Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

State by state, electoral reform is happening — but not fast enough

American flag
blackred/Getty Images

Fisher is deputy director of Unite America, which works to enact and helps finance political reform efforts and candidates "who put people over party." (It is a donor to The Fulcrum.)


Our Unite America Institute has just graded each state on the status of four key electoral reforms: voting at home, independent redistricting commissions, ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan or open primaries. This was our second annual report, and it finds incremental improvements since last summer, as eight states notched higher marks.

Yet nine states still have failing grades. — and another 21 have earned a D. (California leads the country with an A-.)

Only a few states have improved their standing from a year ago.

Within the last year, two states (Virginia and Nevada) established permanent absentee voting lists, which allow voters to voluntarily opt in to a system that automatically mails them a ballot for all future elections. Virginia's reform was complemented by a switch to no-excuse absentee voting and an extension of the deadline to mail ballots. Assembly Bill 345 in Nevada also included provisions expanding poll location options, and allowing for online and same-day registration.

Five states (Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada, and Wyoming) earned points, because the Democratic Party in those states used ranked-choice voting for their presidential primaries. By all accounts, the process was a success that allowed voters to share their full preferences and the states also showed an increase in voter participation. Utah picked up a point, as well, with both parties using ranked-choice voting for their state and federal nominating caucuses.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Four cities (Palm Desert, Calif., Easthampton, Mass., Eastpoint, Mich., and New York) also passed measures to adopt ranked-choice voting. In New York alone, where 74 percent of voters said the system should be used for city council and mayoral races, the reform will eventually triple the number of voters using RCV nationwide, and will save the city more than $10 million each election cycle.


graphDemocracy reform progress over the past decade.Unite America

If the last year saw electoral reform policies inch forward, the next year offers an opportunity to leap ahead.

Ongoing ballot measure campaigns in three states would end the practice of partisan gerrymandering by turning over the map drawing process to an ethics board in North Dakota, to a redistricting commission in Virginia and to an independent commission in Arkansas.

Voters in Alaska, Arkansas, and North Dakota will have the chance to approve final-four voting — a powerful combination of nonpartisan primaries with ranked-choice voting for the top four finishers in the fall — for state and federal elections. RCV is also looking to be on the ballot in Massachusetts, where more than 2,000 volunteers recently successfully completed the first online petition gathering drive to qualify for a ballot in the country's history. Florida could improve its standing, too, where voters will be asked to approve a top-two nonpartisan primary system.

While transitioning to 100 percent vote-at-home systems ahead of this November's elections is an unattainable goal for most states, the current coronavirus crisis has elevated the importance of implementing more permanent policy over the long-term, like Utah and Colorado have done. The 2021 legislative session will likely bring a flurry of legislation to empower all voters to cast more secure, informed and cost-efficient ballots. States like Arizona (where 79 percent of 2018 votes were cast by mail), Montana (72 percent) and New Mexico (63 percent) are leading candidates for making the switch.

Measuring the progress of the movement to put voters first is an important practice, as our community must demonstrate how quickly we are advancing policies that put voters first.

Progress on many important issues — from women's suffrage to gay marriage — has often started slowly, and then happened all at once. This year promises to serve as a potential inflection point that can begin to rapidly accelerate the progress being made. With some new wins on the board, we could be on the precipice of repeating a scale of meaningful change to our democracy not seen since the progressive era.

Read More

Podcast: How do police feel about gun control?

Podcast: How do police feel about gun control?

Jesus "Eddie" Campa, former Chief Deputy of the El Paso County Sheriff's Department and former Chief of Police for Marshall Texas, discusses the recent school shooting in Uvalde and how loose restrictions on gun ownership complicate the lives of law enforcement on this episode of YDHTY.

Listen now

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

There's something natural and organic about perceiving that the people in power are out to advance their own interests. It's in part because it’s often true. Governments actually do keep secrets from the public. Politicians engage in scandals. There often is corruption at high levels. So, we don't want citizens in a democracy to be too trusting of their politicians. It's healthy to be skeptical of the state and its real abuses and tendencies towards secrecy. The danger is when this distrust gets redirected, not toward the state, but targets innocent people who are not actually responsible for people's problems.

On this episode of "Democracy Paradox" Scott Radnitz explains why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies.

Your Take:  The Price of Freedom

Your Take: The Price of Freedom

Our question about the price of freedom received a light response. We asked:

What price have you, your friends or your family paid for the freedom we enjoy? And what price would you willingly pay?

It was a question born out of the horror of images from Ukraine. We hope that the news about the Jan. 6 commission and Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination was so riveting that this question was overlooked. We considered another possibility that the images were so traumatic, that our readers didn’t want to consider the question for themselves. We saw the price Ukrainians paid.

One response came from a veteran who noted that being willing to pay the ultimate price for one’s country and surviving was a gift that was repaid over and over throughout his life. “I know exactly what it is like to accept that you are a dead man,” he said. What most closely mirrored my own experience was a respondent who noted her lack of payment in blood, sweat or tears, yet chose to volunteer in helping others exercise their freedom.

Personally, my price includes service to our nation, too. The price I paid was the loss of my former life, which included a husband, a home and a seemingly secure job to enter the political fray with a message of partisan healing and hope for the future. This work isn’t risking my life, but it’s the price I’ve paid.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Given the earnest question we asked, and the meager responses, I am also left wondering if we think at all about the price of freedom? Or have we all become so entitled to our freedom that we fail to defend freedom for others? Or was the question poorly timed?

I read another respondent’s words as an indicator of his pacifism. And another veteran who simply stated his years of service. And that was it. Four responses to a question that lives in my heart every day. We look forward to hearing Your Take on other topics. Feel free to share questions to which you’d like to respond.

Keep ReadingShow less
No, autocracies don't make economies great

libre de droit/Getty Images

No, autocracies don't make economies great

Tom G. Palmer has been involved in the advance of democratic free-market policies and reforms around the globe for more than three decades. He is executive vice president for international programs at Atlas Network and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

One argument frequently advanced for abandoning the messy business of democratic deliberation is that all those checks and balances, hearings and debates, judicial review and individual rights get in the way of development. What’s needed is action, not more empty debate or selfish individualism!

In the words of European autocrat Viktor Orbán, “No policy-specific debates are needed now, the alternatives in front of us are obvious…[W]e need to understand that for rebuilding the economy it is not theories that are needed but rather thirty robust lads who start working to implement what we all know needs to be done.” See! Just thirty robust lads and one far-sighted overseer and you’re on the way to a great economy!

Keep ReadingShow less