan for a second term. Currently, the state’s delegation to Congress is completely blue. At the state level, there is a supermajority of Democrats, who control both sides of the state legislature. 

For candidates like David Rosa in the Western part of the state, the supermajority is a real issue. 

“Our one-state party is really a dilemma for all concerned,” Rosa said in an email to the Daily Yonder. 

Rosa is running for State Senate to represent Berkshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Hampshire, a rural district in Western Massachusetts. Rosa will be on the ballot next to incumbent Paul Mark, who has held the office since 2022 – where he won against a candidate unaffiliated with either party. 

For those living in Franklin County, Massachusetts – which is among the counties in the Senate district where Rosa is running, the choices will narrow as voters move down the ballot. In Franklin County’s first state representative district, a Democrat runs unopposed. There are no Republican challengers further down either. Democrats are the only ones running candidates for lower offices like Clerk of Courts and Register of Deeds in Franklin County.

Milligan said the uncontested races in Franklin County are symbolic of the GOP’s struggles in rural parts of the region as a whole. Milligan said understanding that the rural populace in Massachusetts looks quite different from other parts of the country is essential to succeeding in these races.

“I don’t think the population of Nantucket matches the population of rural Pennsylvania,” Milligan said. 

On the other side of the state, Republican State Senate candidate Christopher Lauzon is making connections with small-town Massachusetts voters in an attempt to build a broad coalition. Lauzon is running in the Cape and Islands district, which includes Barnstable and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The district is another one where Democrats dominate.

Lauzon will be one of the only Republican candidates for a state-level office on the ballot in Cape Cod and the Islands. A Democrat, Thomas Moakley, is uncontested for State Representative, and no Republicans are on the ballot for local-level offices in Dukes County (Martha’s Vineyard) or Nantucket County. 

On the ground, Lauzon said his campaign is focused on building a broad coalition across what he described as a varied geographic district with different communities. 

“Obviously, national politics can complicate things, but I really try to separate the local from the national,” Lauzon said. “No matter who wins the presidential race, no matter who you support for that, your local races have a much larger impact.”

The post Nationally, Republicans Are the Ones Running Unopposed in Rural. For MA It’s the Opposite.  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Some Ballard County residents received a mailer titled “Just Look What Your Tax Dollars Bought for Ballard County Public Schools” that quoted sexually explicit passages from a trio of books the group deemed obscene.

A social media post made by the district Wednesday said that the books had been removed from the high school library’s shelves in reaction to the mailer. In a subsequent interview, Ballard County Schools superintendent Casey Allen confirmed that the decision was a direct reaction to the controversial postcard.

“The explicit language that was printed on the card and sent to homes not by us, to me, was enough information that I needed to pull those from the shelves, at least for now,” Allen said. “I know that some people will act shocked … but I don’t know every book that’s in the two libraries that we have, and I didn’t know that these books were in there. However, no one in the two days since that mailer went out has challenged the books.”

A bill passed in 2022 – sponsored by Republican state Sen. Jason Howell of Murray – mandated that school districts have a process in place when it comes to material challenges. It also defined what sort of material can be classified as “harmful to minors.” That bill passed into law without Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s signature.

Ballard County Schools had a procedure for challenges more than five years before that law went into effect. Allen said only one item has been challenged since it was put in place, and that it was removed from the school’s library.

The works cited on the card included Susan Kuklin’s “Beyond Magenta,” a collection of interviews with teens on transgender identity; the young adult mystery “Shine,” a novel by Lauren Myracle that follows a teenage girl investigating a hate crime involving the beating and near-death of her LGBTQ friend; and Alice Sebold’s memoir “Lucky,” in which the author describes being sexually assaulted as a teen.

All three have been the focus of challenges to materials in libraries across the country since their publications. Kuklin penned an essay that was shared on NPR in 2022 about her work and challenges to it. She said then that people taking passages out of context is mostly what’s led to her book’s controversial reputation.

“So what they do is they’ll pick a paragraph from the story, whether it’s bad language — because kids curse — or whether it’s a story of someone’s life,” she told NPR. “They take it out of context, and then they turn — they complain about that, that the whole book should be banned and everything that’s in it because of a paragraph here or a word there … people took [one] chapter and that story and turned it around into something very negative and very ugly.”

The district’s post indicated all three of the books it removed had been in the library since at least 2016, with the oldest of the three works having been on the school library’s shelf for more than two decades. It also indicated that none of the three books had been checked out recently.

Allen, a former English teacher, added that students “need to be exposed to information on all sides” and said – though it was “shocking to see … printed on a card and sent directly to people’s homes” – that it’s important to consider the context of the language being quoted on the mailer.

“It’s still shocking language, but a book that is written by [someone who’s] a victim of rape when she was 18 years old, you might expect to have shocking language,” the superintendent said. “So to pull an excerpt from that, print it on a card and send it to someone’s home without explaining why someone was using language like that strikes me as being a little bit misleading, or at least disingenuous.”

The mailers were sent by Conservatives for the Commonwealth, a social welfare group with a mailing address in southcentral Kentucky. It urged people to “support school choice.” Kentuckians will vote on Amendment 2 in November, a ballot measure that would allow public funds to go toward private education.

Allen has been a vocal opponent of the ballot measure. He believes that it will drain resources from rural school districts like Ballard County.

“It just feels like a fight constantly to keep what we’ve got,” Allen said in an August interview. “But it’s a fight worth fighting.”

