Thank you to everyone who took my 2021 reader survey. I spent the weekend going through all the comments and wanted to share some of the results with you.
As I said before, it’s important for me to know what your biggest concerns are for the year ahead, so I can address them throughout the year. I was curious to see if now that we had control over the federal government, if people would generally gravitate back to important issues they cared about pre-2016. But I can say that no, pretty much folks are clearly responding to the damage of the past four years and wanting to strengthen our country is some clear ways.
The number one issue that readers want to tackle (and it’s not close) is voting rights. Folks wrote in that they want to see expanded voting rights, that we need to protect against voter suppression and gerrymandering, a few folks wrote in an interest in seeing more ranked-choice voting options, and a handful noted the need to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
The next biggest issue readers wanted to tackle is what I’m calling fixing Trump’s mess/making sure Biden has a good start. I got comments like “getting the Cabinet up and running and reversing 45’s damage,” “getting Senate Dems to use their power,” and “closing loopholes that Trump exploited.”
Third on the list is protecting democracy. Readers want to tackle “democracy reforms,” “stop McConnell from undermining democracy,” and “end the Electoral College and expand SCOTUS.”
Fourth up on issues readers want to tackle is a biggie: dealing with a radical GOP. This was an issue that readers intertwined with white supremacy. Sample comments I got included “make sure GOP and white supremacists don’t take over,” “dealing with sedition,” and “address growing, violent radicalization of too many Americans.”
Somewhat related to that issue and rounding out the top 5 was misinformation/disinformation. Comments ranged from “dispelling misinformation about political topics,” “how to help trump cultists grasp the truth,” and “consequences for lying.”
The other topics that received a fair number of votes was divisiveness, COVID, the 2022 elections, and dark money.
So again, thank you for taking the time to share your concerns and priorities with me. This gives me a great road map of the topics I will cover this year, while I continue to provide you explainers as to what’s happening and what we can all do about it.
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For people who want to end the Electoral College, and I was one of them, may I recommend a documentary called “Safequard: An Electoral College Story”. I think it’s available on Prime or Netflix.
Thanks, Patricia!
It seems to me you could make #1 the broad category of Democracy Protection and subsume voting rights, dark money, gerrymandering, the 2022 election, etc. under it. It could also include shoring up the free press and dealing with disinformation. Then #2 would be cleaning up Trump’s mess, which could include COVID; #3 Could be dealing with Divisiveness including White Supremacy, hate groups, domestic terrorism, and voila! I’d recommend adding a category on Civics Education–shoring it up in schools and communities. I think I voted, but I can’t remember.
Thanks for your continuing work. It is so heartening when a leader (political or not) looks to people for suggestions.
Thanks, Kathy. There are certain topics I know I want to cover, but I want to know their relative importance to my readers. I’ve found these surveys to be a helpful guide.