Election Time
Articles and voter resources
Spooky Season is here, and that means people across the country have started early voting. In that spirit (no pun intended), I’m resharing some recent pieces that reflect on national and local electoral politics, as well as some voter resources.
I also just contributed this piece at the Center for Educator Wellness and Learning on how to interpret legislators’ education voting records.
National issues:
Former president Donald Trump has explicitly denied involvement with Project 2025, a detailed blueprint by the Heritage Foundation and other hyper-conservative groups (including Moms for Liberty, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Palmetto Promise Institute) to restructure the federal government (primarily by firing everyone who doesn’t pass their political tests).
But, as I get into in more detail in these pieces, Trump’s actual policy platform explicitly includes most of Project 2025’s most headline-grabbing ideas, like abolishing the Department of Education and greenlighting widespread discrimination against transgender and nonbinary children. (Trump has recently gone even further than Project 2025’s fevered rhetoric, by repeatedly making the outlandish claim that schools are literally performing gender reassignment surgeries on children.)
Voter resources:
vote411.org, a project of the nonpartisan League of Women Voters, is a fantastic resource on elections and candidates. The League sends surveys to candidates designed to elicit actual policy positions and stances on issues, rather than talking points. (If a candidate declines to respond, or declines to answer a question directly, that can sometimes tell you as much as anything.)
The NEA’s recommendations for national candidates can be found here.
For issues while voting, you can call the nonpartisan Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
South Carolina-specific resources:
This spreadsheet outlines some key education-related votes of all current and former SC House and Senate members.
The South Carolina Education Association’s recommendations for state candidates are available here. Local county chapters may also provide recommendations.
Advice:
Local elections, and in particular school board elections, are often decided by a very small number of votes, particularly in school districts which contain smaller voting districts. If you’re not sure who to support, asking engaged teachers and public school advocates can be a great place to start. If you can get a handful of your friends and neighbors to vote to elect pro-student, pro-public school school board members, you can take a powerful step in opposing groups like Moms for Liberty and Project 2025.
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