WPSD Local 6 obtained a statement from Conservatives for the Commonwealth earlier this week about the mailer and its purpose. In it, the group called the materials in question “pornographic.”

“We wanted to make sure citizens know that even in many rural communities, public schools are not immune to ideological and inappropriate materials in classrooms and schools,” it read. “These books were paid for with taxpayer dollars. These same school districts are telling their citizens to oppose school choice, while their children are subjected to outrageously sexual content in their own schools.”

Copyright 2024 WKMS

This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. 

After being incarcerated for 19 years, most people would be happy to never step foot in a prison again. But Jesse Vasquez returns week after week, flashing his state-wide security clearance to guards who know him by name. 

Vasquez leads the Pollen Initiative, a non-profit organization that supports the development of media centers and newspapers in prisons. When he was incarcerated, he was sent to 12 different prisons before ending up at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, located just north of San Francisco. There, he got involved with the prison’s long-running newspaper, San Quentin News. He served as the paper’s editor-in-chief before he was paroled in 2019. 

Now, he’s working to bring similar media projects to other prisons in California, especially more rural ones that don’t have the same programming opportunities as San Quentin.

“It’s not necessarily that people don’t want to provide the programs, it’s proximity [to the prison],” Vasquez said.

Vasquez’s sights are currently set on the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), one of California’s two women’s prisons located just outside of Chowchilla, a small city in the Central Valley. Since March of 2024, Vasquez and his colleague Kate McQueen have made the two-and-a-half-hour drive from the Bay Area to Chowchilla to teach a journalism class to CCWF’s incarcerated residents. 

In mid-September, they printed the first edition of the Paper Trail, a monthly newspaper written and edited by incarcerated journalists at CCWF. 

“We want to have media centers and newsrooms flourish inside these institutions primarily because for the longest time they’ve been closed institutions with no transparency, no accountability, and no exposure,” Vasquez said. 

Geography Matters

For those incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility, San Quentin News has long been a source of both awe and exasperation. 

Megan Hogg is a regular reader of San Quentin News and a member of CCWF’s inaugural journalism class. Though she looks forward to reading the newspaper every month, she said she can’t help but notice the difference between the opportunities available to her at CCWF compared to those at San Quentin.

California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation “has provided so much for San Quentin, but they just ignore us,” Hogg said. “It’s frustrating to open the San Quentin News and see that they have athletes, musicians, and artists coming in. There are no resources like that for the women.”

CCWF is one of the largest women’s prisons in the world, with a population of over 2,100 incarcerated residents. It is one of two facilities for women in California, though it also houses trans men and nonbinary people. 

The nearby city of Chowchilla has a population of 19,000 and is in Madera County. Madera County comprises a small, single-county metropolitan area. 

Although certain programs like Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and basic education are available across all of California’s prisons – rural and urban – access to other educational, vocational, and therapeutic resources varies across institutions. 

Many of these programs rely on support from local volunteers and nearby organizations. For example, San Quentin, which is located in the Bay Area, benefits from 500 active monthly volunteers who implement 160 different programs in the prison, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). 

In comparison, CCWF has 100 monthly volunteers who come in at least once a month.

In more rural prisons like High Desert State Prison, located in Lassen County, a nonmetropolitan county with a population of 32,700, just 36 “long-term program providers and religious volunteers” provide programming to the incarcerated, according to the CDCR. Approximately 10 providers with statewide prison clearance provide services to High Desert “a few times throughout the year,” the corrections department said. 

These differences are not lost on Vasquez. While he’s extremely proud of San Quentin News, he said, he’s also “ashamed that we’re not representing the 32 other [California] prisons, many of which are in rural areas and have fewer resources and programming.” 

The Fourth Estate Behind Bars

The Pollen Initiative’s effort to support prison newspapers builds on a long history of prison publications in the United States. 

The first prison newspaper was published from a debtors’ prison in New York in the year 1800, according to archives from the American Prison Newspapers collection. Printing presses were commonly used for vocational training in prisons during the early and mid-20th century, which allowed for a vibrant prison press to flourish.

Since 1800, more than 700 different newspapers have been published at prisons across the country, with the number of publications peaking in the middle of the 20th century. 

But in the 1970s, attitudes towards incarceration began to shift. Punitive, tough-on-crime policies replaced efforts at rehabilitation, and the prison population exploded from 200,000 in 1973 to 2.2 million in 2009, according to a report from the National Resource Council. 

This change in attitude also affected educational and vocational opportunities within prisons. For example, the 1994 Crime Bill excluded incarcerated people from using federal Pell Grants, which had previously helped them access college education. Without funding, few prison college programs survived. 

Most prison newspapers met a similar fate. Punitive attitudes and legal challenges over censorship and the first amendment rights of the incarcerated caused the majority of prison newspapers to disappear by the end of the 20th century. 

Now, it seems a revitalization of the American prison press is underway. At least 25 prison newspapers in 12 states are currently published, and incarcerated journalists are increasingly collaborating with outside publications.

The presence of electronic tablets in prisons and jails across America has also drastically increased the distribution of prison newspapers among incarcerated people. For example, the San Quentin News – and now CCWF’s Paper Trail – are available in print at every California prison, as well as digitally in 950 prisons and jails around the country. Both papers have websites that outside audiences can access. 

This reemergence of the prison press could itself be an indication of shifting attitudes toward criminal justice. In combination with state-level reform, federal policies and legislation have reduced prison populations and expanded rehabilitative opportunities over the past 15 years.

While these reforms are promising for the Pollen Initiative’s work, Vasquez says there is no guarantee that such support for prison reform will continue. 

