About
100% Democracy is a new initiative dedicated to the proposition that a representative democracy is only truly representative when everyone participates. Our goal is to reimagine voting as both a fundamental right and a civic responsibility, with every eligible citizen required to participate in this most fundamental act of self-governance.
The launch of this initiative to advance universal voting in the U.S. follows the success of the book 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting by E.J. Dionne and Miles Rapoport. Our goal is to introduce and elevate the idea of universal voting in public debate as well as in legislative discussion and action.
Staff
Miles Rapoport, Executive Director
In addition to being Executive Director of 100% Democracy, Miles is Senior Practice Fellow in American Democracy at the Ash Center of the Harvard Kennedy School. Earlier, he served five terms in the Connecticut House of Representatives, from 1984 to 1994, chairing the committee on elections. He was Connecticut Secretary of the State from 1995 to 1998, leading multiple initiatives to expand voting and participation. He was President of Dēmos from 2001 to 2014, and President of Common Cause from 2014 to 2016. He is the co-author, with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, of 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting, published in March of 2022 by the New Press. miles.rapoport@100percentdemocracy.org
Cathy Duvall, Senior Organizing Consultant
Cathy Duvall is the founder and CEO of Democracy Ascent Advisors, a consulting firm focused on strategic outreach, organizing, and engagement to create a more functional democracy. Duvall comes to this work after serving for 10 years as the strategic outreach director at the Sierra Club where she worked with the vast network of staff and volunteers to win local and national policy changes around environmental justice, workers’ rights, and democracy issues, and oversaw the youth organizing and political programs. Over the years she has also served as the campaign manager and field director for numerous local, state, and national political campaigns.
Raaheela Ahmed, National Legislative and Organizing Director
Raaheela Ahmed is a nonprofit executive, grassroots community advocate, and servant leader. She served five years as the elected representative for the Prince George's County Board of Education, District 5, representing more than 80,000 Maryland residents. Before joining 100% Democracy, she worked as Deputy Director of Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project, a nonprofit that focuses on voting and civic engagement at college campuses. Prior to that, Raaheela was Manager of Leadership Programs at New American Leaders, where she cultivated and supported a national network of 500+ first- and second-generation immigrant elected officials. As a young, first-generation American, head-covering Muslim woman of Indian and Pakistani descent, Raaheela understands and passionately strives for equity and justice for marginalized people and communities.
Amber Von Schassen, Communications Specialist
Amber Von Schassen employs her creative talents to amplify voices and drive social change. Previously, she served as a research analyst at the Brookings Institution, where she specialized in public opinion polling, U.S. politics, and voting rights. Amber is a Fulbright Research Award recipient and a graduate of George Washington University.
Allegra Chapman, Board Chair
Board
A former civil rights and voting rights litigator, Allegra now consults for social justice, voting rights, and political organizations on strategies to build bridges between communities, enhance electoral and political participation, and heal divides. To these ends, she writes, researches, and advises philanthropies. She has worked in government (NY State Attorney General's Office, Civil Rights Bureau), private practice (Lansner & Kubitschek), and at nonprofit organizations (Dēmos, Common Cause).
She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from McGill University and a J.D. from Emory Law School.
Professor Cornell William Brooks
Cornell William Brooks is the founding Faculty Director of the Trotter Collaborative, as well as the Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He also serves as Visiting Professor of the Practice of Prophetic Religion and Public Leadership at Harvard Divinity School. Brooks is the former president and CEO of the NAACP, a civil rights attorney, fourth-generation ordained minister, writer, orator, writer, and the executive producer of two films.
Brooks holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal and member of the Yale Law & Policy Review, and a Master of Divinity from Boston University’s School of Theology, where he was a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar. He also holds a B.A. from Jackson State University. He is a fourth-generation ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Marc Caplan
Marc Caplan has been a leading organizer and advocate in progressive politics and the democracy movement for decades. For 25 years, he was extensively involved in issue campaigns, coalition-building, and political campaigns in New England, including running three statewide election campaigns in Connecticut. He pioneered the development of state-wide, multi-constituency electoral coalitions in five New England states, and he directed Northeast Action from 1992 to 1999. He served as a senior program officer at the Proteus and Piper Funds, addressing the excessive corporate and special interest influence on our political system, and continued that work at Common Cause. He presently consults for the Working Families Party in New Jersey.
Archon Fung
Archon Fung directs the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and is the Winthrop Laflin McCormack Professor of Citizenship and Self-Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He examines policies and practices that aim to deepen the quality of democratic governance. He focuses upon public participation, deliberation, and transparency. His books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton University Press). He has authored five books, four edited collections, and over one hundred articles appearing in professional journals. He served as Academic Dean of the Kennedy School from 2014-2018 and was its Acting Dean in 2015.
Fung holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alex Keyssar
Alex Keyssar is the Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. A historian by training, he has specialized in the exploration of historical problems that have contemporary policy implications. His book The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States was named the best book in U.S. history by both the American Historical Association and the Historical Society; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Keyssar writes frequently for the popular press about American politics and history. His latest book, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?, was named a New Statesman Book of the Year.
María Teresa Kumar
María Teresa Kumar is the founding President and CEO of Voto Latino and an Emmy-nominated on-air analyst for MSNBC. Under María Teresa’s leadership, Voto Latino has become the country's largest Latinx voter registration and mobilization organization that played a decisive role in American elections. In the 2020 election cycle alone, Voto Latino registered more than 600,000 voters, making it the largest digital voter registration organization in the country and the largest focused on people of color.
María Teresa served on President Obama’s Policing Taskforce, currently serves on the National Election Crisis Task Force and Brooking Institute’s Universal Voting Task Force. Named amongst the 100 Top Political Influencers by Washingtonian Magazine, María Teresa serves on corporate boards and is a sought-after political strategist.
Born in Bogota, Colombia, María Teresa immigrated to the United States when she was 4 years old. She studied at University of California at Davis and the Harvard Kennedy School.
Carolyn Lukensmeyer
Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer is a leader in the field of deliberative democracy. She previously served as Founder and President of AmericaSpeaks, a nonprofit that promoted nonpartisan initiatives to engage citizens and leaders through the development of innovative public policy tools and strategies. During her tenure, AmericaSpeaks engaged more than 200,000 people and hosted events across all 50 states and throughout the world.
Dr. Lukensmeyer served as Consultant to the White House Chief of Staff in the 1990s and was the Chief of Staff to Ohio Governor Richard F. Celeste from 1986-91, becoming the first woman to serve in this capacity.
She holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University.
Heather McGhee
Heather McGhee designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America. Her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. She is a Visiting Lecturer in Urban Studies at the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies. For nearly two decades, Heather helped build the nonpartisan think tank Dēmos, serving four years as president. She holds a B.A. in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. Heather is the chair of the board of Color Of Change and also serves on the boards of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Open Society Foundations, and Dēmos.
Dorian Warren
Dorian Warren is co-president of Community Change, the co-founder and co-chair of the Economic Security Project, and the co-host of the Deep Dive podcast on The Takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry. He taught for over a decade at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, where he was co-director of the Columbia University Program on Labor Law and Policy. He's the co-author of The Hidden Rules of Race, co-editor of Race and American Political Development, and author of numerous academic articles. He also worked at MSNBC, where he was a Contributor and fill-in host for "Melissa Harris-Perry" and "Now with Alex Wagner.” He serves on the boards of Working Partnerships USA, the Leadership Conference Education Fund, the National Employment Law Project, and The Nation magazine, among others.
Warren received his B.A. from the University of Illinois and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.