Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Democracy groups rally to defend independent redistricting in Michigan

Democracy groups rally to defend independent redistricting in Michigan

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, speaks in opposition to partisan gerrymandering during a rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in March 2019.

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

A coalition of democracy reform groups is rallying in opposition to a lawsuit seeking to block Michigan from moving forward with a voter-approved independent redistricting commission.

The commission was approved as part of a 2018 ballot measure that transferred the power of drawing congressional and legislative districts from lawmakers to a 13-member body consisting of four Democrats, Republicans and five unaffiliated members.


The measure, which was championed by Voters Not Politicians, was in response to the state's practice of drawing once-a-decade voting lines that favored the party in power, a practice known as partisan gerrymandering.

Two lawsuits filed last year have challenged the legality of the redistricting commission, including one by the Michigan Republican Party, which argues the measure's eligibility restrictions that block politically connected individuals, such as politicians, lobbyists and legislative staffers, from serving on the commission are a violation of their free speech and equal protection rights.

On Tuesday, Issue One, Common Cause, RepresentUs and three other political reform groups filed a brief with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the commission. The court is reviewing the case on appeal.

"We know that you cannot take the politics out of redistricting, but you can and should take the politicians out," Issue One CEO Nick Penniman, said in a statement. "That is why Issue One believes that independent commissions represent the best tool yet for drawing congressional districts." (Issue One is the incubator of, but editorially independent from, The Fulcrum.)

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Leadership Now Project, Equal Citizens Foundation and the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress also joined the brief.

Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for March 17.

Brennan Center for Justice and the League of Women Voters of Michigan have also filed briefs in opposition to the lawsuit.

Read More

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

A roll of "voted" stickers.

Pexels, Element5 Digital

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

The analysis and parsing of learned lessons from the 2024 elections will continue for a long time. What did the campaigns do right and wrong? What policies will emerge from the new arrangements of power? What do the parties need to do for the future?

An equally important question is what lessons are there for our democratic structures and processes. One positive lesson is that voting itself was almost universally smooth and effective; we should applaud the election officials who made that happen. But, many elements of the 2024 elections are deeply challenging, from the increasingly outsized role of billionaires in the process to the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation.

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

A check mark and hands.

Photo by Allison Saeng on Unsplash. Unsplash+ License obtained by the author.

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

Originally published by Independent Voter News.

Today, I am proud to share an exciting milestone in my journey as an advocate for democracy and electoral reform.

Keep ReadingShow less
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