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Webinar rewind: How to make voting healthier and easier this fall

There is still time to create reliable, versatile and healthy election systems nationwide during the coronavirus pandemic — but that will mean getting aid to local administrators quickly and dousing the partisan fire over the virtues and risks of expanded absentee balloting.

That was one of several important takeaways from our rapid-fire and information-rich April 22 webinar with Amber McReynolds, CEO of the National Vote at Home Institute, and elections expert Tammy Patrick of the Democracy Fund.


Training new poll workers, disinfecting voting sites, and easing absentee rules, registration requirements and early in-person voting timetables are also part of the solution to generating turnout during the public health crisis, they said, and both strongly rebutted the notion that easier voting would incubate fraud.

You can watch their presentations, and all the smart questions and answers above.

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a hand holding a red button that says i vote
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Yes, elections have consequences – primary elections to be specific

Can you imagine a Republican winning in an electoral district in which Democrats make up 41 percent of the registered electorate? Seems farfetched in much of the country. As farfetched as a Democrat winning in a R+10 district.

It might be in most places in the U.S. – but not in California.

Republican Rep. David Valadao won re-election in California's 22nd congressional district, where registered Republicans make up just shy of 28 percent of the voting population. But how did he do it?

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A better direction for democracy reform

Denver election judge Eric Cobb carefully looks over ballots as counting continued on Nov. 6. Voters in Colorado rejected a ranked choice voting and open primaries measure.

Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

A better direction for democracy reform

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.

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To-party doom loop
Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America

Let’s make sense of the election results

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.

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Person voting in Denver

A proposal to institute ranked choice voting in Colorado was rejected by voters.

RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Despite setbacks, ranked choice voting will continue to grow

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.

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