POLICY 2020
POLICY
Unpacking the Issues Shaping the 2020 Election
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n fall 2019, Brookings launched Policy 2020, a new initiative to provide Americans with reliable data on the key policy issues shaping the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The Institution-wide effort was developed to empower voters with fact-based, datadriven, non-partisan information on the policy platforms that affect their lives. Throughout the run-up to Election Day, Policy 2020 served as an antidote to the polarization and partisanship that is readily accepted as the status quo. With resources available in English and Spanish, this initiative sought to encourage informed decision-making for all Americans. At a time when the political discourse, whether on social media, cable news, or in person, is rife with disinformation and misinformation, finding trustworthy sources of information on critical issues can be difficult. Brookings’s underlying credibility as an organization devoted to independent, fact-based research and the highest academic standards meant that voters knew they could rely on what they found on the Policy 2020 microsite and at virtual and in-person events. This was equally true whether the content was a detailed breakdown of an issue in a “Voter Vital” or a thought-provoking “Big Idea” policy proposal.
VOTER VITALS EXPLORE ISSUES IN DEPTH A key pillar of Policy 2020 was “Voter Vitals,” a series of guides written by leading Brookings experts that provided detailed examinations of the facts on the issues dominant in the election. Under the editorial leadership of Senior Fellow David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, and Senior Fellow Elaine Kamarck, founding director of the Center for Effective Public Management, these guides featured accessible explanations of critical policy questions. Voter Vitals
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were among the most popular pieces of content on the Brookings website in 2020. The Voter Vitals were organized under eight broad topics: jobs and the economy, health care and public health, immigration, foreign policy and global development, housing, education, climate, and governance. Many of these topic areas explored different facets of complicated issues. In each, the author laid out the issue at hand and posed questions designed to draw out factual information and counter misleading narratives that had made their way into the policy conversation. Many of the Voter Vitals were illustrated with statistics and charts to help visualize the data and provide important empirical grounding. Each also provided opportunities to learn more through links to related content on the Brookings website. For example, as concerns about the risks of in-person voting during a pandemic rose, Vice President and Director of Governance Studies Darrell West wrote a Voter Vital exploring the questions of “How does vote-bymail work and does it increase election fraud?” Published in June 2020, his Voter Vital opened with “The Vitals,” a brief overview and the key questions surrounding voteby-mail, followed by “A Closer Look,” which provided facts about rules in different states, how it works, the political consequences, evidence on electoral fraud, and
