For nearly three decades I have documented and interviewed people as they participate in the foundations of our democracy: voting and helping others to vote. Registering voters, knocking on doors, canvassing voters, attending rallies, administering elections, working the polls, watching the polls, counting ballots, and standing in line and voting — people exercising their belief that each and every voice matters. As a photojournalist and as an active voter, they inspire me.
I was in the first wave of 18-year-olds eligible to vote. My college made it easy with a polling station set up in the student union. I didn’t give much thought to the idea that my experience as a voter might differ from that of people in other parts of the country. That is, until I went to Selma to photograph the efforts of a group who came down to register voters, two decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
I returned to the South, this time to Mississippi, twice in subsequent decades. The first time for a documentary that focused on the history of people struggling and dying for the right to vote. The second time was for the closely contested 2018 Senate runoffs. I wanted to see whether voter participation in the Magnolia State had changed. And it had.
I became inspired to learn more. That trip launched my nonpartisan photojournalism project, Documenting Democracy, which tells the stories of those who work to advance, protect, and participate in the vote. Throughout 2020, much of it during the height of the COVID pandemic, I traveled more than 24,000 miles across two dozen states as well as the District of Columbia. I photographed that election cycle from the start of the Iowa caucus through the Georgia runoffs right up to Inauguration Day. I consciously focused on voters and election workers in both swing and fly-over states and in states where battles for representation and voting rights have been — and continue to be — fought.
The photographs that follow are selected from my most recent travels, which have continued through the 2022 midterms. I returned to several of the states I had photographed earlier to learn how voting protocols now differed due to legislative or public health changes. I wanted to hear how views on voting and democracy may have been impacted by the barrage of news stories focused on skepticism about the integrity of our elections.
My photographs attempt to capture the actions of individuals who believe in the power of the vote and the importance of participating in ways large and small to strengthen our democracy.
Sue Dorfman is an independent documentary and human rights photojournalist, media strategist, and educator. She produced the documentary short Dying to Vote, and her photos have appeared in outlets such as ABC News, CNN, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. She also photographs for ZUMA Press. Dorfman has been traveling across the country for nearly three decades — most recently in an RV nicknamed Doc-cy, short for her current photography project titled “Documenting Democracy.”
