In episode 3 of the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s Ballots & Bagels series, Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine is joined by Joseph Kirk, election supervisor for Bartow County, Georgia. They talked about preparing for and administering Georgia’s May 24th primary, as well as ways to strengthen trust in future elections.
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A better direction for democracy reform
Nov 12, 2024
Drutman is a senior fellow at New America and author "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America."
This is the conclusion of a two-part, post-election series addressing the questions of what happened, why, what does it mean and what did we learn? Read part one.
I think there is a better direction for reform than the ranked choice voting and open primary proposals that were defeated on Election Day: combining fusion voting for single-winner elections with party-list proportional representation for multi-winner elections. This straightforward solution addresses the core problems voters care about: lack of choices, gerrymandering, lack of competition, etc., with a single transformative sweep.
And yes, I understood the case many made behind the smaller changes: Get some wins, build momentum, get people comfortable with the idea of electoral reform.
Given these overwhelming losses, it’s time to reconsider that strategy.
Still: Why did these reforms fail so badly and decisively, across the board?
Honestly, I’m surprised. My theory is that these reforms fell into a dead zone where they were not transformative enough to excite and energize voters who want big change, while simultaneously provoking a reflexive status quo bias against the added complexity. It also didn’t help that election administrators set off alarms about implementation.
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Hopefully, the overwhelming failure of these reforms will spur a strategic rethink in the electoral reform community. It’s now time to focus on reforms that support stronger, healthier parties — and more than two of them!
Your donations to the campaigns were (overwhelmingly) wasted. And maybe even counter-productive:
The campaigns begged for and received billions of dollars of your money this cycle. Upwards of $16 billion. The presidential campaigns accounted for almost $4 billion of that. Most of that money went to all that annoying advertising. Kamala Harris’ campaign outspent Donald Trump’s campaign. But Trump won.
Did any of that money make a difference? Probably not. (I wrote a longer piece skewering the campaign fundraising-consulting industrial complex.)
My basic point was that once a campaign gets beyond a certain threshold, extra money becomes pointless. Perhaps even counter-productive. Yet, the campaigns keep asking for the money. They ask, because campaign consultants who run campaigns get very rich making and producing ads. Broadcast and especially social media companies get very rich. But not only are these constant fundraising asks and campaign ads annoying. They are also overwhelmingly negative and anxiety-inducing. All this is very bad for our democracy. It probably makes the doom loop even worse.
Hopefully, we can spend some of that money elsewhere next time.
The arc of history is squiggly
We like to think there is some linear progress to history. But history is full of ups and downs. History is a sine wave. The arc of history is squiggly.
I take some comfort in this.
And often a “down” portends a future “up.”
I previously argued that sometimes, when a system gets so FUBAR, collapse is necessary for renewal. As I wrote:
My readings into complex systems (and history) point to an unfortunate pattern: sometimes collapse is necessary for renewal.
This idea goes against our instincts for control. But there it is.
Take forest management. Turns out, small fires are vital to a forest's long-term resilience. These small fires clear out accumulated fuel, make space for new growth, and bring nutrients back into the soil. Without them, tall trees crowd out everything else, making the whole forest vulnerable to devastating wildfires. ...
Complex systems can appear hopelessly rigid right before transformation. Yet beneath seemingly calcified patterns, the potential for renewal often lies dormant. Consider again our forest management analogy: After decades of fire suppression, forests don't just contain accumulated fuel—they also harbor dormant seeds awaiting an opportunity.
So that is perhaps the silver lining — sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better. But I’ll admit that’s not much silver right now.
Now what? Maybe something new?
I hope this moment is generative. I hope it creates space for some new ways of thinking about our political moment and the prospects for reform and renewal.
I hope it becomes clearer that we need a much bolder and ambitious vision for democracy reform. I eagerly offer my More Parties, Better Parties vision, built around both the structural reforms of proportional representation and fusion voting and a vision of political parties as genuine intermediary institutions, connecting citizens and government. Let’s discuss.
I also take encouragement from the surprise performance of independent Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn. He didn’t win. But he made a Senate race in solidly Republican Nebraska highly competitive. He did so by running as a working-class economic populist without the burden of the Democratic Party label. He even talked about the two-party doom loop!
Given how toxic the Democratic Party brand is in so many parts of the country, I really hope we see more Osborn-style candidacies. Otherwise, the Senate will likely stay in Republican control for a long time to come.
What I’m worried about
But I also have some real worries, beyond the obvious ones about how destructive and dangerous a second Trump administration will be (you can read about that on every liberal website).
