Carah Ong Whaley

Carah Ong Whaley, PhD is the Executive Director of Better Choices for Democracy. Previously, Carah served as Vice President of Election Protection at Issue One, where she worked with IO’s Faces of Democracy, National Council on Election Integrity, and on the 2024 Trusted Elections Communications Hub bringing together over 85 national state and local nonpartisan organizations to advance election integrity and increase confidence in elections. Carah also worked at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. She serves as a member of APSA’s Civic Education Committee and was co-chair of the American Political Science Association’s Civic Engagement section from 2022-2025. 

Carah’s work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Teen Vogue, and NPR, among others. She is co-author and editor of The Red Ripple: The 2022 Midterm Elections and What They Mean For 2024 (Rowman & Littlefield 2022); Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in Era of Divisive Politics (Palgrave MacMillan 2024); Leaning Into Politics: Higher Education’s Role in the Building the Democracy We Need(Information Age Press 2024); American Government: Roots and Reform (chapters on Political Parties, Campaigns, Elections and Voting, and The Media; Pearson 2013-2024); “Jan. 6 Hearings Show a Democracy in Crisis. Civic Education Can Help;” “We the People, We the Process: Engaging Young People in Election Administration;” “Counting on Higher Education: Teaching and Assessing Knowledge and Participation in the 2020 Census;” among other publications. 

Carah focuses on developing innovative pedagogy and experiential learning to develop civic knowledge, skills and agency of young people. She was previously Associate Director of the James Madison Center for Civic Engagement at James Madison University. Under campus-wide voter education and engagement initiatives facilitated by Carah, over 75% of the student body turned out to vote in the 2020 election. Carah worked for non-governmental organizations on nuclear weapons and security issues from 1999-2012. She was appointed by the Governor of Virginia to the Complete Count Commission for the 2020 Census.