“When you look at the pendulum of criminal justice reform, it shifts so slowly in the way of progress and so quickly in the way of ‘tough on crime,’” he said. “So when you have a prison administration open its doors to you, you have to strike while the iron is hot because you don’t know when that door is going to close.”

At CCWF, it took nine months of meetings with prison officials before they began working inside the prison. That’s because starting a media center requires approval from the prison’s administration and buy-in from the incarcerated population – a trust-building process that takes time. 

In the spring of 2024, McQueen began teaching a weekly journalism class to the first cohort of students. The program held a celebration for the 19 graduates in mid-September, the same day the first edition of the Paper Trail was published. The Paper Trail’s editorial board was selected from members of this class and has directed both the content and vision of the new publication.

McQueen and Vasquez said the enthusiasm of the prison’s acting warden, Anissa De La Cruz, has made all of this possible. 

“I have made it my mission to give the population of the women’s prison a voice,” De La Cruz wrote in the first print edition of the Paper Trail, which was published September 16, 2024. “Part of that means making space for a newspaper at CCWF, its own newspaper.” 

The Paper Trail in Print

In late August, CCWF’s inaugural journalism class laid eyes on the first physical printing of their newspaper – a mockup that Vasquez and McQueen brought in so the editorial board could finalize the design and layout of the first edition. 

Though it was just a sample draft on regular printer paper, this first look at their newspaper was emotional for many of the writers. Sagal Sadiq, features editor for the Paper Trail, said seeing his first byline was “surreal.” 

“I don’t even know what to say,” Sadiq said, shaking his head. 

The writers hope that in addition to providing information and building community among the incarcerated at CCWF, it will also lead to more attention – and therefore more resources – for the prison. 

One article in the paper’s first edition highlights a peer support program at CCWF for incarcerated people, the first of its kind in the country. The program, which involves 82 hours of training, equips its participants to help new arrivals as they adapt to life in the prison. They’re also trained to facilitate support groups focused on things like personal health and reentry.

Paper Trail contributors say the newspaper is one way to highlight the innovation happening at this rural prison. “We’re doing things that are groundbreaking here, but we don’t have the same coverage as San Quentin,” said Amber Bray, the Paper Trail’s first editor-in-chief. “So we’re leveling the playing field.” 

Bray believes the newspaper can strengthen CCWF’s programming by helping Chowchilla residents see the incarcerated residents as part of their community, which could encourage more volunteers to get involved. 

Everyone incarcerated at CCWF is counted as a Madera County resident in the U.S. Census, Bray pointed out. And the first edition of the Paper Trail includes coverage of one of the many fundraisers put on by CCWF that directly benefits the outside community. Some local publications have shown interest in republishing articles from the Paper Trail, which would further expand the newspaper’s audience and influence.

“Hopefully the newspaper will motivate people to ask questions, and think about how they can help our community by volunteering and getting engaged,” Bray said. 

Nora Igova is the Paper Trail’s art and layout designer. She shares Bray’s hope that the newspaper will bring the inside and outside communities closer together. 

“The Paper Trail will humanize us, humanize this community,” Igova told the Daily Yonder. “There is still an instilled fear in the outside community around prisons. We want people to not be afraid to believe in transformation and rehabilitation, and to see us as potential neighbors.”

For Vasquez, the Paper Trail is an example of something he’s always known: every incarcerated person has a story to tell. 

“There are thousands inside the prison system who are brilliant thinkers, writers, artists,” he said. 

Vasquez knows he was lucky – when he ended up at San Quentin, the resources that were already there allowed him the opportunity to flex his own writing muscle. “I just happened to be at the prison with the most exposure, with the most proximity,” he said. 

No matter where a person is incarcerated, he wants them to have similar access to this opportunity. Vasquez and McQueen hope the Paper Trail can serve as a model for what could be possible at other prisons, rural and urban alike. 

“We want to show people that it is possible, and this is how you can do it,” Vasquez said.

The post A Prison Newspaper Hopes to Bridge ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ Worlds in Rural California appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Rural young voters continue to feel ignored in politics as the presidential election intensifies, according to research this spring from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). 

Described as the least contacted and most undecided demographic by the Rural Youth Voter Fund, their participation in the upcoming presidential elections could be critical in deciding the next four years and beyond. In swing states during the 2022 midterm elections, youth made up 10% to 15% of all votes cast, according to CIRCLE, large enough to change outcomes.

“There’s this huge opportunity to engage with young people [and] to give them the opportunities to learn more about the system and make their mark,” said Michael Chameides, communications director of the Rural Democracy Initiative, which helped to create the Voter Fund. 

The Voter Fund supports local youth-led initiatives and brings together leaders interested in civic engagement. Chameides noted the most successful initiatives are relationship-focused and allow young people to become leaders and reach their peers. Initiative projects are also dependent and modeled on their local communities and relatability, based in schools and popular events. 

“You have leaders who genuinely care about the people around them and instill an organizational passion for supporting other people and building those relationships,” Chameides said. “They’re using language that resonates with their peers and makes sense to their peers and feels natural. A lot of people are driven by a certain desire to make their lives better and to make their families’ lives better and make their community’s lives better … In a lot of communities, skating is really popular, and so maybe there’s skate to the poll events. Knowing your audience and doing things that are both fun and meaningful is really powerful.”