I worry that Democrats will spend too much time playing counterfactual blame games now. (What if Joe Biden had dropped out earlier? What if Harris had picked Josh Shapiro instead of Tim Walz? What if Harris had settled on a campaign slogan?) I worry that Democrats will finger external factors like foreign interference, misinformation or Elon Musk, rather than confronting the need for fundamental change. This blame-shifting serves mainly to exonerate current leadership. Real leadership means admitting when you’ve made a mistake and when it’s time to change.
I also worry that Democrats will just simply revert to counting on Trump and Republicans to overreach and for thermostatic public opinion to predictably turn against Trump and deliver a repeat of 2018 and 2020. It may work out that way. But it may not.
We need a moment of genuine transformation
My bottom line is that our current political arrangement is only growing more unsustainable. Incremental reform, blame-gaming and business-as-usual are not acceptable responses. To renew and revive the American experiment in collective self-governance, we need something more visionary and more transformative. This is a moment for imagination and big-picture thinking.
This article was first published in Undercurrent Events.
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Let’s make sense of the election results
Nov 11, 2024
Drutman is a senior fellow at New America and author of "Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America."
Well, here are some of my takeaways from Election Day, and some other thoughts.
1. The two-party doom loop keeps getting doomier and loopier.
This was an ugly campaign. The tone was very nasty. The threats and dehumanizations grew quite dark. This is the two-party doom loop in depressing motion: a vicious cycle of escalating rhetoric around continually high-stakes, narrowly decided elections. As parties become more polarized, they compromise less and demonize more. It only gets worse and worse.
This self-reinforcing logic cuts at the foundational core of the democratic bargain — mutual toleration and forbearance. I only see it getting worse under a second Trump administration, which promises to be even more combative and vindictive.
Authoritarian leaders benefit from polarizing conflict. The ruthless us-versus-them dynamic gives them power to fight “the enemy within.”
The conflict is only going to grow more intense. Doomier and loopier, I often find myself thinking. This election did not reveal any off-ramps.
This makes me sick. It is like being on the scariest roller coaster ever and not being able to get off.
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2. The anti-system vibes remain strong — and bad for incumbents.
Americans are in a sour mood and have been for a while. Overwhelming majorities report feeling dissatisfied with the way things are going in this country. For the last few years, the share of Americans feeling satisfied has hovered around 20 percent.
Such persistent dissatisfaction does not help incumbents. As I wrote earlier this year, no national political figure is viewed favorably. Incumbency, once an advantage in politics, is now a liability. Every election is now a “change” election.
This rumbling anti-incumbent dissatisfaction appears to be a global phenomenon, across democracies. We are in a kind of era of discontent. But this discontent seems especially pronounced in the United States. More than two-thirds of Americans think “the system” needs to change.
Harris at times tried to pitch her campaign as a “fresh start.” But ultimately she fell back on a campaign of continuity and defending the (distrusted) institutions. As the sitting vice president, she really had no other choice.
The big problem is that when voters are unhappy with the status quo, they only have one other choice. If that choice happens to be an authoritarian, then voters who just want “change” may wind up with fascism.
3. Complicated, incremental electoral reform is not a winning path out of the doom loop.
In six states plus the District of Columbia, voters had the option to open up their party primaries, adopt ranked choice voting or both, via ballot initiative. In one state, Alaska, voters were asked whether to preserve their reform.
Only Washington, D.C., voted in favor of open primaries and ranked-choice voting.
As an electoral reform nerd, this round-the-board rejection of primary and RCV reform was the biggest shock of the night. I had expected reform to pass in at least Oregon and Colorado, and possibly Nevada.
So what happened? Let me break it down.
In four states, the open primaries and rankedc hoice voting initiatives were yoked together into one initiative.
In Colorado, voters rejected Proposition 131, which would have moved the state to a top-four “all candidate” primary and a ranked choice voting election. (The vote was 55 percent no to 45 percent yes.)
In Nevada, voters rejected the same proposition (but with a top-five primary), by a similar margin (54 percent to 46 percent).
In Idaho, voters rejected their version of the measure even more overwhelmingly — 69 percent against, 31 percent in favor.
In Alaska, voters were deciding whether to keep their top-four-plus-ranked-choice-voting system, which they had approved narrowly in 2020 (when it was paired with a provision to eliminate dark money). The Alaska repeal effort appears to have narrowly succeeded, thus ending Alaska’s short-lived experiment with open primaries and RCV.
