In 2016, Rachael Jeck ’89 promised her two daughters that Donald Trump couldn’t win the White House. His victory, then, came as a shock. But it quickly turned into a call to action for Jeck, out of a concern for what his presidency might mean for women.
After flying to Washington, D.C., for the post-inauguration Women’s March, Jeck, a Los Angeles lawyer, joined the board of FundHer, a PAC focused on getting more women candidates into state legislatures. “For a democracy to be representative, it has to look like our communities,” she says. Women “are the majority of the population, but we’re not the majority in government.”
Four years later, following the 2020 election, FundHer examined its failed races and discovered that some candidates lost by just a handful of votes. “We were shocked by the numbers,” Jeck says. “Many elections were decided by less than a 5% margin.”
By then, with both daughters headed to college, Jeck had left her career in law to pursue this second act. “How could I see the world falling apart and not play some role in trying to make things a little bit better?” she says. With the 2020 results in mind, Jeck spun off a new organization in 2021, to increase the number of women making it to the ballot box in the first place.
RegisterHer is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to registering women and convincing them to vote. This election season, it’s operating in six states — Arizona, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas — with plans to expand as the organization grows.
Funded by individual donations and grants from organizations including the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, Jeck plans to eventually expand RegisterHer to all 50 states. “When we see more women voting, we’re going to see greater numbers of women in state legislatures,” she says.
Jeck’s first awakening about gender equity happened at age 13, when her mother took her to a pro-choice event in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona. “I couldn’t believe women were dying because they couldn’t get health care,” she says.
Princeton’s “in the nation’s service” motto resonated. “It further cemented my belief that if you are in a position to do something to help others, that is an obligation I have.” Senior year found Jeck traveling to Washington, D.C., for a pro-choice march. At Boston University’s School of Law, she researched policies to make RU-486, the first “morning after” pill, available over the counter.
“I’ve been a single-issue voter my whole life,” Jeck says. “For women to be full citizens and have full equal rights, they have to be able to decide for themselves whether and when to become parents.”
After volunteering for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Jeck joined the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Project to elect candidates who support reproductive rights. At FundHer, Jeck discovered that the high-propensity voters usually targeted by get-out-the-vote efforts were oversaturated. “They would say, ‘I’ve been contacted 10 times today. Leave me alone.’”
Meanwhile, low-propensity voters were mostly ignored. “There are millions of women in this country who no one’s ever asked if they want to vote,” Jeck says. “There’s this whole other world out here that needs to be addressed if we’re ever going to achieve gender parity.”
As a nonpartisan organization, RegisterHer doesn’t advocate for specific positions or candidates. Still, this year in particular, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and the continuing discussion about further restrictions, Jeck believes reproductive rights will be at the forefront of many voters’ minds. “Our overarching goal for 2024 is not who sits in the president’s office,” she says, “as much as it is that women understand what’s at stake … and that they turn out and vote in their best interest.”
Kamala Harris’s surprise ascension to presumptive Democratic nominee is turbocharging efforts both at RegisterHer and FundHer, where Jeck remains on the board. “I have been on multiple calls and have heard an energy and excitement that I have not witnessed over the past few years,” Jeck says.
“Many more women, especially young women and women of color will actually turn out to vote now,” she continues. “All but one of our fellows are women of color, and they commented on how excited they are to see a woman of color at the top of the ticket and how much easier it is for them to go out and talk to other young women about why they should vote.”
Jeck keeps her 2016 ballot stub in her wallet as a reminder both of the hopes she had for a Clinton presidency and of the country she wants to help build. When she thinks about how far the U.S. trails other countries on issues like education, health care, and parental leave, “it’s shocking to me,” she says. “I never would have predicted it when I was in college…. I do see women being in office as a way to fix a lot of those problems.”