Having places to engage in issues is crucial for turnout, according to suggestions for rural youth voter empowerment by CIRCLE. Although civic information access is similar across geographic regions, rural youth were less likely to feel there were comfortable places to engage with that information. That lack of support translated into lower voter turnout: rural youth – aged 18 to 29 – voter turnout was 44% in rural counties compared to 52% in urban counties, according to the spring research from CIRCLE. 

Alejandro Rangel-Lopez is a 23-year-old campaign manager at New Frontiers, a project from Loud Light that empowers young Southwest Kansans to build community power. He organizes meetings to help young voters develop leadership skills in places he can find such as community centers and bubble tea shops. However, he finds there are less opportunities for voters to engage with and learn about the issues closest to them in rural areas or smaller towns such as Dodge City and Garden City. 

“We get all our news from Wichita,” Rangel-Lopez said. “We know what’s going on at the state and national level, but we don’t know what’s going on a block or two away.”

Additional reports reaffirmed the importance of infrastructure in voting turnout, showing infrastructure was tied to a sense of belonging that excited voters. Courtney Smith, director of voter engagement at Forward Montana, also noted voting barriers specific to rural communities. Online voter registration is not allowed in Montana, which presents a significant challenge if people need to drive 100 miles to the nearest election office in Gallatin County. 

“If folks are miles and miles apart, it’s harder to bring folks together,” Smith said. “But we do have programs where we try to reach people still at home. For example, we host a voter registration drive in high schools called Democracy Days, where we’re able to have a host on site who registers students at the high schools and the local libraries within communities in rural parts of Montana so that they still have access to voting even if they’re far away.”

Kathleen Alonso, also a community organizer with New Frontiers based in Liberal, Kansas, has encountered challenges in creating cultures around volunteer advocacy. By investing in leadership development and hosting fun events such as a Sip and Paint, she’s hoping to make organizing for affordable housing and fair cost-of-living more accessible and break stereotypes of youth as unengaged voters. Alonso pointed to an isolation factor in her personal experience with finding peers interested in similar issues and politics. 

“In my experience and with the people I’ve connected with, we feel isolated in our areas and across the state when it comes to other issues,” Alonso said. “When it comes to economic issues, a lot of the time we hear Wichita and Kansas City on the radar. People a lot of the time tend to forget Southwest Kansas, Liberal, Garden, and Dodge.” 

Claire McCoy, an organizer with Down Home North Carolina and a student at Appalachian State, agrees reducing stigma around young people not being engaged in politics will help turnout. She became involved in Down Home as a way to have an outlet for nonpartisan, working class organizing for housing and healthcare accessibility. Although she encounters mixed political views while canvassing, her peers are highly engaged with issues close to them. 

“The issues that affect everyone affect young people at an expedited rate,” McCoy said. “We’re going into and trying to live in a world that we won’t thrive in, and we need rent caps and more healthcare in rural areas.”

In Boone, where McCoy grew up and lives, 75% of homes are rentals, compared to 35% for the state and national average, impacting students and young people less likely to own. Although Down Home was not able to pass rent caps, they did achieve funding for low-income housing weatherization and helped secure two homes for recovery housing. They worked with other local nonprofits to do this, such as WAMY and the Mediation and Restorative Justice Center, which McCoy says is crucial for reaching people across rural counties and keeping them engaged.

“I think with young people, they sometimes don’t feel they can help or doing things in the community doesn’t seem like enough,” McCoy said. “I think that’s a narrative that needs to change…I do believe part of the reason Watauga County struggles to retain young people is lack of economic and housing opportunities. Most people want to stay and be involved in the community but it’s not a viable option.”

Forward Montana engages young Montanans to advocate for issues they care about. Through polling, they’ve noted affordable housing, climate change, inflation, and reproductive rights as paramount. Smith said focusing on change at the local level can increase accessibility and engagement. However, both on the local and national level, youth feel ignored and disillusioned with politics. 

“They feel like they’ve been dismissed by a lot of politicians in the things that they’ve heard and the things that they want aren’t actually coming to fruition,” Smith said. “A lot of young people feel frustrated, especially by the two party system, and disillusioned with that.”

However, Smith said Forward Montana has noticed more energy around voting from young people since Biden dropped out, largely because of Harris’ younger age and increased relatability. But above a particular candidate, Smith noted young voters care less about party systems and more about issues. She hopes they will increasingly be treated as persuadable voters who don’t identify with a party. 

“Young people’s issues that they care about are important, both at the state level and the national level, and their ability to feel heard and listened to and valued by politicians is vitally important to making sure that they stay engaged and active citizens and participants in the future,” Smith said. 

Rangel-Lopez has seen a “night and day” shift after Biden dropped out. A despair he noticed before has transformed to energy and joy for voter mobilization. The most discussed issues among the Southwest Kansans they work with are reproductive rights, LGBT+ protections, and immigration protections, especially given the majority minority population of the area. He has also seen increased interest in preserving and shaping local communities, especially around stopping “brain drain” and fresh water decreases. 

“We’re becoming the adults in the room. No one else is gonna figure this out for us,” Rangel-Lopez said. “It’s both exciting and scary for a lot of folks, but we take it one step at a time.”

“A lot of people see their futures in the communities that they’re in,” Chameides said. “…I think that place-based thing is a big motivation. It is a sense of ‘I want to be in a place that is livable and have opportunities to thrive in those communities.’”

The post ‘Least Contacted and Most Undecided:’ Young Voters in Rural America  appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama made a decision that most political analysts called a waste of time: He opened field offices in rural America. 