Only in my super-liberal home city of D.C. did an RCV and semi-open primaries initiative pass.
In other states, ranked choice voting and open primaries were on the ballot separately.
In Oregon, voters rejected a standalone ranked choice voting proposition (60 percent against, 40 precinct in favor). In Arizona, voters rejected Proposition 140, to create a single, all-candidate open primary by a similar margin (59 percent no to 41 percent yes).
In Montana, voters considered two separate initiatives: CI-126, to create a single open primary, like Arizona, and CI-127, to require a majority winner. Voters decisively opposed CI-127, but as of this writing, they have only narrowly opposed CI-126, which remains too close to call.
Finally, South Dakota decisively rejected a top-two primary reform (modeled on California and Washington), 68 percent against to 32 percent in support.
Frankly, I think voters made the right choices in all these places, even if they didn’t always do it for the right reasons.
To me, the open-primaries-plus-RCV combo (often billed as “fiinal four voting” or “final five voting”) only further weakens parties (by pushing parties further out of the business of nomination). My view has long been that we need to build healthier and stronger parties. And that starts with giving parties more control over their nominating process, rather than allowing any schmuck to claim the legitimating label. These reforms would have moved us further in the wrong direction.
This combination also adds confusion and complexity to elections (making life difficult for already over-taxed election administrators). And making elections “nonpartisan” increases campaign costs and makes money even more important. This benefits wealthy candidates and donors even more than the existing system. The United States already has the most “open” primaries of any democracy in the world. Only in the United States can you register (for free!) as a member of a party and get to choose that party’s nominee.
I think there is a better direction for reform: combining fusion voting for single-winner elections with party-list proportional representation for multi-winner elections. This straightforward solution addresses the core problems voters care about: lack of choices, gerrymandering, lack of competition, etc., with a single transformative sweep.
And yes, I understood the case many made behind the smaller changes: Get some wins, build momentum, get people comfortable with the idea of electoral reform.
Given these overwhelming losses, it’s time to reconsider that strategy and explore new options and approaches.
This will be the subject of Part 2 tomorrow.
This article was first published in Undercurrent Events.
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Despite setbacks, ranked choice voting will continue to grow
Nov 11, 2024
Mantell is director of communications for FairVote.
More than 3 million people across the nation voted for better elections through ranked choice voting on Election Day, as of current returns. Ranked choice voting is poised to win majority support in all five cities where it was on the ballot, most notably with an overwhelming win in Washington, D.C. – 73 percent to 27 percent.
For state ballot measures, the status quo won the day – with a ballot measure to implement RCV losing in Oregon, and ballot measures to implement open primaries and RCV falling in Colorado, Idaho and Nevada. A ballot measure to keep RCV in Alaska is neck-and-neck and may take several days to call, with absentee ballots continuing to arrive for 15 days.
“Ranked choice voting took a step forward on Election Day 2024, as voters in our nation’s capital and several cities said yes to better elections,” said my colleague, FairVote President and CEO Meredith Sumpter. “We celebrate the countless hours that local and state advocates have spent turning their frustration with today’s politics into real progress. Alaska and Maine also used ranked choice voting to elect the president and other key officials, and 10 cities across the nation held smooth and successful RCV elections.”
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Changing the status quo is never easy. Entrenched interests — including several state parties and an increasingly well-organized national opposition — pushed back hard on this year’s statewide ballot measures. But make no mistake: The future remains bright for ranked choice voting.
Ranked choice voting was used in only 10 cities and zero states in 2016, and has now grown to over 50 cities, counties and states that are home to nearly 17 million people.
We also see clear signs that voters like ranked choice voting once they get to use it — the Oregon ballot measure is performing best in counties in the state that already use ranked choice voting, and the Alaska ballot measure is outperforming the other statewide measures. We’ll continue to see ranked choice voting deliver in cities and the states where it’s used, and we also have to make a stronger case on how RCV benefits voters and elected officials alike.
The data is on our side, and the reform will continue to grow because it works — empowering voters, rewarding candidates who can deliver for the majority of their constituents, and making our democracy work better for the American people.
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Electoral College rules are a problem. A worst-case tie may be ahead.
Oct 31, 2024
Johnson is the executive director of the Election Reformers Network, a national nonpartisan organization advancing common-sense reforms to protect elections from polarization. Keyssar is a Matthew W. Stirling Jr. professor of history and social policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His work focuses on voting rights, electoral and political institutions, and the evolution of democracies.
