As we turn the final pages on a tumultuous 2021, all this week The Fulcrum will share a year-end series of guest commentaries from a distinguished group of columnists on the current state of electoral reform and what we may expect in the upcoming year.
Penniman is the founder and CEO of Issue One, a crosspartisan political reform organization, and author of “Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It.”
Our democracy is under attack. The campaign to sow doubt in our elections and create distrust in our institutions is extremely motivated, and bad actors are gaining ground across the country.
This year alone, we saw 19 states enact new laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote, and several states placed election administration under greater partisan control. Barring federal action, we will see even more states in 2022 take steps to undermine the will of the people and set the stage for a constitutional crisis the likes of which we have never seen in our history.
That’s why Congress must act. Many common sense proposals — which benefit from a long history of bipartisanship and are supported by overwhelming majorities of Americans — have already been introduced. But Republicans in Congress have repeatedly filibustered these bills, going so far as to block debate on the very reforms needed to fix our broken political system.
We cannot allow this inaction to continue into next year. If we want to save our democracy, we must act now. As the leading crosspartisan political reform group in Washington, D.C., here’s what Issue One is focused on achieving in 2022.
Protect election officials and frontline poll workers
Our election officials and frontline poll workers have been facing death threats on a daily basis since the 2020 presidential election. These have been fueled by baseless claims of fraud despite former President Donald Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security, and attorney general, declaring the 2020 election safe and secure.
While the Department of Justice launched a task force earlier this year to investigate threats against election workers, there have been few arrests or criminal convictions, and many secretaries of state are frustrated that the task force hasn’t been deployed aggressively enough.
Our election officials are the embodiment of democracy in action — helping members of their communities register to vote, find their polling locations, cast their ballots and ensure that every vote is counted accurately. Many now live in fear, and states are bracing for mass retirements in the wake of these threats, which leaves positions open to extremists. As former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, a leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement, said last month, “We’re taking over all the elections.”
In addition to the DOJ stepping up its game, members of Congress should seek to pass bipartisan legislation protecting election officials from intimidation and threats of violence.
Prevent election administration from partisan takeover
We’ve seen a growing number of states move to strip local election officials of their power and place election oversight into the hands of partisan politicians. It’s difficult to interpret these laws as anything but election sabotage — an attempt to do what failed in 2020 by making it legal for politicians to toss out legitimate votes if they don’t like the outcome.
Principled Republicans, Democrats and independents must stand against this trend before it takes over not just purple states and red states but also blue states.
Make it easier for voters to securely cast their ballots
Even in the midst of a global pandemic, mail-in ballots, early voting and additional measures helped ensure that Americans were able to safely exercise their sacred freedom to vote.
What was the response in some states to this tremendous success? Making it harder to vote.
The massive disinformation campaign that Trump and many of his supporters continue to spread about the 2020 campaign has empowered lawmakers to roll back voting modalities they once championed — like mail-in voting.
And for what gain? In November’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, where steps have been taken in recent years to make voting more accessible, we saw how Republicans appear to have benefitted from some of the very proposals that have now stalled in Congress — including early voting, no-excuse absentee voting and automatic voter registration.
Passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would at least empower the Department of Justice to take a closer look under the hoods of some of these laws and make sure they don’t discriminate against certain groups of voters. Congress has previously reauthorized the VRA on five separate occasions by overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats since its original passage in 1965, and they should once again affirm that bipartisanship.
End hyper-partisan redistricting
We’ve all seen the classic examples of gerrymandering — zigzagging districts engineered down to partisan perfection. It’s a tried and true weapon that both political parties have mastered, long ago coming to the realization that the best way to win elections and hold onto power is to prevent races from becoming competitive in the first place.
It’s had a profound effect on the makeup of Congress: of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, only 10 percent are considered up for grabs in next year’s midterm elections. Which means that 90 percent of House members need to worry mainly about getting through their primaries, either by raising so much money they prophylactically scare off competitors or by being so extreme that they cultivate the affinity of base voters.
When we talk about the dysfunctionality on Capitol Hill, we have to realize that it’s in large part the result of structural problems, and that many of those problems are fixable. Voters should pick their politicians, not the other way around. We must fix this undemocratic problem.
Update the Electoral Count Act
Our ability to elect a president and vice president fairly and peacefully every four years is
a hallmark of our democratic system. For over a century, the Electoral Count Act has governed this process and Congress’ role. But the 19th century law is outdated and rife with arcane language and ambiguities, opening the door to misinterpretations and exploitation.
It’s time for Congress to modernize this law, clarify the role of the vice president, rein in the objection process and prevent one party from attempting to overturn the will of the people.
We cannot leave this to chance. Both parties should work together to get this done and restore Americans’ trust in our democratic process.
Curb the spread of disinformation
Disinformation permeates every corner of our society. It fueled an attack on our nation’s Capitol and continues to run rampant across all forms of media, perpetuating lies about the election and other falsehoods.
Until we confront the harm disinformation is causing, it will be extremely difficult to accomplish any of the important reforms outlined above. We cannot hand the future of our country over to algorithms that distort the truth and allow lies to spread faster than real journalism.
Congress cannot let these platforms off the hook. Members from both parties have already expressed interest in bipartisan solutions following disturbing reports about the dangers facing young people. It is crucial that legislation also addresses the destructive power of disinformation.
Our broken political system — fueled by big money — has created an environment in which the vast majority of ordinary citizens today no longer have a seat at the table. 2022 must be the year we change course and fix this. The American people must have confidence in our democracy.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.