Obama raised an unprecedented amount of money to fund his campaign – roughly $750 million. This was more than double the amount his Republican opponent, John McCain, raised, and was the most money raised out of any presidential candidate in U.S. history. The majority of it came from small donations, with 90% of his donors giving less than $100, according to Politico reporting. 

All this money allowed him to open many more field offices than a “standard” presidential campaign. He focused on battleground states in particular, and instead of opening just one or two offices in the state capital and major cities, he focused on more rural areas, too. 

For example, in Nevada, Obama opened campaign offices in three of the major cities – Carson City, Reno, and Las Vegas – and in small towns like Elko and Winnemucca. By September of 2008, Obama had opened 14 Nevada state offices, hired 100 paid staffers, and recruited over 3,500 volunteers. By contrast, McCain had opened nine Nevada state offices. 

This full-state campaign strategy worked: Obama won Nevada by 12.5 percentage points, a margin of victory that hadn’t been achieved by Democrats in Nevada since 1964. In rural Elko County, Obama won 28% of the vote – almost 10% more than Democratic candidate John Kerry’s Elko County performance in 2004. 

While Obama still lost the majority of votes in Nevada’s rural counties, the marginal increases he made thanks to a boots-on-the-ground rural campaign strategy helped him win the state overall . He employed similar campaign strategies in states like Colorado and New Mexico, both of which he won by significant margins. Overall, Obama won 43% of rural U.S. votes – 3% more than Kerry in 2004.

This could have marked a turning point for how Democrats perform in rural America (slow and steady, upticking progress), but by 2016, the tide had shifted significantly. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won just over 30% of the rural vote. Liberal pundits blamed rural voters for putting Donald Trump in office, without acknowledging the drastic shift in rural voting behavior between 2008 and 2016. In 2020, Trump garnered an even higher percentage of the rural vote at 65%, despite losing the overall presidential election to Joe Biden. 

Over the past 15 years in presidential and midterm elections alike, many Democrats seem to have fallen for the stereotypes associated with rural America. They think it’s a homogenous swath of backwards, uneducated people that vote Republican no matter what – aka, it’s not worth it for Democrats to campaign there. Clinton’s 2018 comments that she “won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward,” while Trump’s whole campaign “was looking backwards,” exemplified this stereotype. 

Now, in 2024, the presidential election is highly contested, and the result could hinge on which way rural people vote. But does Democratic nominee Kamala Harris know this?

By and large, rural America leans Republican. There are a lot of complicated reasons for this, ranging from the post-World War II pursuit of industrial development in rural America (an argument historian Keith Orejel posits), to economic anxiety fueled by the 2008 Great Recession (as authors Nicholas Jacobs and Daniel Shea theorize). 

But not every rural voter casts a Republican ballot. And those marginal victories – like Obama winning 28% of the vote in rural Elko County as opposed to Kerry’s 19% – matter. Shaving down the number of Republican votes by even a few percentage points in rural counties can lead to statewide wins for Democrats. 

But Democrats have to show up in those rural places if they expect people to show up for them at the polls.

That’s a campaign strategy Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz need to remember over these next two months. The two of them are scheduled to visit North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in the next week. 

Including small towns during these stops – and speaking to the unique issues each of them face – could help shift the margins in their favor. 

The post Does Campaigning in Rural America Actually Work for Democrats? appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

As the 2024 presidential election hurdles closer, voters are clamoring for more information about what policy might look like under Democratic nominee Kamala Harris or Republican nominee Donald Trump. 

For agriculture policy, experts predict it could follow two very different paths depending on the results of the election: more tariffs and subsidies for big farmers under Trump, or climate investments and expanded crop insurance under Harris.  

To know what might happen under a second Trump administration, clues can be found from his first presidency. As for a Harris administration, the question will be how much a new Democratic president would continue the policies of her predecessor, Joe Biden.

Trump’s Tariffs and Subsidies

Early in his term, former President Trump withdrew from a free-trade agreement the U.S. had entered in 2016 that would have lowered trade barriers for domestic producers. Soon after, Trump invoked a series of tariffs on imports from nearly every other country in the world. Many countries retaliated by invoking their own tariffs on U.S. products.

This eventually led to a trade dispute with China, which resulted in steep tariffs on agriculture products, particularly soybeans and pork products.  

To support farmers who lost out on business from global consumers, Trump authorized $14.5 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) market facilitation program to provide payments to farmers affected by “unjustified foreign retaliatory tariffs.” 

He also greenlit the use of the Commodity Credit Corporation, a credit program the USDA can use to pay farmers without requiring appropriations from Congress. 

“It’s much more like an entitlement program,” said Jonathan Coppess, a University of Illinois politics professor and former administrator of the Farm Service Agency at the USDA. 

“So you can sign up and be entitled to the payment, and then the appropriators just pay off the borrowing, basically pay off the credit card,” he said. 

This provided a lot of flexibility for the USDA, but in combination with the market facilitation program and the payments farmers already received from programs in the 2018 farm bill, Coppess said some payments were made to the same people – many of whom operate large-scale operations that don’t need the extra money. 

This is an issue that goes back much further than the Trump administration. Large-scale federal support for agriculture was first implemented during the 1930s to protect farmers from volatile markets caused by tariffs, natural disasters, or economic recessions. But in recent decades, the majority of that spending has gone to the largest, wealthiest farms. 

“They not only get a disproportionate amount of the income, they also get a disproportionate amount of the safety net,” said Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in a Daily Yonder interview. 

