Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

A presidential assassination attempt offers a time to reflect

Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump attends the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at Milwaukee on July 15.

Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Nye is the president and CEO of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress and a former member of Congress from Virginia.

In the wake of an assassination attempt on an American presidential candidate, we are right to take a moment to reflect on the current trajectory of our politics, as we reject violence as an acceptable path and look for ways to cool the kinds of political rhetoric that might radicalize Americans to the point of normalizing brute force in our politics.

Even though the motivations of the July 13 shooter are yet unclear, it’s worth taking a moment to try to reset ourselves and make an earnest effort to listen to our better angels. However, unless we change the way we reward politicians in our electoral system, it is very likely that the opportunity of this moment to calm our politics will be lost, like many others before it.


We have a fundamental problem in our politics that negates efforts to encourage politicians to take a better road, or the media to play a healthier role. As long as our electoral system incentivizes politicians to engage in incendiary rhetoric and push the bounds of civility, and rewards this behavior with election or re-election, all our best efforts to appeal to logic and good sense are limited to marginal potential effect. As long as media outlets have a business model that rewards focus on dramatic storylines and bombastic political behavior, then that is where their focus will remain. And as long as we leave the responsibility for voter turnout to the campaigns instead of our society as a whole, we will continue to have an incentive for campaigns to engage in manipulative rule-crafting and radical appeals to emotion, because those are the proven ways to determine who shows up at election time.

The silver lining is that we have a pathway to changing the incentive built into the electoral system itself. Ideas for such reform are covered almost daily in this outlet, and momentum is building across the states. There are election innovations on the ballot this November in Nevada, Oregon and South Dakota, with others pending, that would change the incentive structure for candidates, compelling them to appeal to a much broader set of voters so they can make the majority requirement to win office. Unfortunately, there are also efforts on ballots, for example in Alaska, to undo or preclude such election innovations from continuing.

If we truly want to change political rhetoric past this moment, maintaining focus on these reforms is vital. It won’t fix all that is wrong with the course of our politics or heal all the divisions, but it would place a fundamentally different set of incentives in place that are shown to actually work. Without mandating voting, as Australia does for example, the problem of campaign responsibility for turnout will remain, but some of the ill effect could be moderated if candidates have to appeal to a majority to win, rather than a hard-core plurality.

Current attention is naturally on former President Donald Trump, who, in the aftermath of surviving a brutal assassination attempt that sadly took the life of a bystander, spoke of unity and who reportedly intended to amend his approach during the convention to strike a more civil tone. Having been one of the chief practitioners of incendiary rhetoric, the idea that he might seek to lower the political temperature is certainly welcome. If for example, he chose to reflect on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and define that as the kind of violent behavior we should avoid in our politics, and call on his own followers to put aside incendiary descriptions of political adversaries in the best interests of the country, he might have some immediate positive effect on the coarse nature of political dialogue in America.

We would still have to wonder, though, how long we could rely on the good will of politicians whose electoral prospects are raised by appealing to the emotions of that small and extreme element of our politics that dominate primary election contests, or improved by the ability to fire up low propensity voters with existential and apocalyptic warnings about the intentions of their political foes. As long as those behaviors win elections, the incentive to engage in them will remain overwhelming.

Fortunately, we have answers to some of the structural questions. But if we allow ourselves to believe that simply calling on political leaders to do better or be more civil will put us on a better path, we will fail.

Read More

League of Women Voters of Arkansas President Bonnie Miller on a hike, standing in front of a landscape view.

Katie Fahey speaks with League of Women Voters of Arkansas President Bonnie Miller on democracy reform across the state and her work in civically educating and engaging residents.

The Fahey Q&A With Bonnie Miller of the League of Women Voters, Arkansas

Since organizing the Voters Not Politicians 2018 ballot initiative that put citizens in charge of drawing Michigan's legislative maps, Fahey has been the founding executive director of The People, which is forming statewide networks to promote government accountability. She regularly interviews colleagues in the world of democracy reform for our Opinion section.

Bonnie Miller is known for her activism in democracy reform in Arkansas and is the current president of the League of Women Voters of Arkansas and chair of Save AR Democracy, a campaign to protect ballot initiatives in Arkansas. In 2020, Miller led the Arkansas Voters First campaign, which garnered significant support but was eventually struck down by the Arkansas Supreme Court. She continues to lead the fight for a better democracy in her state while also working in higher education at the University of Arkansas School of Law.

Keep ReadingShow less
How To End Gerrymandering: Reformers Debate Retaliation, Representation, and Redistricting Reform

Given the profound implications for democratic integrity in the U.S., The Fulcrum is hosting a curated roundtable to explore the strategic, moral, and civic dimensions of partisan redistricting.

Getty Images, Israel Sebastian

How To End Gerrymandering: Reformers Debate Retaliation, Representation, and Redistricting Reform

tAcross the democracy reform movement, a growing debate has emerged over how, if at all, reformers should respond to the escalating gerrymandering battles unfolding in states like Texas, California, and beyond.

Last week, Fix.us convened a provocative discussion thread featuring academics and practitioners, surfacing a wide spectrum of views on this contentious issue.

Keep ReadingShow less
Republican, Democratic and independent checkboxes, with the third one checked
Independents will decide the election. What do we know about them?
zimmytws/Getty Images

Tired of the Two-Party Gridlock? Independents Offer a Way Out

Something feels wrong. American Democracy is supposed to be the beacon of hope that leads the free world. But for far too many, it feels like our votes do not elect leaders who truly represent what is best for our families and our communities.

Affordability of basic necessities is out of reach, and issues that have over 70% support from the public rarely get a second glance from those who are supposed to represent us. And at this point, our representatives are too busy fighting to maintain power than they are fixing the issues that we as Americans face.

Keep ReadingShow less