Sheila McCants was director of the federal TRIO program for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds at a Tampa, Florida, community college in late 2023 when she experienced a light-bulb moment on voter education.
She was speaking with an 18-year-old college student her staff had registered to vote. He later told her assistant that he probably would not actually cast a ballot. McCants wanted to know why.
“He told me that we registered him to vote but he didn’t know how to vote,” said McCants. “I knew then that we can’t abandon future voters after we register them.”
Then and now, McCants is the chairperson of the connections and social action committee for the Gamma Theta Omega alumnae chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. in Tampa. She is responsible for get-out-the-vote programming for the chapter’s 400 Black members and the wider Black community in Tampa.
To realize her “personal dream,” as she called her goal to educate and rally young voters to the polls, McCants turned to Genesis Robinson, executive director of the Equal Ground Education Fund.
The AKA chapter already relied on the statewide voting rights group’s monthly legislative briefing call between Robinson and organizations such as the local League of Women Voters and NAACP, faith leaders, congressional members, gun violence prevention activists and others. The sorority also hosts Robinson and his team for an annual, in-person briefing where the Equal Ground staff reviews all signed and proposed legislation and explains how it affects the Tampa community.
“He talks about the legislative activity the way I like,” McCants said. “He presents the pros and cons of legislation, why it’s important that we support or oppose it and tells us how it impacts our community. Genesis and his team are absolutely phenomenal.”
In recognition of the innovative voter education and voter engagement that Robinson’s group has developed, the Southern Poverty Law Center awarded a two-year, $200,000 Vote Your Voice Field Strengthening grant to Equal Ground in 2023.
The SPLC established the Vote Your Voice program in 2020 and is making $100 million in grants available to help grassroots organizations in the Deep South build capacity and extend their voter outreach and civic engagement efforts over the next decade.
“This isn’t just voter registration. It’s community activation,” said Robin Brulé, Vote Your Voice program officer for the SPLC. “Our Field Strengthening grants are a strategic platform for building long-term civic infrastructure in the South with organizations such as Equal Ground, which receive multiyear investments.”
‘Informed, empowered and prepared’
Equal Ground’s emphasis on education was born in response to the wave of voter suppression laws that have been passed in Florida since 2020. These laws restrict access to the ballot, confuse voters and disproportionately impact Black communities and other historically underrepresented groups.
“The rules around voting, elections and civic participation are constantly shifting, and our goal is to equip residents with the tools and knowledge to push back, stay engaged and protect their right to vote,” Robinson said. “Our job is to make sure people remain informed, empowered and prepared.”
The annual legislative debriefing tour is a major cornerstone of the group’s educational mission and is part of a broad, coordinated, statewide effort to ensure communities across Florida understand what took place during the legislative session and how it affects them.
The Vote Your Voice grant allows us to continually be able to speak with voters year-round and not educate them at the last minute.”
Angie Nixon, Florida for All Executive Director
Another major effort aims to dispel confusing voting and election misinformation and disinformation surrounding laws, state policies and candidates’ promises. Candidates and their supporters often spread both through dishonest political campaigns, but the electorate’s confusion is also the result of an overwhelming barrage of television and streaming media coverage of multiple versions of proposed legislation.
“People hear about dangerous policies that may not make it into the final bill,” Robinson said. “Sometimes a judge may invalidate part of a bill, but voters don’t know. People are left to wonder what’s in the bill, and that doesn’t include the basic questions people have about how a bill or a policy may affect them or what a politician’s position on an issue is. If a politician promised X, Y and Z without being in the community to explain their actions, that erodes trust in the institutions that are meant to serve the people.”
Robinson’s approach to turning civics-curious Floridians into consistent voters is based on using nontraditional tactics, in his belief that advocacy work is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach. While the organization conducts more traditional get-out-the-vote efforts like phone banking and email distribution, Robinson adheres to the concept of creating an “ecosystem of advocacy.”
“One organization may be responsible for voter preparedness,” Robinson said. “Another may focus on education to help people make more informed decisions. We have to help voters get to a place where they know that a politician can’t sell you a wooden nickel. As my grandmother used to say, ‘If you knew better you would do better.’”
Equal Ground’s partnership with the Northwest Florida Panhandle Coalition for Civic Engagement demonstrates its reciprocal benefit to small organizations. The coalition focuses on voting rights, registration, civic engagement and getting out the vote in Escambia, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties. Launched in 2021, the 332-member coalition has collaborated with Equal Ground since 2022. Coalition co-founder Derrick Scott’s staff and community members participate in Robinson’s monthly legislative “Black political empowerment calls.”