Biden’s Rural Policy Expands Beyond Ag

Vilsack said the Biden administration has been trying to tackle how to funnel more federal resources to smaller farms. Millions of dollars are available through the American Rescue Plan Act to expand small farm operations and support farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture initiatives. The Inflation Reduction Act injected $19.5 billion into the USDA’s conservation programs that incentivize climate friendly farming. 

President Biden has invested in rural communities more broadly through policies like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which funds broadband infrastructure, modernized wastewater and drinking water systems, and road and bridge development, to name a few. 

The Biden administration also inherited Trump’s coronavirus food assistance program, which provided $19 billion in relief to farmers and ranchers at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Biden administration expanded the now-defunct program in 2021. 

But Biden’s time at the White House has also been defined by drawn-out farm bill negotiations, which are almost a year overdue. 

Farm Bill Headache

The farm bill goes far beyond support to individual farmers. For example, it funds food stamps benefits and rural development like sewage and drinking water needs. The bill is reauthorized by Congress every five years, but it often takes longer to approve.

That’s what happened with the 2023 farm bill. Fierce partisan debate over how much money should be spent on what programs has plagued negotiations, and nearly one year out from the expiration of the 2018 farm bill, a new five-year farm bill still has not been passed, even with proposals from both the House and Senate.  

“I do think among farm country, the fact they can’t get a 2023 farm bill done shows tremendous dysfunction and unwillingness to come to the negotiation table,” said Joe Maxwell, co-founder of Farm Action and former lieutenant governor of Missouri. “Both sides just get entrenched.” 

Maxwell said this dysfunction could add to the public’s frustration with politics, especially as the 2024 presidential election gets closer. 

2025 and Beyond

Agriculture experts predict two very different realities for farm policy depending on the results of this election.

Another Trump administration would likely produce more tariffs on China. It also could provide more subsidies to the largest farming operations, according to Scott Faber, the senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group (EWG). 

He’s concerned about what farm bill proposals from Republicans Glenn Thompson, the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, and John Boozman, the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, would mean for small farmers. 

“The House bill in particular provides a roadmap for what Republicans might do if they were to control all the Congress and the White House,” Faber said. The proposed bill would increase reference prices on just a few agricultural products like peanuts, rice, and cotton. This means those farmers are guaranteed payment through the USDA’s Price Loss Coverage program if the market value on those products dips below the reference price. But it leaves out many other commodity farmers, especially ones with smaller operations. 

Critics worry large farm operations would double-dip in different subsidy programs if the House’s farm bill proposal were enacted. “The increase in farm subsidies would be the largest in more than a generation, even though farm bankruptcies are at a 20-year low,” Faber said. 

By contrast, the Democratic farm bill proposal from Debbie Stabenow, chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, would incorporate the climate-smart farming investments created by the Inflation Reduction Act into the new farm bill. 

It would also expand access to crop insurance, which for many farmers has been difficult to obtain because of high premium costs. Stabenow’s proposal would increase federal support of farmers’ premium expenses and make it more affordable to access higher insurance coverage levels. 

While Congress is the main driving force behind farm policy, the president can steer that force down certain paths.

President Biden steered Congress toward climate action and rural investments over his four years. Secretary Vilsack said he’s confident Vice President Harris is aware of these steps taken by the Biden administration.

He also said Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz has replicated some of these farm policies as governor of Minnesota, which could mean they would be prioritized at the federal level if Harris and Walz are elected to the White House in November. 

“I’m confident that they understand the significance of [investing in small farmers] and the importance of it based on my current experience with them,” Vilsack said. 

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Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox.

David Salinas knows how to approach strangers. He got good at it while in college, working as a photojournalist. And, he knows what to do when they’re shy at first. He mastered that when working as a car salesman. 

He has one question he always turns to in those moments: “Did you ever finish your education?”

And then, he just pauses … and listens. Sometimes people need a second to open up. It gives him time to read their body language, and set them at ease. That’s another skill he picked up, at his last job, working for child protective services. 

He noticed that a lot of people were scared to admit not having finished high school or attended college.

“No?” he finally replies, once they’ve opened up. 

“Well, what if I knew a way for you to get a GED for free?”

People love it when they hear free, he tells me. It’s clear the former salesman has perfected his pitch. 

In fact, it seems like his whole life has prepared him to be a career navigator for UpSKILL Coastal Bend, a coalition of education leaders and community partners working together to help the South Texas communities around Corpus Christi.

The group formed in 2018 with a goal of breaking down barriers to education, fostering open dialogue, and creating “a singular vision to power solutions that prepare our workforce for good-paying middle-skill jobs in high demand across the region.”

It’s a noble mission, if perhaps a bit vague. Such flexibility is important to their model, which depends on having enough wiggle room to address their challenges in sometimes creative ways … for instance, by turning a rural Dollar Store into an economic incubator or convincing a local judge to sentence offenders to a classroom instead of a jail cell.

Then there are the on-the-ground career coordinators. Like Armando Castellano, who covers seven towns yet is never more than a text away from racing to help his clients. Or Aaron Trevino, a city alderman in Falfurrias, a small town known for its famed tribal healer, a curandero, and an infamous border patrol station.

In such remote places, where some towns are a few hours drive from each other, organizers can’t afford to place all their time and resources in Corpus Christi.

“We’ve been really strategic to make sure the navigators are embedded in the communities we serve,” says Ann Vlach, the operations director at the nonprofit community foundation Education to Employment Partners.

David primarily advises residents of Jim Wells County. It is one of 11 counties serviced by the coalition, which includes representatives from local community colleges, the state’s workforce group, and various nonprofits.

