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

People voting

Jessie Harris (left,) a registered independent, casts a ballot at during South Carolina's Republican primary on Feb. 24.

Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Our election system is failing independent voters

Gruber is senior vice president of Open Primaries and co-founder of Let Us Vote.

With the race to Election Day entering the homestretch, the Harris and Trump campaigns are in a full out sprint to reach independent voters, knowing full well that independents have been the deciding vote in every presidential contest since the Obama era. And like clockwork every election season, debates are arising about who independent voters are, whether they matter and even whether they actually exist at all.

Lost, perhaps intentionally, in these debates is one undebatable truth: Our electoral system treats the millions of Americans registered as independent voters as second-class citizens by law.

Keep ReadingShow less
ballot

The ballot used in Alaska's 2022 special election.

What is ranked-choice voting anyway?

Landry is the facilitator of the League of Women Voters of Colorado’s Alternative Voting Methods Task Force. An earlier version of this article was published in the LWV of Boulder County’s June 2023 Voter newsletter.

The term “ranked-choice voting” is so bandied about these days that it tends to take up all the oxygen in any discussion on better voting methods. The RCV label was created in 2002 by the city of San Francisco. People who want to promote evolution beyond our flawed plurality voting are often excited to jump on the RCV bandwagon.

However, many people, including RCV advocates, are unaware that it is actually an umbrella term, and ranked-choice voting in fact exists in multiple forms. Some people refer to any alternative voting method as RCV — even approval voting and STAR Voting, which don’t rank candidates! This article only discusses voting methods that do rank candidates.

Keep ReadingShow less
People voting
Paul J. Richards/Getty Images

Make safe states matter

Richie is co-founder and senior advisor of FairVote.

It’s time for “safe state” voters to be more than nervous spectators and symbolic participants in presidential elections.

The latest poll averages confirm that the 2024 presidential election will again hinge on seven swing states. Just as in 2020, expect more than 95 percent of major party candidate campaign spending and events to focus on these states. Volunteers will travel there, rather than engage with their neighbors in states that will easily go to Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. The decisions of a few thousand swing state voters will dwarf the importance of those of tens of millions of safe-state Americans.

But our swing-state myopia creates an opportunity. Deprived of the responsibility to influence which candidate will win, safe state voters can embrace the freedom to vote exactly the way they want, including for third-party and independent candidates.

Keep ReadingShow less
Map of the United States

The National EduDemocracy Landscape Map provides a comprehensive overview of where states are approaching democracy reforms within education.

The democracy movement ignores education races at its peril

Dr. Mascareñaz is a leader in the Cornerstone Project, a co-founder of The Open System Institute and chair of the Colorado Community College System State Board.

One of my clearest, earliest memories of talking about politics with my grandfather, who helped the IRS build its earliest computer systems in the 1960s, was asking him how he was voting. He said, “Everyone wants to make it about up here,” he said as gestured high above his head before pointing to the ground. “But the truth is that it’s all down here.” This was Thomas Mascareñaz’s version of “all politics is local” and, to me, essential guidance for a life of community building.

As a leader in The Cornerstone Project and a co-founder of The Open System Institute I've spent lots of time thinking and working at the intersections of education and civic engagement. I've seen firsthand how the democratic process unfolds at all levels — national, statewide, municipal and, crucially, in our schools. It is from this vantage point that I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the democracy reform movement will not succeed unless it acts decisively in the field of education.

Keep ReadingShow less