2026 General Scholars Application (Virtual-Only)

The Democracy Summer project seeks to bring about political change in America by training and deploying the next generation of Democratic organizers and leaders to win elections at every level. This one-of-a-kind Democratic Fellowship—founded in Maryland by Congressman Jamie Raskin but now undertaken across the country—teaches high school and college students state-of-the-art tactics in voter registration and political organizing, the dynamic history of political and social change in our country, and essential lessons for political leadership.

Democracy Summer expanded nationally for the first time in 2021 in an historic partnership with the DCCC and multiple campaigns of Democratic Members. Last cycle, we had more than 1,500 college and high school students participating in nearly every state in the union. Democracy Summer Fellows engage in a full-blown pro-democracy, pro-voting rights and pro-freedom curriculum and an exciting summer of on-the-ground organizing, with voter registration, door knocking, phone banks, rallies and political events.

Our virtual curriculum has featured lectures on the struggle for democracy and voting rights from academic luminaries like Harvard Professor Alex Keyssar, who speaks on his books The Right to Vote: The History of a Contested Right and Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?; expert voting rights lawyers like Marc Elias, who speaks about how to understand and combat rampant voter suppression; elected officials like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the late John Lewis, a stalwart supporter of Democracy Summer until his death; and labor leaders like the Executive Director of the Labor Heritage Foundation, Elise Bryant, who gives our Fellows insight into the major contributions of the labor movement to political, economic and cultural democracy.

In prior years, the program has also featured powerful supplementary teachings throughout the summer on confronting the climate crisis, ending gun violence and the power of the NRA, opposing the assault on reproductive freedom, addressing wealth inequality and regressive tax policy, advancing immigration and refugee policy, taking on the Electoral College and the National Popular Vote campaign, challenging redistricting and gerrymandering, understanding the domestic budget and the military budget, examining U.S. foreign policy and Congressional power to declare war, improving education policy, promoting civil rights and civil liberties, and opposing the continuing spread of voter suppression tactics in GOP-controlled state legislatures. Other popular speakers have included Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. Maxwell Frost, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rev. William J. Barber II, Prof. Laurence Tribe, and many more.