Their work has to be holistic, David says. The same person who needs their GED is often making little or no income. They likely are searching for a new job, and may also be struggling to get housing or food benefits they would qualify for. The coalition works together to connect people to all the services they need at once … before they can accidentally slip through the cracks.

Their work has to be holistic, David says. The same person who needs their GED is often making little or no income. They likely are searching for a new job, and may also be struggling to get housing or food benefits they would qualify for. The coalition works together to connect people to all the services they need at once … before they can accidentally slip through the cracks.

That’s why one of the first things David did, after taking the job two years ago, was make friends with Rosie Rodriguez at the Housing Authority of Alice. He gives weekly workshops there, some as simple as how to write a better resume, others about accessing adult education and potential workforce opportunities.

He keeps going, even though it’s an hour commute roundtrip from his home in Kingsville. Even though only a few people typically show up and most are retirement-aged. It’s important to be there. 

“They’ll know either nephews or grandchildren, and that’s one way to get word of mouth out there,” he says.

Jasmine Vegas certainly was glad that he did. The 37-year-old mother of four kids visited the housing authority a month ago, and left her number, after Rosie said she could possibly get her GED for free.

“I got a call from David the next day,” she says.

Jasmine tries to tell her two teenagers that they need to stay in school, even when they don’t want to … and she is tired of them responding by saying ‘Well, you dropped out.’

This article first appeared in Mile Markers, a twice monthly newsletter from Open Campus about the role of colleges in rural America. Join the mailing list today to have future editions delivered to your inbox.

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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

Kamala Harris announced Tuesday morning that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is her vice presidential running mate, bringing her campaign up many notches in rural credibility.

Walz grew up in Valentine, Nebraska (population 2,700), on his family’s farm before moving to the even smaller town of Butte, Nebraska (population 300), his sophomore year of high school, graduating in a class of 25 students.

After high school, he joined the National Guard and worked in manufacturing before attending Nebraska’s Chadron State College for a degree in social science education. He taught and coached high school football in Alliance, Nebraska (population 8,000), where he met his future wife, Minnesota-born Gwen Whipple. They married in 1994 and moved to Mankato, Minnesota (population 45,000), in 1996. Walz taught geography and coached football at Mankato West High School, where he also headed the school’s first gay-straight alliance.

In 2006, he ran for Congress as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nominee (a third party unique to Minnesota whose platform centers “progressive agrarian reform” and advocates for farmers, union workers, and the public ownership of utilities, railroads, and natural resources, as well as social security legislation, according to their website.) He won the disproportionately rural first congressional district of southern Minnesota, beating the district’s six-term Republican incumbent. He represented the district from 2007-2019 before becoming governor of Minnesota.

All this to say: Walz knows rural America.

Unlike many other Democrats, Walz understands what it’s like to be from a small town where no matter your political ideology, neighbors still look out for one another. He’s privy to political nuance in rural communities, like in the congressional district that voted for him and also voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Walz doesn’t hold the same disdain for or condescension of rural folks or Trump supporters that some Democrats are guilty of (Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment about Trump supporters is the most famous example of this).

This last point is what I find most compelling about him. Walz doesn’t think Trump supporters are dumb or are voting against their own interests; he thinks that Democrats have a messaging problem. In an interview with Ezra Klein, he harkened back to his teaching days to describe this issue.

“The schoolteacher in me keeps thinking, if I give a test, and 90% of the students fail, I can guarantee you it’s not because the kids aren’t smart, there’s something wrong with the test or the way I’m teaching it,” Walz told Klein. “I keep coming back to this: if they’re not voting for us, there’s not something wrong with them, there’s something [about Democrats’ messaging] that’s not quite clicking.”

Since it was first announced Walz was being considered for the V.P. pick, he’s developed his own way of talking about the threat of another Trump presidency by keeping it simple: Republicans are just plain-ole “weird.”

Before Walz hit mainstream media, Democrats were warning of the “existential threat to democracy” that Trump poses, but now they’ve united around Walz’s phrasing. Republicans who want to take books away, to be in your medical exam room – they’re weird for that.

This messaging is refreshing in its simplicity. The way Walz uses “weird” isn’t to shame Trump supporters; it’s to point out how odd Republican policies like book bans or abortion bans really are. Isn’t it counter to personal freedom – one of the fundamental values in the United States – to dictate what a person can and cannot read? Isn’t it a terrible privacy infraction to want a say in the healthcare people receive? Can’t we all just respect each other’s personal freedoms and mind our own business, Walz asks?

As Minnesota governor, Walz has passed an impressive number of progressive policies. Some of his signature accomplishments include investments in public education like free breakfast and lunch for all students, expansion of the state’s child tax credit, protections for reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare, a $1 billion investment in affordable housing and expanded voting rights access, to name just a few.

But he’s got critics, too. His governor’s campaign ran on a “One Minnesota” message meant to bridge the state’s rural-urban divide, but some Minnesota pundits say once he was armed with a Democratic trifecta in the governor’s office and in both chambers of the state legislature, his “One Minnesota” message changed.

“But once he got that trifecta, his message shifted to: ‘This is what we can do with single party control, the era of gridlock is over,’” said Hamline University professor David Schultz in a CNN interview. Other pundits have wondered whether he’ll be able to rekindle the unity that message spurred if the Harris-Walz ticket loses in November.

Even with these critiques, Walz seems to be a strong choice for the Harris campaign.

