Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

What not to do: Wisconsin provides a case study in election resilience

Wisconsin voters

"Every state has an opportunity and obligation to learn from the debacle in Wisconsin," writes U.S. PIRG's Joe Ready.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Ready is the democracy program director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the network of state organizations that use research, grassroots organizing and direct advocacy to advance the public interest.

Last week's election in Wisconsin was a total failure of leadership. No one should ever be forced to choose between going to the polls and risking coronavirus infection, or staying home and forgoing the basic right to vote.

Yet despite the clear threat to public health and to our democracy, about 300,000 Wisconsinites confronted that very choice and decided to get out and vote. The full extent of the damage, both to human health and voter participation, may never be known.

What is abundantly clear though, is that with a bit of foresight and planning, this could have been avoided. Elected officials in Wisconsin and across the country should act now to avoid repeating the same mistakes.


States have a constitutional obligation to provide all voters the opportunity to participate in elections safely. But for too many Wisconsinites, the long lines and packed polling places, as well as the confusing and (up until the eve of election day) constantly changing absentee voting policy, casting a vote under the life-threatening cloud of a deadly disease seemed too dangerous. That can't happen again.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The Covid-19 outbreak has exposed a gaping hole in our election systems. Very few states have established voting procedures to withstand the public health emergency that a pandemic presents.

Over the past weeks, we've seen states scramble to come up with ways to safely run elections. Some states, including Maryland, were successful. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan decided weeks ago to turn his state's April 28 special congressional election in Baltimore into a vote-by-mail contest, and to postpone the state's spring primary to June.

Of course, safe, secure elections can't happen overnight. It takes time — as well as money and infrastructure — to print ballots, mail them to voters, staff polling places and implement systems for tracking and counting votes. With that in mind, every state has an opportunity and obligation to learn from the debacle in Wisconsin and start work now to quickly establish plans for resilient elections come November.

Fundamentally, each plan should ensure that every voter is able to access and cast their ballot safely, even if the novel coronavirus persists. More specifically, states must untether themselves from the traditional voting model — the idea that everyone votes on one day at one place.

We need to create more space, both literally and figuratively, for people to engage in the election process. One of the best ways to do that is to expand access to voting by mail, up to and including having the emergency option to mail every eligible voter a ballot directly.

Vote by mail isn't perfect; there is real value in a private voting booth. But during a pandemic, the advantages and necessity of emergency universal vote by mail are clear. If by November, allowing thousands of people to congregate at the polls still presents a public health risk, states need to have the ability to directly mail all registered voters an absentee ballot. This would allow them to make their voices heard from the comfort and safety of their own homes.

In addition to expanding voting by mail, states should expand access to voter registration, adjust deadlines and make plans to accommodate voters for whom voting by mail doesn't work. Building out all of these systems will require additional infrastructure and a robust public education effort.

The smart thing to do is to plan for a Nov. 3 when Covid-19 is continuing to make crowding in public places unsafe. That planning needs to start today. Seven months from now, there will be no excuse for elected officials caught unprepared.

Read More

"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
Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump
text
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump

Donald Trump wasted no time when he returned to the White House. Within hours, he signed over 200 executive orders, rapidly dismantling years of policy and consolidating control with the stroke of a pen. But the frenzy of reversals was only the surface. Beneath it lies a deeper, more troubling transformation: presidential elections have become all-or-nothing battles, where the victor rewrites the rules of government and the loser’s agenda is annihilated.

And it’s not just the orders. Trump’s second term has unleashed sweeping deportations, the purging of federal agencies, and a direct assault on the professional civil service. With the revival of Schedule F, regulatory rollbacks, and the targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the federal bureaucracy is being rigged to serve partisan ideology. Backing him is a GOP-led Congress, too cowardly—or too complicit—to assert its constitutional authority.

Keep ReadingShow less
One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

A roll of "voted" stickers.

Pexels, Element5 Digital

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

The analysis and parsing of learned lessons from the 2024 elections will continue for a long time. What did the campaigns do right and wrong? What policies will emerge from the new arrangements of power? What do the parties need to do for the future?

An equally important question is what lessons are there for our democratic structures and processes. One positive lesson is that voting itself was almost universally smooth and effective; we should applaud the election officials who made that happen. But, many elements of the 2024 elections are deeply challenging, from the increasingly outsized role of billionaires in the process to the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation.

Keep ReadingShow less
MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

A check mark and hands.

Photo by Allison Saeng on Unsplash. Unsplash+ License obtained by the author.

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

Originally published by Independent Voter News.

Today, I am proud to share an exciting milestone in my journey as an advocate for democracy and electoral reform.

Keep ReadingShow less