CHICAGO -- While they can't legally cast a ballot themselves yet, dozens of Illinois high school students are working to ensure that people of voting age understand the importance of their civic duty.

As part of the WOKE Project, roughly 130 young people from three Chicago-area high schools are working the phones and pounding pavement to offer nonpartisan election information to eligible voters.

Jasmine Roach, 17, a junior at Prosser Career Academy, said the work they're doing is very important to her, personally.

"I get to vote next year, so I learn a lot through this program," she said. "It helped me learn about the politics, what's going on with the election, what can we do to get our voices heard, especially in the Black and Brown community."

Following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID-19 guidelines, some students are manning a phone bank tonight while others will drop off literature in person. The WOKE Project, which stands for "Working On Knowledge and Equity", brings together educators and students of color for learning beyond the classroom, with a focus on direct engagement in their communities. Thirteen civics classes are part of this week's get-out-the vote effort.

As a junior at Roosevelt High School, Alexandra Moreno, 16, said she enjoys the outreach work and believes the main point of voting is to make communities better.

"I thought it was important for our communities to be more safe, be united, to be more positive," she said. "It's kind of dangerous right now, but that's why we need to vote -- to make power, to make our community safe."

Roach said the WOKE Project helps support young people in the community who are struggling and can feel they have nowhere else to turn.

"They have programs where you can go if your mental health is not OK," she said. "If you don't have money for food, they help out with that. If you need help with homework, they help you with that, they get you tutors."

The WOKE Project is a partnership between Voices of Youth in Chicago Education and Communities United.


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The Iowa League of Women Voters plans to ask the Iowa Legislature to rethink the voting restrictions put in place prior to last month's midterm elections. Among other changes, they limited the number of early voting days.

Iowa reduced the number of days that people could cast ballots early this year, from 29 days to 20. Legislators also voted to close the polls an hour earlier, at 8 p.m., and shorten the window for the state to process early ballot requests.

Terese Grant, president of the Iowa League of Women Voters, said they were reacting to claims of fraud surrounding the 2020 election.

"Lots of misinformation about voting, and it was very unfortunate that that national misinformation affected the Legislature here in Iowa, and they felt that they needed to restrict voting," she said. "It was a solution without really a problem."

So, Grant said the League will call on the Legislature in January to reverse or change those restrictions, giving voters more time and opportunity to cast ballots in the future. More than 1.2 million Iowans voted in the midterm election, the second-highest total ever.

While overall voter turnout was good statewide, Grant said, early balloting was down - most likely because of the new restrictions. She acknowledged that the odds could be steep against any less restrictive voting rules, given the current political makeup at the Statehouse.

"I'm not sure that we're going to have any success," she said. "One party controls the House, the Senate and the governor, so we can certainly ask them. I don't know that they'll do anything, but we certainly don't want any more restrictions - and we're going to certainly watch to make sure that doesn't happen."

She said the League is concerned that more restrictions will hinder voter participation and keep more people out of the democratic process.

Support for this story was provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

A decision could come today on Nevada's bid to become the first state in the nation to hold a Democratic primary in 2024.

The Democratic National Committee is meeting to consider whether to change the traditional order of Iowa, then New Hampshire, and then South Carolina.

Judith Whitmer, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, said Nevada delivered the Senate for the Democrats in the midterms and fits the bill as a small, diverse state which lends itself to retail politics, where candidates must engage with voters in person.

"The criteria are diversity and competitiveness," Whitmer pointed out. "It needs to be in a media market that isn't so overpriced that candidates can't afford it coming out of the gate."

The Nevada Republican Party is expected to hold its primary on the same day as the Democrats. Gov. Steve Sisolak signed a law last year instituting a statewide primary, replacing the former caucus system. No significant opposition has arisen in-state but multiple other states are vying to go first on the primary calendar, including Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire.

Emmanuelle Leal, national communications director for Somos Votantes, a group focused on Latino voter engagement, said Nevada provides an ideal location.

"The country does not look like Iowa. The country does not look like New Hampshire," Leal stressed. "The country looks like Nevada: a state with a diverse population of people of color, unions, with rural and urban families."

Leal noted the state chosen to go first will garner a huge amount of national attention and political influence, and will see an influx of millions in election-related spending.

Local candidates that signed onto a no-corporate-money pledge made midterm election gains in Charleston.

Katie Lauer, co-chair of West Virginia Can't Wait, said the organization now has two dozen bipartisan elected officials - including Republicans, Democrats and independents in public office across the state. She said the wins signal Mountain State voters are paying less attention to politics and more on the issues affecting their lives.

"Our goal for this cycle was to double that number to get 22 elected officials into office, and we not only met that goal, but surpassed it. So we now have 24 elected officials across the state," Lauer said. Some are on city council, some are on school boards, some are on county commissions."

Around 35% of voters statewide went to the polls for the midterms, according to a U.S. Elections Project Analysis.

She said Charleston's officials are focused on decriminalizing cannabis, instituting harm-reduction programs for substance use, addressing trauma among youths and families, and increasing minimum-wage and paid sick days for workers.


"And the question we're asking is, are there things that we can do right here at home that address the problems right in our backyard?," she said. "And who from whatever party wants to come to the table and help solve those problems?"

West Virginia Can't Wait was founded in late 2018 and ran its first slate of candidates in 2020.