He hits many of the demographic factors Harris’ advisers were looking for, whether officially or not: He’s a white, rural, middle-age veteran who has won over the internet through a single word. And the power of the internet is nothing to scoff at – one of this summer’s it-girls, musician Charli XCX, declared Kamala Harris a “brat” (a counter-intuitive compliment that references Charli XCX’s hit album), and enthusiasm for Harris soared among young millennials and Gen Z. Capitalizing on Walz’s internet virality is a good strategy for getting young voters.

Pair that with Walz’s rural credibility (he recently said he could out-shoot Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance in a pheasant hunt), and the Harris-Walz ticket could be a force to be reckoned with.

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In rural Kansas, if you’re between the ages of 21 and 39ish, you might be considered a PowerUp —  but not just because of your age or location. A PowerUp is someone who is rural by choice. 

“The name was created to illustrate the goal of empowering and moving younger people in rural communities into positions of leadership and influence,” Simone Elder said. 

She is the PowerUp & Engagement Manager for the Kansas Sampler Foundation (KSF), which focuses on preserving and sustaining rural culture. “For years, returning to rural has gotten a bad rap — the perception that it’s less than or someone failed at their bigger endeavors elsewhere,” Elder said. But KSF has been working to shift that mindset. 

Despite old narratives about small towns being places to escape, grassroots leaders and policymakers in rural communities nationwide are exploring ways to attract young people to these places and make them feel at home there.

For example, KSF is challenging residents to envision new possibilities by getting out on the back roads to experience overlooked assets in their hometowns. “Through the Big Kansas Road Trip, we help Kansans and other visitors from outside the state to see Kansas with new eyes,” Elder said. 

After identifying PowerUps as some of the strongest assets available, KSF has emphasized cultivating rural influencers. “There’s tremendous value in having an older person visibly and intentionally elevate the work of younger people in rural,” Elder said. 

Many PowerUps KSF has interviewed express wanting a sense of community, especially when it comes to raising kids, and a number have voiced entrepreneurial aspirations. Elder noted that while being rural by choice can mean loving where you live, it can sometimes feel lonely or frustrating. “It doesn’t mean you chose wrong,” she said. It’s about having a strong network of champions that can move forward together.

In neighboring Nebraska, Megan Helberg has become one of those champions. Fifteen years ago, she was a “returner.” Similar to Kansas, Nebraska was having an issue telling its own story. “We used to kind of joke about how small we were,” Helberg said. “But we started to realize that people listen to what you say.” 

Helberg, who decided to return despite that old narrative, is now a local rancher and secondary school teacher. She also sits on the Board of Directors for the Nebraska Community Foundation and serves as chairperson for the Calamus Area Community Fund. 

She is one of many spreading the message that young Nebraskans should go explore but then bring their greatness back. “We need you here, we want you here, and you can make a great life here,” she said. In 2024, her school’s senior class had six graduates, all of whom are heading off to college. But 75% are committed to coming back to help with an existing business or start one of their own. 

Creating the climate for those kinds of endeavors is where the community fund comes in, relying on unrestricted endowments, local bank accounts that accept donations from community members. Only the accumulated interest can be spent and all funds must be poured back into the community.

“It has been absolutely transformational,” Helberg said. In her area, the community fund has supported the renovation of neglected homes, making the properties available again to combat the housing crisis. Two new childcare centers have also opened with local support, as well as additional funding sources.

While these grassroots efforts show the power of community when everyone joins in, there is also critical work happening at the policy level across the country. New Hampshire-based Stay Work Play is a non-profit making it easier for young people to call the Granite State home. 

Part of its approach is non-partisan, issues-based advocacy informed by statewide data collection. Take, for instance, Stay Work Play’s Policy & Pints series, which gathered young locals at area breweries for focus groups to identify barriers to feeling welcome and secure in New Hampshire. 

Unsurprisingly, housing and childcare were high on the list. “We’re not experts ourselves in housing or childcare, but we do work with partners across the state for whom this is their business,” said Will Stewart, executive director. 

Stay Work Play is supporting greater investments in the state’s workforce housing fund and advocating for the ability to build smaller units on smaller lot sizes. “Things that young families need to get a toehold here in the state,” Stewart said. 

In addition, he’s seen “a return to older models,” like employer-supported housing. Some companies are paying existing employees to house new ones until they’re able to secure stable living situations. A leading healthcare provider has also been exploring options to develop on land already under its ownership. “But they’re just one example of a company that’s looking for novel solutions,” Stewart said. 

Beyond these logistical factors, social infrastructure is a key element that’s sometimes less talked about. In New Hampshire, young residents reported high satisfaction with “being able to get out of work and 30 minutes later be on the ski slopes or out hiking or on a paddleboard,” Stewart said. But making friends or finding a date can mean an ever-expanding search radius on social apps. The need for more “third places” where people can gather organically is strongly felt. 

As small towns rise to the challenge, sharing a new narrative through effective branding and marketing is essential. Stewart points to Littleton, a rural New Hampshire town that has cultivated a buzzing downtown, food and drink scene, and outdoor recreation network. 

For potential “returners” who may not have been back except for holiday dinners, “they probably don’t have an understanding of places, like Littleton, that have changed, and to use a scientific term, gotten cooler,” Stewart said. That’s an opportunity for a redefined rural place to find its people.

Caroline Tremblay is a freelance writer who covers Radically Rural, an annual two-day summit on rural issues held in Keene, New Hampshire. This year’s event, featuring the people and organizations cited in this story, will take place September 25-26. For more information, and to register for this year’s summit, visit radicallyrural.org.

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