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Gas prices up again? What’s going on?

Former felon Erica Racz registering to voting

Florida top court ruling on felon voting is hardly the final word

Non-citizen voting advances in the biggest city in deep blue Vermont

Voters in Vermont

Burlington would join Montpelier as the second Vermont city that wants to allow non-citizens to vote.

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Our Staff
By Our StaffOct 09, 2019
Our Staff
The Fulcrum staff.
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Vermont's largest city is reviving a bid to permit non-citizens to vote in local elections, the latest in a small but persistent effort in some of the nation's most politically progressive corners to give immigrants the franchise.

The Burlington City Council vote this week was 10-2 in favor of changing the city's charter. The principal sponsor of the change, Democrat Adam Roof, told WCAX that the goal "is to create a more inclusive and engaged community, which is critical because we know that broad participation in the democratic process strengthens the entirety of the community."

Kurt Wright, a Republican, opposed the proposal as inconsistent with American tradition and noted the city's voters had rejected a similar effort several years ago.

The proposal now goes to the Democratic-majority state Legislature, which has already endorsed a similar measure for Montpelier, the capital. But Republican Gov. Phil Scott is considering a veto on the grounds it could violate some aspects of state law.

Burlington, where Sen. Bernie Sanders got his political start as the mayor, has a population of 42,000 plus the 10,000 students at the University of Vermont.

It would be the biggest municipality in the country with non-citizen voting for all city officials. Many of the other places are liberal Maryland suburbs of Washington. Board of education contests in Chicago and San Francisco are open to all adults who live in those cities, on the theory that immigrants with kids in the schools should have a say in how they're run.

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But this sliver of a trend runs counter to the overwhelming sentiment against expanding the rights of immigrants that permeates much of the country.

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Imagining constitutions

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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.

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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.

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Vice President Kamala Harris closes out the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night.

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The Democrats didn't have a meaningful primary, and no one cared

Lovit is a senior program officer and historian at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, where he also hosts the podcast"The Context.”

In many respects, last week’s Democratic National Convention was indeed conventional. The party faithful gathered in a basketball arena in Chicago for speeches carefully calibrated to unite factions and define the central messages of the Harris-Walz campaign. It was a ceremony, a celebration and a storyline — just like the Republicans’ convention last month, and many conventions in years past.

For most of American history, party conventions served a different purpose. They were practical meetings where elites hammered out details of the party platform and wrangled over potential nominees. In a political world where party tickets at every level of government were determined in smoke-filled rooms, the convention was the biggest smoke-filled room of them all.

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A framework for democracy philanthropy

Stid is the executive director of Lyceum Labs, a fiscally sponsored project of the Defending Democracy Together Institute. The following is reposted with permission from his blog, The Art of Association.

It is challenging for philanthropic funders to get started and stay focused when it comes to strengthening democracy. The vagaries of our political system — really a complex system of systems cast on a continental scale — make it hard to know where to even begin. There are dozens of solutions that could be worthy of support. Alas, none are backed by dispositive evidence indicating that they are the single-best way forward. Then, every second and fourth year, elections reset the stage of democracy and reshuffle the cast of characters, often in unsettling ways.

Democracy's proximity to politics further complicates the philanthropic picture. The tax code bars foundations from backing or opposing candidates, parties and ballot measures. Many foundations take a belt-and-suspenders approach to this proscription on electioneering by avoiding anything that smacks of politics (as democracy-related causes frequently do). Other foundations, in contrast, push right up to the edge, seeking to exploit all the legal ways they can underwrite voter registration, education and participation, ostensibly on a nonpartisan basis, to further their political goals.

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Red and blue figures pulling a map of the U.S. apart

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who oversees elections, is running for governor this year.

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We can break the partisan cycle by unrigging the system

Sturner, the author of “Fairness Matters,” is the managing partner of Entourage Effect Capital.

This is the sixth entry in the “Fairness Matters” series, examining structural problems with the current political systems, critical policies issues that are going unaddressed and the state of the 2024 election.

We face complex issues, from immigration to the national debt, from Social Security to education, from gun violence to climate change and the culture war, from foreign policy to restoring a vibrant middle class by ensuring economic outcomes are more balanced and equitable.

Yet, neither party seems to be doing much about any of the political problems and policy challenges plaguing our nation. Instead of working on real solutions, our politicians spend their time and our national resources distracting and dividing us by using every tool at their disposal to retain power. Why is that? As Andrew Yang points out in a recent TED Talk (quoting a senator), “A problem is now worth more to us unaddressed than addressed.” It’s galling until you remember that the Democratic and Republican parties are private, gain-seeking organizations that exist to seek and retain power. As such, we should be wary of political parties because our interests and theirs are not aligned.

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