Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Five Significant Changes to Immigration Policies Under Trump (so far)

Five Significant Changes to Immigration Policies Under Trump (so far)

Will Trump and Musk ultimately clash?

Will Trump and Musk ultimately clash?

Musk budget cuts will leave millions uninsured

Musk budget cuts will leave millions uninsured

Will Trump’s immigration crackdown be good or bad for the economy?

Will Trump’s immigration crackdown be good or bad for the economy?

Support for Mass Deportation Drops Well Below Half as People Consider Other Options

Support for Mass Deportation Drops Well Below Half as People Consider Other Options

Meet the change leaders: Eric Bronner, veteran and political reformer

Eric Bronner
Courtesy Veterans for All Vets
David L. Nevins
By David L. NevinsFeb 20, 2024
David L. Nevins
David L. Nevins serves as co-publisher of The Fulcrum. Additionally, Nevins serves as co-founder and Board Chairman of the Bridge Alliance. Nevins brings business acumen, vision and a tireless this-must-and-can-be-done zeal to the burgeoning movement to bridge divides to transform the political process. As a business leader, Nevins excels at building bridges between people and organizations from the right, left and center for civilized conversation and then action. He co-founded the Bridge Alliance because, as he says, “No matter how well managed and how well funded anyone organization is, significant political reform will not happen without an alliance to further collaborative interactions. Together we can and will raise the collective impact of all.” He is a member of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, with a focus on the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, he established and continues to work with The Nevins Democracy Leaders program at Penn State University. Nevins graduated with honors in economics from Penn State in 1969 and received an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
See More Writings by author

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Eric Bronner on Jan. 18 for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series.

Bronner is the founder and chief operating officer of Veterans for All Voters – a veteran-led, cross-partisan community that is mobilizing military veterans to be advocates for election innovations that unlock competition, make our politics less toxic and encourage the government to be more responsible.

Bronner graduated with honors from the United States Naval Academy in 1997 and served on active duty for eight years as a naval flight officer. Before discovering his passion for election reforms, Bronner was a successful real estate broker and attorney in St. Louis, Mo. For three years, Bronner was a board leader with Show Me Integrity, a cross-partisan democracy reform organization that in 2020 helped bring an innovative, nonpartisan approval voting system to St. Louis.

After the 2020 election, a fellow veteran saw Bronner’s passion for political reforms and recommended getting more veterans involved. Early in 2021, he put together an informal advisory board of veterans from across the country and political spectrum to investigate this opportunity. They discovered a true “white space” between the 40,000-plus veteran service organizations and thousands of civic health, bridge building and reform organizations.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

As such, Veterans for All Voters launched publicly, in Wisconsin, in October 2021. Since then, VAV has mobilized over 3,200 veterans and supporters in all 50 states. In 2022, VAV was a coalition partner with the successful “Yes on 3!” ballot amendment campaign to bring “final-five voting” to Nevada. Now, in 2024, VAV’s 300-plus veteran leaders are supporting over 20 different active reform campaigns in cities and states across the country. These efforts are opposed by both major political parties.

Watch the interview to learn the full extent of Bronner’s remarkable work and perhaps you’ll become more civically engaged as well.

Eric Bronner- Veterans for All Votersyoutu.be

Latest news

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers
Electoral Reforms

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

Read More

Half-Baked Alaska

A photo of multiple checked boxes.

Getty Images / Thanakorn Lappattaranan

Half-Baked Alaska

This past year’s elections saw a number of state ballot initiatives of great national interest, which proposed the adoption of two “unusual” election systems for state and federal offices. Pairing open nonpartisan primaries with a general election using ranked choice voting, these reforms were rejected by the citizens of Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. The citizens of Alaska, however, who were the first to adopt this dual system in 2020, narrowly confirmed their choice after an attempt to repeal it in November.

Ranked choice voting, used in Alaska’s general elections, allows voters to rank their candidate choices on their ballot and then has multiple rounds of voting until one candidate emerges with a majority of the final vote and is declared the winner. This more representative result is guaranteed because in each round the weakest candidate is dropped, and the votes of that candidate’s supporters automatically transfer to their next highest choice. Alaska thereby became the second state after Maine to use ranked choice voting for its state and federal elections, and both have had great success in their use.

Keep ReadingShow less
Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

The United States Supreme Court.

Getty Images / Rudy Sulgan

Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

Fourteen years ago, after the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the popular blanket primary system, Californians voted to replace the deeply unpopular closed primary that replaced it with a top-two system. Since then, Democratic Party insiders, Republican Party insiders, minor political parties, and many national reform and good government groups, have tried (and failed) to deep-six the system because the public overwhelmingly supports it (over 60% every year it’s polled).

Now, three minor political parties, who opposed the reform from the start and have unsuccessfully sued previously, are once again trying to overturn it. The Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party have teamed up to file a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Their brief repeats the same argument that the courts have previously rejected—that the top-two system discriminates against parties and deprives voters of choice by not guaranteeing every party a place on the November ballot.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ranked Choice Voting May Be a Stepping Stone to Proportional Representation

Someone filling out a ballot.

Getty Images / Hill Street Studios

Ranked Choice Voting May Be a Stepping Stone to Proportional Representation

In the 2024 U.S. election, several states did not pass ballot initiatives to implement Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) despite strong majority support from voters under 65. Still, RCV was defended in Alaska, passed by a landslide in Washington, D.C., and has earned majority support in 31 straight pro-RCV city ballot measures. Still, some critics of RCV argue that it does not enhance and promote democratic principles as much as forms of proportional representation (PR), as commonly used throughout Europe and Latin America.

However, in the U.S. many people have not heard of PR. The question under consideration is whether implementing RCV serves as a stepping stone to PR by building public understanding and support for reforms that move away from winner-take-all systems. Utilizing a nationally representative sample of respondents (N=1000) on the 2022 Cooperative Election Survey (CES), results show that individuals who favor RCV often also know about and back PR. When comparing other types of electoral reforms, RCV uniquely transfers into support for PR, in ways that support for nonpartisan redistricting and the national popular vote do not. These findings can inspire efforts that demonstrate how RCV may facilitate the adoption of PR in the U.S.

Keep ReadingShow less
Supreme Court
Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Gerrymandering and voting rights under review by Supreme Court again

On Dec. 13, The Fulcrum identified the worst examples of congressional gerrymandering currently in use.

In that news report, David Meyers wrote:

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2025