News & Media
5 Things to Know About Single Mothers in Poverty
May 11th, 2012
By Katie Wright As we approach another Mother’s Day, we as Americans reflect on the challenges facing some of the mothers struggling the most out there—single mothers living in poverty—and what we can do to create greater economic opportunity for all kinds of families. Too often the space in the national discourse for this discussion is [...]
Civil rights groups launch voter registration drives earlier
May 11th, 2012
By Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY Voter registration among blacks is down from 2008, prompting the NAACP and other civil rights organizations to launch registration drives two months earlier than in past presidential election years. Leaders of the NAACP and other groups blame the decline on new state laws requiring people to produce identification to register or placing [...]
Stay-at-Home Moms in U.S. Lean Independent, Lower-Income
April 23rd, 2012
by Lydia Saad Fourteen percent of American women currently have a child under age 18 in their household and aren’t formally employed. While few in this group would be able to identify with Mitt and Ann Romney’s wealth, it is the segment of the population that could potentially be offended by recent commentary that Ann [...]
How to Expand the Voter Rolls
April 10th, 2012
EDITORIAL Published: April 6, 2012 A country that should be encouraging more people to vote is still using an archaic voter registration system that creates barriers to getting a ballot. In 2008, 75 million eligible people did not vote in the presidential election, and 80 percent of them were not registered. The vast majority of [...]
What’s Driving the Gender Gap Between Obama and Romney? It’s the Economy, Stupid
April 10th, 2012
By Bryce Covert 4/09/2012 @ 11:24AM The blogosphere was abuzz last week after polling numbers from USA Today/Gallup came out showing Obama with a 18-point lead over Romney with women in swing states. Many leapt to the conclusion that the more than a month-long fracas over birth control – when and how it should be covered, as well as whether [...]
All the Single Ladies
March 26th, 2012
Unmarried women comprise an increasing share of the population Posted by John Fetto under Featured, Research, Targeting Strategies Women already account for a majority of the total U.S. population, and in recent years, Experian Simmons found that the share of adult women in this country who are not married rose to nearly half. In 2011, 48% of adult women were [...]
Martial Status and the Recession
March 22nd, 2012
Marital Status and the Recession By CASEY B. MULLIGAN Job losses among women during the recent recession exhibit a curious pattern by marital status that is revealing about the importance of labor demand and supply factors. During the 2008-9 recession, job losses were not equitably shared; employment rates fell more for some groups than others. Not [...]
Why women are out-earning men
March 19th, 2012
By Patricia Sellers March 16, 2012: 11:44 AM ET Women are poised to become America’s biggest breadwinners. The tipping point is a generation away, assuming women’s economic power keeps rising as expected. But already, the trend is stunning enough that TIME made it the subject of its current cover. “Almost 40% of working wives out-earn their [...]
Rise of the Single-Woman Vote
March 14th, 2012
The fight to win over the nation’s fastest-growing voting group—and the most misunderstood. By Hanna Rosin Updated Tuesday, March 13, 2012, at 1:51 PM ET When headlines announced last weekend that the “Obama Campaign Plans Big Effort to Court Women,” they generally called a couple of particular types of women to mind. Despite the dating metaphors [...]
Obama Plans Big Effort to Build Support Among Women
March 12th, 2012
By JACKIE CALMES Published: March 10, 2012 WASHINGTON — President Obama’s re-election campaign is beginning an intensified effort this week to build support among women, using the debate over the new health care law to amplify an appeal that already appears to be benefiting from partisan clashes over birth control and abortion. On Monday, mailings will go out to [...]
Rush Limbaugh and the poisoning of the GOP brand
March 7th, 2012
How the least-liked “news personality” in America became the symbol of the GOP — and just poisoned their brand BY STEVE KORNACKI Sponsors are still bailing on Rush Limbaugh, who is apparently uninterested in expanding his very limited apology to Sandra Fluke, the woman he called a “slut” on his radio show last week. Limbaugh still seems unlikely [...]
2012 or Never
February 28th, 2012
Republicans are worried this election could be their last chance to stop history. This is fear talking. But not paranoia. By Jonathan Chait, Published Feb 26, 2012 Of the various expressions of right-wing hysteria that have flowered over the past three years—goldbuggery, birtherism, death panels at home and imaginary apology tours by President Obama abroad—perhaps the [...]
Statement from Mission Control RE: Colorado Voter Registration Effort
February 27th, 2012
February 24, 2012 To Whom it May Concern: In the course of printing approximately one million voter registration forms for the Voter Participation Center, including 17,000 in the state of Colorado, our printer made two errors that lead to incomplete voter registration forms being sent to individuals in Colorado. Because an imaging head was incorrectly [...]
Statement by Page Gardner, President, The Voter Participation Center RE: Colorado Voter Registration Effort
February 27th, 2012
STATEMENT BY PAGE GARDNER, PRESIDENT, VOTER PARTICIPATION CENTER RE: COLORADO VOTER REGISTRATION EFFORT FEBRUARY 24, 2012 In the course of mailing more than one million voter registration applications to 27 states this week, a printer’s mistake was made that affected the 17,291 applications sent to Colorado. Immediately after being informed by the Colorado Secretary [...]
Frequently Asked Questions About the Voter Participation Center’s Mailings
February 23rd, 2012
Here are some frequently asked questions about our work along with some answers to questions about a recent mailing the Voter Participation Center did to the Rising American Electorate in Wisconsin. WHO WE MAIL APPLICATIONS TO Q. Who is the target audience of VPC’s mailings? We reach out to unregistered unmarried women, people of color [...]
Statement by Page Gardner RE: Wisconsin Voter Registration Effort
February 23rd, 2012
STATEMENT BY PAGE GARDNER RE: WISCONSIN VOTER REGISTRATION EFFORT VOTER PARTICIPATION CENTER FEBRUARY 22, 2012 On Tuesday, February 21, 2012, The Voter Participation Center was contacted directly by the Wisconsin Government Accountability (GAB) Board with disturbing news that may impact nearly 75,000 prospective voters hoping to exercise their legal right to register by mail [...]
Voter Participation Center Statement on Wisconsin Government Accountability Board Actions
February 23rd, 2012
February 21, 2012 Statement by Page S. Gardner, President, Voter Participation Center: “The voting rights of nearly 75,000 prospective voters in Wisconsin may be threatened if the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board refuses to process voter registration forms that are sent directly to them and that are federally approved for use in Wisconsin. Despite the legitimacy [...]
Swing-State Singles: How Unmarried Voters Could Decide the Election
February 13th, 2012
By Eric Klinenberg Unmarried voters played a decisive role in 2008, and four years later there are even more of them. Eric Klinenberg on how the candidates can court this up-for-grabs demographic. The phrase “swinging singles” will take on new meaning during the 2012 presidential campaign—and not because of the candidates’ behavior. This year there are [...]
Chicago Hope
January 6th, 2012
The Obama Campaign focuses on the fast-growing constituency first identified by The Voter Participation Center — the Rising American Electorate — unmarried women, latinos, voters under 30. Read Chicago Hope from Marc Ambinder at The National Journal.
Republicans Face Potential Hard Sell to Women
December 4th, 2011
Republicans Face Potential Hard Sell to Women