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Democracy 21

Democracy 21 and the Democracy 21 Education Fund work to strengthen the integrity and fairness of our democracy and to increase the role of citizens in our political process. The organization brings unique policy and litigation experience and expertise to campaign finance and democracy issues, and to related government integrity, transparency and accountability issues. Since we began in 1997, the organization has played a leading national role in the efforts to address the nation's campaign finance problems through public education, litigation, and other efforts. D21 President Fred Wertheimer has played a key role in every major campaign finance reform and ethics battle in Congress since the post-Watergate reforms in the 1970s and has participated as a lawyer in every major Supreme Court campaign finance case during this period. Democracy 21 manages a coalition of reform groups that meet regularly to develop approaches and strategies for promoting democracy reforms.


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A crowd of protestors standing on a sidewalk, many holding protest signs.

Suffragists protest President Woodrow Wilson in Chicago in October 1916, four years before ratification of the 19th Amendment. The history of voting rights has never been a clean march forward; even rights later treated as inevitable were won through pressure, backlash and years of state-by-state organizing.

Universal History Archive

What 250 Years of Voting Rights Battles Tell Us About Today

Happy Fourth of July, on this 250th anniversary of the United States. We’re living through extraordinary times in American democracy, as President Trump presses for greater federal control over elections and redistricting slips loose from its once-a-decade rhythm. As always, Votebeat is focused on an essential part of it: who gets to vote, who makes the rules, and what those votes are worth.

That question has loomed over the nation from the beginning. Voting history is often framed as a steady expansion from white male landowners to everyone else. The truth is messier. States have always experimented with expanding the franchise, retracting it, and expanding it again.

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Woman struggling to pull blue donkey with rope

Should Democrats redefine their mission? How the Declaration of Independence, equality, and America's founding principles offer a vision for Democratic Party reform.

Klaus Vedfelt / Getty Images

Centrist Democrats' New "Promise to America." Ho-Hum.

Centrist Democratic politicians, upset by the wins of Democratic Socialists in the recent primaries, have issued a statement of their convictions. Called "The Promise to America," it sounds good, responding to many of the problems we face. But they are empty promises, even if well-meant.

How can I say that? First, Democrats have been saying similar things for years. Yet despite the rhetoric, the people are hurting. Why? It's not just because of Trump and the Republicans; it's because the government—Democrats as well as Republicans—have lost sight of the meaning and implications of our founding principles. It is to those principles that Democrats must dedicate themselves. See my article, "People are Hurting - The U.S. Must Return to Our Founding Principles."

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 Lego Bricks in child hands

How imagination shapes our future and the American spirit.

Ekaterina79 / Getty Images

The Dreams That Built America—and Will Carry Us Forward

Ah love, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

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