The New Voting Aficionados

Oct 01, 2026

THIS WEEK: Voting is so hot!

It’s a boomtime for protecting the vote.

So much so that a 2022 Yale School of Management report posited that the field was too crowded. There were close to 200 groups trying to protect the vote. Half had been in existence for less than five years.

Alarm over too many people caring about voting. That feels like burying the lede…or how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?…or, really dudes?

But we digress.

Reporting Right thinks there are a lot of great local stories to be told about all these voting aficionados. Who are they on your beat? What are they doing? How has fear about voter suppression changed what a lot of people do on Saturday or after work? Are young people meeting other young people this way?

So excited about how cool it now is to vote, we decided to offer up some story ideas.

But first:

CHECK OUT VOTEBEAT

Story Ideas

Too young to drink, but not to get out the vote

Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have started youth poll worker programs. That’s a great feature. Who are these kids and what does it mean for their free time? Is this getting them off social media? Is it helping young people form IRL bonds, hook-up, make new friends they would have otherwise never met, cross political divides?

Wait, is this the new bowling?

Is nationwide anxiety about voting access and election integrity bolstering civic life? Are folks in your community replacing PTA meetings, church pot lucks and whatever else they do in their free time with poll-worker trainings, voter-registration events, and election-protection workshops? Find out.

Polling Places are happy places…unless they’re not

These folks did an ethnographic study of polling places. Turns out they foster community, peer-to-peer bonds, etc…Explore this in a local human interest piece.