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Democracy Madness: Final Four set in our Voting bracket

Democracy and basketball
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The favorites took care of business in the second round of the Voting region of our Democracy Madness bracket. Now you get to decide who heads to the "regional" finals.

Will it be the No. 1 seed, a new Voting Rights Act, which blew away the idea of expanded early voting? Or maybe No. 4, universal automatic voter registration, will keep on rolling after shutting down the call for expanded felons' voting rights.

The No 3 seed, voting at home, is the darling of the moment and ended the Cinderella run for No. 11 STAR Voting. But now it faces the No. 2 seed, ranked-choice voting, which had the most dominating win of the round — absolutely crushing another surprise performer, the No. 10 seed, a ban on straight-ticket voting.

The 2-vs-3 game may be the biggest matchup of the tournament, with RCV and vote-at-home trying to keep their momentum going. RCV has had the longer public relations campaign, but the coronavirus has made voting at home (absentee ballots sent to everyone) the story of the season. Keep your eye on that one.


Remember: You can click the matchups, then each label, for more about the surviving proposals. But there are just two days for this round — so don't forget to press the Vote Now button and make all four choices.

After this quarter of the draw gets done, look for future brackets contesting ideas for reforming campaign finance, elections, civic life and Congress. Ultimately, we're looking for our readers to tell us what they view as the most transformative idea for reforming democracy out of 64 leading proposals.




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How the Voting Rights Act Reshaped Texas’ Electoral Maps

President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., Clarence Mitchell Jr., Patricia Roberts Harris, and other guests at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.

Yoichi Okamoto - Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum

How the Voting Rights Act Reshaped Texas’ Electoral Maps

In 2002, U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, a Republican, nearly lost his South Texas seat to Democrat Henry Cuellar. So when the GOP used its newfound majority in the state Legislature to redraw the voting maps the next year, they sawed through Cuellar’s hometown of Laredo and scattered Latino voters, who tended to vote Democratic, into other districts.

Latino advocacy groups sued under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the cornerstone provision of the law that prevents government bodies from diluting the voting power of specific groups. The Supreme Court found Texas lawmakers had taken away Latino voting power “because they were about to exercise it.”

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Audience members listen as U.S. President Donald Trump.

Audience members listen as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Coosa Steel Corporation on February 19, 2026 in Rome, Georgia.

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Heil Trump!

Stop. I am not implying that Trump is the equivalent of Hitler. As I have said in two previous posts suggesting an analogy between Hitler and Trump, while Trump has an evil streak, he is not even close to being as evil as Hitler (see "The Hitler-Trump Analogy" and "Another Hitler-Trump Analogy"). However, Trump has characteristics, and his supporters have characteristics, in common with Hitler and his followers.

Trump is a megalomaniac; his self-aggrandizement knows no bounds. See my article, "Trump - Poster Child of a Megalomaniac." Trump clearly thinks of himself as a man who can do no wrong, the brightest person in the world, a king, a master of the universe. There are no rules that apply to him. As he said in a New York Times interview, "My own morality, my own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me."

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Oregon Pioneered Vote-by-Mail. Its Ballot Access Laws Are Still in the Covered Wagon Era.
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Oregon Pioneered Vote-by-Mail. Its Ballot Access Laws Are Still in the Covered Wagon Era.

Oregon's primary election was on May 19. Neither of the two major-party candidates in Oregon's 6th Congressional District faced a primary opponent. They'll automatically advance to November's general election ballot, without a single voter really needing to weigh in, without collecting a single petition signature, and without knocking on a single door. The Democratic incumbent represents a party that accounts for 29.75 percent of registered voters in this district. The Republican nominee represents a party with 24.78 percent of the vote. Together, the two parties represent a minority of OR-6's electorate, and both of their candidates are already on the November ballot.

I represent the largest voting bloc in this district. Nearly 40 percent of OR-6's registered voters are unaffiliated, more than either party. These voters have never had a candidate who answers only to them—not to party bosses, party lines, or special interests. I am trying to be that candidate. And I am still on the porch, clipboard in hand, collecting the 5,500 hand-signed paper petitions I will need just to guarantee that my name appears beside theirs in November.

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