Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Ranked-choice voting won in NYC with obscured cash. A reformer wants to change that.

Brad Lander

New York City Councilman Brad Lander, here at a news conference in July, is now pushing a new campaign finance curb.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

New York City's approval of ranked-choice voting was one of the year's biggest wins for democracy reformers. But the million-dollar push for the ballot measure was fueled by one of the institutions most reviled in "good governance" circles: dark-money groups.

Now one prominent lawmaker, with a proven record of tightening campaign finance rules in the nation's biggest city, has plans to prevent such an irony in the future.

City Councilman Brad Lander is readying legislation to expand the current disclosure requirements for donations in local elections to include ballot proposals. The transparency rules now mandate donor disclosures only for political messaging related to candidates. But that law's enactment was spearheaded five years ago by Lander, and the Brooklyn Democrat says it's time to close a loophole he left behind.


The most prominent item on the November ballot was a proposal to use the ranked-choice system, also known as the instant runoff, in primaries and special elections starting with the mayor's race next year. It was approved with 74 percent of the vote.

The Committee for Ranked Choice Voting NYC, the good-governance conglomerate responsible for most messaging on the issue, spent $986,017 on digital, television and direct mail advertising — capped in the campaign's final weeks with TV spots featuring Academy Award-winning actor Michael Douglas.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

But none of these spots were required to include "paid for by" information, leaving the moneyed proponents of so-called RCV a mystery to most. Those curious enough to seek further information could learn how much the committee spent — but not where the money came from — using the city government's "Follow the Money" online portal.

Learning the identity of the donors required navigating the state Board of Elections website. It shows the committee received almost $2 million in contributions — 95 percent of which came from just five donors. The Action Now Initiative gave $1 million, but understanding the names behind that group requires another trip down the disclosure rabbit hole. Another $500,000 came from James and Kathryn Murdoch, a son and daughter-in-law of media mogul Rupert Murdoch who have recently signaled a willingness to invest big in democracy reform.

Lander's vision is to make it much easier to follow the money spent on local ballot measures by expanding his own legislation: In 2014, he pushed through a bill that created the first public disclosure of groups spending to influence campaigns for local office. The bill was enacted in response to the big-money influences seen a year earlier in the first mayoral race following the Supreme Court's Citizen United ruling, which allowed for unlimited spending in elections. Bill de Blasio was ultimately elected after an intense and expensive five-way Democratic primary.

Lander's vow to write a new bill came in recent days, after the NYC Campaign Finance Board asked the City Council to move such legislation.

"New York City has the country's strongest disclosure requirements and resources for independent expenditures. Unfortunately, when it comes to ballot proposals, our law has a blind spot," said Amy Loprest, the board's executive director.

Under the Lander proposal, donors to political groups would be listed on the city's "Follow the Money" portal, cutting out the need to visit two separate websites to reveal this information. And ballot measure ads would have to name the top three donors and direct voters to their website for more information.

Read More

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries
person in blue denim jeans and white sneakers standing on gray concrete floor
Photo by Phil Scroggs on Unsplash

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries

With the stroke of a pen, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham enfranchised almost 350,000 independent voters recently by signing a bill for open primaries. Just a few years ago, bills to open the primaries were languishing in the state legislature, as they have historically across the country. But as more and more voters leave both parties and declare their independence, the political system is buckling. And as independents begin to organize and speak out, it’s going to continue to buckle in their direction.

In 2004, there were 120,000 independent voters in New Mexico. A little over 10 years later, when the first open primary bill was introduced, that number had more than doubled. That bill never even got a hearing. But today the number of independents in New Mexico and across the country is too big to ignore. Independents are the largest group of voters in ten states and the second-largest in most others. That’s putting tremendous pressure on a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand Placing Ballot in Box With American Flag
Getty Images, monkeybusinessimages

We Can Fix This: Our Politics Really Can Work – These Stories Show How

As American politics polarizes ever further, voters across the political spectrum agree that our current system is not delivering for the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans feel most elected officials don’t care what people like them think. Eighty-eight percent of them say our political system is broken.

Whether it’s the quality and safety of their kids’ schools, housing affordability and rising homelessness, scarce and pricey healthcare, or any number of other issues that touch Americans’ everyday lives, the lived experience of polarization comes from such problems—and elected officials’ failure to address them.

Keep ReadingShow less