It’s the worst-case presidential election scenario — a 269–269 tie in the Electoral College. In our hyper-competitive political era, such a scenario, though still unlikely, is becoming increasingly plausible, and we need to grapple with its implications.
Recent swing-state polling suggests a slight advantage for Kamala Harris in the Rust Belt, while Donald Trump leads in the Sun Belt. If the final results mirror these trends, Harris wins with 270 electoral votes. But should Trump take the single elector from Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district — won by Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016 — then both candidates would be deadlocked at 269.
In case of a tie — or any scenario with no candidate winning a majority of electoral votes — the House of Representatives picks the president and the Senate chooses the vice president, and, yes, they could come from different parties. The House’s contingency election gives each state one vote, meaning Wyoming and Vermont have the same impact as California and Texas.
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This year, a contingency election would almost certainly result in a victory for Trump — Republicans have held a majority of congressional delegations for many years, including when Democrats won more seats in the House. This unrepresentative tiebreaker would probably occur after a Harris popular vote victory, further underscoring the deep flaws of this system.
Of course, the chances are low the election gets “thrown to the House” — it has occurred only twice,the last time exactly 200 years ago. But even if rare, the presidential contingency mechanism impacts our politics on a regular basis.
In a democracy it should be possible — and desirable — for new parties to emerge and to challenge the status quo with policy alternatives and new leadership. But in the United States a new party faces the near certainty that its presidential candidate would throw the election to an undemocratic vote in the House or “spoil” the election by “stealing” votes from a politically similar candidate. Facing such prospects, alternative political groups often stay on the sidelines, as No Labels decided to do this year. And if parties aren’t competing for national leadership, they’ll lack the stature to compete for other major offices as well.
There are many other significant hurdles to creating strong third parties in the U.S. such as first-past-the-post elections for most public offices,anti-fusion laws and stringent ballot access requirements. Together these forces have made the United States a rarity in the democratic world. We are the only country where no new party came to power in the 20th century. Even countries like England, France and Canada that — like us — use single-member districts for the legislature have more than two parties seriously contending for power.
Our completely binary politics starves voters of a range of choices — for president, and on down the ballot. Perhaps more dangerously, binary politics fuels the vilification of opponents and the competing versions of truth that increasingly dominate our national narrative.
Removing disincentives to new party formation is a critically important goal requiring a range of reforms. This presidential season it is worth focusing on the part that the presidential tiebreaker plays. The vast majority of countries with directly elected presidents have a two-round runoff system, providing citizens the opportunity to consider new parties and enabling greater innovation and dynamism in the party system.
France is a case in point. Amid widespread political dissatisfaction, almost a dozen candidates contested the first round of the 2017 French presidential election. The surge of support for Emannuel Macron’s new Renaissance party carried him to the presidency and catalyzed a paradigm shift in French politics. The runoff rule was critical in allowing this to happen.Studies in Latin America likewise find that presidential countries using a runoff election score higher on formation of new parties and on overall democracy — as runoffs encourage moderation and give victors the “legitimacy of majoritarianism.”
We too can do this. Proposalsto amend or abolish the Electoral College have circulated for two centuries, and an amendment calling for a direct popular election with runoff nearly passed in 1970. A current modification that would not require an amendment is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would ensure a majority of electoral votes for the popular-vote winner, ending the risk of an election thrown to the House. Ranked choice voting (which is often called “instant runoff voting”) is another path to reducing the risks of the Electoral College contingency mechanism.
In 1992, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) proposed an amendment maintaining the Electoral College but establishing a second round if no candidate reached an electoral vote majority. Arguably, we could fix many of the system’s flaws by taking McConnell’s amendment and adding to it a requirement that states allocate electors proportionally rather than by winner-take-all, which would greatly expand the number of competitive states. That approach would keep the Electoral College, which many conservatives will fight hard to protect — not a perfect solution but perhaps a feasible one.
When McConnell introduced his amendment, it was Republicans who’d likely lose a thrown-to-the-House election since they controlled fewer state delegations. That’s a valuable reminder that both parties can be threatened by undemocratic Electoral College rules. Similarly, in 2004 George W. Bush came close to being a popular vote winner and Electoral College loser, and it’s certainly possible that a Republican could suffer that fate in a future election.
The challenges are huge and the record of failed attempts daunting. But we can find new ideas, alliances and motivation from understanding how the Electoral College hurts our politics on a regular basis. Addressing once and for all the archaic Electoral College is a critical step in building a robust and innovative democracy for the 21st century.
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