Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Change leader: Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America

Opinion

Change leader: Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America

Brian Clancy, co-founder of the Bridge Alliance’s signature Citizen Connect project, had the wonderful opportunity to interview Nick Troiano on Feb. 15 for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series.

Troiano is the founding executive director of Unite America, a philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan election reform to foster a more representative and functional government. He is the author of “ The Primary Solution: Rescuing our Democracy from the Fringes ” (Simon & Schuster, February 2024).


As America heads into another critical election year, “The Primary Solution” offers voters across the political spectrum a realistic roadmap to a more representative and functional democracy.

Since 2019, Unite America has invested more than $70 million to help win 25 state reform victories and 25 municipal policy victories. In 2014, Troiano ran for the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania’s 10th district and was both the youngest candidate of the cycle and the most competitive independent congressional candidate nationally in over two decades.

Troiano earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American government from Georgetown University and, as an undergraduate, co-founded and endowed the Social Innovation and Public Service Fund. He regularly provides commentary to a range of media outlets on topics of democracy and politics, and he has been featured in three documentaries: “Follow the Leader,” “Broken Eggs ” and “Unrepresented.” He lives in Denver.

Watch the interview to learn the full extent of Troiano’s remarkable work and perhaps you’ll become more civically engaged as well.

yuue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xdCAfil-zM&t=1s expand=1 site_id=19309670] The Fulcrum Democracy Forum Meets Nick Troiano, Founding Executive Director of Unite Americawww.youtube.com

Read More

Princeton Gerrymandering Project Gives California Prop 50 an ‘F’
Independent Voter News

Princeton Gerrymandering Project Gives California Prop 50 an ‘F’

The special election for California Prop 50 wraps up November 4 and recent polling shows the odds strongly favor its passage. The measure suspends the state’s independent congressional map for a legislative gerrymander that Princeton grades as one of the worst in the nation.

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project developed a “Redistricting Report Card” that takes metrics of partisan and racial performance data in all 50 states and converts it into a grade for partisan fairness, competitiveness, and geographic features.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote Here" sign

America’s political system is broken — but ranked choice voting and proportional representation could fix it.

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Election Reform Turns Down the Temperature of Our Politics

Politics isn’t working for most Americans. Our government can’t keep the lights on. The cost of living continues to rise. Our nation is reeling from recent acts of political violence.

79% of voters say the U.S. is in a political crisis, and 64% say our political system is too divided to solve the nation’s problems.

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. President Barack Obama speaking on the phone in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Barack Obama talks President Barack Obama talks with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan during a phone call from the Oval Office on November 2, 2009 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, The White House

‘Obama, You're 15 Years Too Late!’

The mid-decade redistricting fight continues, while the word “hypocrisy” has become increasingly common in the media.

The origin of mid-decade redistricting dates back to the early history of the United States. However, its resurgence and legal acceptance primarily stem from the Texas redistricting effort in 2003, a controversial move by the Republican Party to redraw the state's congressional districts, and the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. This decision, which confirmed that mid-decade redistricting is not prohibited by federal law, was a significant turning point in the acceptance of this practice.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand of a person casting a ballot at a polling station during voting.

Gerrymandering silences communities and distorts elections. Proportional representation offers a proven path to fairer maps and real democracy.

Getty Images, bizoo_n

Gerrymandering Today, Gerrymandering Tomorrow, Gerrymandering Forever

In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." (Watch the video of his speech.) As a politically aware high school senior, I was shocked by the venom and anger in his voice—the open, defiant embrace of systematic disenfranchisement, so different from the quieter racism I knew growing up outside Boston.

Today, watching politicians openly rig elections, I feel that same disbelief—especially seeing Republican leaders embrace that same systematic approach: gerrymandering now, gerrymandering tomorrow, gerrymandering forever.

Keep ReadingShow less