Last Call for Voting: A Conversation with Damon Circosta
Damon Circosta holds many community roles here in the Triangle. Within this interview, he is speaking as the Chair of the North Carolina State Board of Elections and as an engaged citizen. Damon is a Transforming Leaders 2013 Goodmon Fellow and he serves on the Leadership Triangle Board of Directors as Treasurer.
Damon is the Executive Director and Vice President of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation (AJF). Damon has been the Executive Director of AJF since 2012 where he has spearheaded several initiatives that help nonprofits thrive. Damon comes to work every day heartened by all of the good things happening in the nonprofit sector and AJF’s unique role as funders, partners, counselors, and helpers in these endeavors. A native of Arizona, Damon has lived in California, Hawaii and (for a few weeks each year) on the shores of Walloon Lake, Michigan. Previously, Damon led the North Carolina Center for Voter Education, an organization dedicated to improving the electoral process. He currently serves as the chair of the North Carolina State Board of Elections as well as a professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He is a graduate of the University of Arizona School of Law. If you ask him, he will tell you way too much about his paleo diet and “fringe” sports pursuits like surfing, ultimate frisbee, climbing and pickleball. He vehemently opposes Daylight Savings Time.
“I think that there’s a really important notion that voting is a two way street. It’s a dialogue between the elected and those who elect. And there are very few places where we have that dialogue in our systems of leadership. If you ask me why I care so much about voting, it’s not because the act of going to the polling place and casting your ballot is the be-all-end-all. Voting is important because it symbolizes what we’re trying to do here, which is to live in shared space and work together for the common good.”
Kristine: Damon, you recently told me that the one issue you would spend your days and your nights working on is people’s ability to exercise their right to vote. Why is voting so important to you?
Damon: Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first is that every four years, there’s one thing that we collectively as a society do, and that is: we all cast a ballot for President of the United States. Certainly voting is not just about the President of the United States, but there’s something wonderful about people coming together, even if they agree or disagree and collectively engaging in a shared experience. Voting is obviously the bedrock of democracy and the thing that makes our government legitimate, which is all very important, but it’s also a community thing. It’s being together with people across lines of difference. And if I think I’ve learned anything in my now almost 44 years on this planet, it’s that nothing gets done unless it gets done across differences. That’s the challenge that we as humans have been working on for millennia and the biggest challenge I think, of our entire species.
Kristine: What do you say to people who are disillusioned with voting?
Damon: I understand, right? How does my one vote make a difference? I get that. I’m not immune to thoughts of that myself. AND, it’s the ticket to ride. If you want to be engaged in your community, voting is not the end or the culmination of that. But it is the beginning. And if you’re not interested in voting and participating in our democracy, imperfect as it may be, I don’t really have an interest in trying to work with you on all the other things, because it shows to me that you’re not a serious person about a democracy. It shows to me that you’re more talk and less action. Voting is a very concrete, fundamental action that we can all take to be part of something larger than ourselves.
Kristine: I feel like there’s a lot of power in democratically elected leadership. There are so few places where we collectively get to come together and say, these are the people who are going to lead us. That’s not how leaders are chosen in most areas of our lives. Do you agree with that? What would you add?
Damon: It also fosters a relationship. Voting is not simply telling our government, this is who needs to make decisions. Voting is a reciprocal conversation. Certainly you have a level of credibility and legitimacy if you’re democratically elected to any post, but it also gives the folks who voted for you an opportunity to stand with you. Or if you are not living up to your ideals, they can reject you. And I think that’s important. That’s an important distinction. I think that there’s a really important notion that voting is a two way street. It’s a dialogue between the elected and those who elect. And there are very few places where we have that dialogue in our systems of leadership. If you ask me why I care so much about voting, it’s not because the act of going to the polling place and casting your ballot is the be-all-end-all. Voting is important because it symbolizes what we’re trying to do here, which is to live in shared space and work together for the common good. That’s why I love voting so much and have dedicated so much of my time to making sure everybody can vote. It confers legitimacy on the shared enterprise that we’re engaged in.
Kristine: What are the Get Out The Vote organizations or efforts here in the Triangle that most inspire you?
Damon: I’ve been very inspired with Common Cause’s HBCU outreach project. Common Cause is your typical good government, election reform organization. About, I want to say 10 years ago now, they took an intentional step to work with Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Not simply to just get out the vote on election day, but to train young people in the ways in which democracy works. To help them learn about their agency. In the process of full disclosure, the A.J. Fletcher Foundation grants money to Common Cause, and I’m proud to be playing a role in that and also very, very happy with the work they do, because it’s not just about showing up on a random Tuesday in November. It’s about learning how to interact with your appointed and elected officials and learning how to make change happen all year. Not just during election season.
“I mean this system, the sort of rules that govern our behavior, they’re not set in stone. They’re made up and they’re made up because we all make them up. And to me, that’s why voting is so important whether or not my candidate wins or loses. I played a part. And that means that I’m invested in this thing. Not to speak investment talk, but not every investment is perfect and not every investment has, you know, 20x returns. But when you’re invested in something, you care about it and you work on it and you make it better.”
Kristine: When I was prepping for this interview, I was thinking about John Lewis and about his passing and his legacy. He said “Freedom is not a state. It is an act.” That reminded me of you. I’m wondering, how do you think about John and his words and legacy within the frame of voting, or within the frame of elections?