Scott takes about 65 attendees to Equal Ground’s “Day at the Capitol” each winter. In turn, Robinson and staff rotate the location of the legislative session debriefing among the organization’s three Northwest Panhandle counties, describing the impacts of legislation to coalition members and communities.
“A lot of folks don’t see how what happens in D.C. or Tallahassee affects them,” Scott said. “We are highly indebted to Equal Ground. For example, a lot of people think that Medicaid legislation only has impact on people who don’t work. They say that Medicaid recipients should just get a job. Equal Ground explains to them, ‘You want to have Medicaid? Even if you have a job, you may have life-altering health problems, and you won’t have coverage if Medicaid is cut.’ So, what’s the next step? The next step is to vote these people out of office.”
‘Building pathways for civic engagement’
Equal Ground and another Florida voting rights group, Florida for All, are models of what it takes today to engage and rally people to vote and to keep voters abreast of upcoming elections and up-to-date voting requirements. This is critical in a state that has imposed a slew of repressive voting laws since 2021. Florida for All Executive Director Angie Nixon accepted a $500,000 Vote Your Voice grant in 2023 to further her organization’s work.
The voting rights battlefield in Florida is a crowded one, with many of the groups and players interacting on a regular basis. Nixon and Florida for All, for example, have partnered with Robinson and his team in the past. McCants and Robinson have paired up to plan workshops to instruct newly registered voters on how to cast their ballot using straw polling and actual voting machines.
“Equal Ground and Florida for All are not just reacting to policies; they’re proactively building pathways for civic engagement and leadership,” Brulé said. “Their work exemplifies innovation through deep community listening. They tap into often overlooked voices and translate that engagement into tangible electoral power, engaging and focusing on under-resourced communities.”
Florida for All also devotes significant resources to dispelling disinformation regarding election laws and legislative bills — “stuff from the mouths of the state’s elected officials,” as Nixon defines it.
These days, Nixon — who is also a part-time state legislator representing Duval County — includes falsehoods politicians spread about conditions at a Florida Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center popularly known as “Alligator Alcatraz” in her presentation. The facility has become a controversial part of the Trump administration’s war on immigration, which has ensnared many people regardless of their immigration status or criminal record.
“Those people aren’t prisoners,” Nixon said. “They are being illegally detained.”
The Florida for All group was informally founded in 2014 with the goal of protecting and defending democracy through long-term changes in racial and gender policy. It serves underrepresented communities, and like Robinson, Nixon draws from a partnership organizing model — in this case, “theory of change” tables that the organization has built in 13 counties throughout the state.
“We pull in progressive organizations to align around a long-term agenda to bring change,” Nixon explained.
Main partners include other Vote Your Voice grantees in the state like Florida Rising, Faith in Florida and Engage Miami, but Florida for All also partners with nearly 90 varied organizations in cities and smaller rural counties depending on its specific goal, whether it be gathering signatories for a petition, holding proposed legislation listening sessions or conducting traditional phone banking, text messaging and door knocking to get out the vote. For its election sabotage prevention initiative, it partnered with Equal Ground, which is a member of its statewide Black Alignment Group table.
During election cycles, Nixon serves as a scout and intelligence gatherer, dispatching Equal Ground crisis response mobilization teams to monitor intimidation at polling stations and challenge lies conservative politicians spread about unlawful behavior at the polls so that voters know their rights under the law.
“We keep this up, so we don’t have to start from scratch the next year,” Nixon said.
Nixon’s communications department also trains leaders of other organizations around the state to effectively challenge disinformation. It also provides toolkits with social media and text messaging templates and one-page graphic formats that organizations can tailor to reflect their own voices.
Florida for All provides similar toolkits to its Latinx table member groups based on country of origin, and hosts joint community events with other civic organizations at local bookstores, block parties and festivals like Miami’s weeklong Carnival celebration in October.
“The Vote Your Voice grant allows us to continually be able to speak with voters year-round and not educate them at the last minute,” Nixon said. “So, folks can trust us and get to work, be involved.”
Photo at top: From left: Florida State Rep. Fentrice Driskell; Tangela D. DuPree, president of the Gamma Theta Omega alumnae chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha; and Genesis Robinson, executive director of the Equal Ground Education Fund, during the Equal Ground on the Ground tour’s stop in Tampa on June 7, 2025. In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center awarded a two-year, $200,000 Vote Your Voice Field Strengthening grant to Equal Ground. (Credit: Sheila McCants)