Damon: Our election administration apparatus is not perfect. It disproportionately makes it harder on some versus others to vote. The history of election administration in this state and in almost every state is one of exclusion, not inclusion. So I begin by acknowledging that we are very far from a perfect way in which we can garner the will of the people. John Lewis, in pursuit of improving that process, almost died. Took a Billy club to the head. On Election day, there will be voters who encounter long lines, who encounter challenges with the process. I am sympathetic to that and we need to do better AND if there were ever an example of how much this thing is important, we have to remember the people like John Lewis, who were willing to literally take a stick to the head so that we can vote. It might be one of those days where we’re going to have to sit in line for an hour. We’re trying to conduct an election in the midst of a pandemic, but being there and showing up and watching that ballot go into the tabulator… we owe it to all the people before us who worked so much harder than us, to make this thing happen, to get to the polls and cast our votes.
Kristine: Beautiful. When I voted last week, and watched my ballot go into the machine, it was one of the only moments this year where I have felt a small bit of agency over the future. And that was so worth the wait.
Damon: So this is kind of a tangentially related concept, but you know, there’s all this evidence in the education space about the disparate outcomes in education versus situations where the parents and families have agency over the choice of their school. I don’t want to get into the whole charter school versus public school versus private school debate. I’m a huge supporter of public education, but there’s something about that agency where you’re willing to fight harder for things in which you’re a part of that you are a part of by choice. And that to me is why voting is so important, right? I mean this system, the sort of rules that govern our behavior, they’re not set in stone. They’re made up and they’re made up because we all make them up. And to me, that’s why voting is so important whether or not my candidate wins or loses. I played a part. And that means that I’m invested in this thing. Not to speak investment talk, but not every investment is perfect and not every investment has, you know, 20x returns. But when you’re invested in something, you care about it and you work on it and you make it better.
Kristine: What do you think are some of the key victories of this year that support voters in this election cycle — in their capacity to vote?
Damon: First let’s start from the fact that this is an unusual year because we’re conducting the election in the midst of the largest public health crisis most of us have ever seen. So it’s not an easy process. When you’re an election administrator, you’re all about making sure that the system is predictable, replicable and process-oriented, and we’ve had to change so many of the normal process pieces in order to make sure that we can all safely vote in the midst of a pandemic. First and foremost, we’ve tried to make voting by mail as seamless and as easy as possible. We have seen historic numbers of North Carolinians choose that option. We made sure that there was enough space and time during early voting so that we could spread out and socially distance. We’re providing every voter with a mask, we’re providing all of our election workers with all the appropriate PPE, we have extra staff on hand to make sure it all works out. Most of the work that we’ve done this year to make it easier is a direct response to the pandemic.
There’s a lot of work to be done to improve election administration, and that work begins in the General Assembly in North Carolina. The lawmakers need to come back and start talking about ways in which we can garner as much voter intent as possible. I think that it’s a bedrock principle in American society. One that I hope remains for long after this election, that we all should be able to vote easily because that’s what gives our government legitimacy. Collectively, not just people who work in the Board of Elections and not just people who make laws at the General Assembly, but all people, start thinking about how we can better garner that voter directive.
I’m talking about things like, you know, we’ve got the technology to automatically register every eligible voter in the state. We should all have automatic voter registration. I like what we’ve done over the last couple of decades when it comes to moving away from the notion of an Election day and more to an election period. Maybe it’s my old days as a bartender, but I like calling Election Day last call for voting. Last call for voting is November 3rd and 7:30 PM is when the polls close.
All that’s to say, it’s not perfect. We’ve burdened some voters over others on how accessible the franchise is. And we got a lot of work to do. What we’ve done this year is, given some of the extraordinary circumstances around the pandemic, we’ve moved the ball forward. There’s still a long way to go.
Kristine: Last question. Within your role as the North Carolina State Board of Elections Chair, what is a leadership lesson that you have learned in this last year?
Damon: There’s a whole history over who gets to quote “control” the Board of Elections. The way the laws work in North Carolina, the political parties have a big say in who gets nominated to be on the Board of Elections. But you know there are a third of the voters in this state who don’t affiliate with either political party. As soon as any Board of Elections member takes on that role, we cease to be partisan actors and need to be actors for the good of the whole. The first lesson I’ve learned is that relationships matter. Working with people over time and developing that trust is perhaps the most important thing we do. Many years ago, I was involved in some reforms to curb the excesses around lobbying and gifts to legislators. That was all very important work. An unintended consequence of that was that by shutting down some of those parties and fundraisers, we didn’t open up another arena in which legislators could get to know each other in an informal setting. So you turn a collegial body into a body that only knows each other where when they’re in the fight, in the arena. That created a higher degree of tension and distrust. Relationships matter. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything somebody says, and it doesn’t even mean you have to like somebody personally, but you have to learn how to work with people. And that’s perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned this last year on the Board.
Kristine: Anything else you think people should know?
Damon: Polls open at 6:30am and they close at 7:30 PM. Any voter in line at their assigned polling place at 7:30 p.m. will be able to vote. Do not go anywhere until you vote. Be courteous to your fellow voters, be mindful of how hard the staff is working and enjoy participating in democracy.
