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What is your take?

What is your take?
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David L. Nevins
By David L. NevinsOct 22, 2021
David L. Nevins
David L. Nevins serves as publisher of The Fulcrum. Additionally, Nevins serves as co-founder and Board Chairman of the Bridge Alliance. Nevins brings business acumen, vision and a tireless this-must-and-can-be-done zeal to the burgeoning movement to bridge divides to transform the political process. As a business leader, Nevins excels at building bridges between people and organizations from the right, left and center for civilized conversation and then action. He co-founded the Bridge Alliance because, as he says, “No matter how well managed and how well funded anyone organization is, significant political reform will not happen without an alliance to further collaborative interactions. Together we can and will raise the collective impact of all.” He is a member of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, with a focus on the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, he established and continues to work with The Nevins Democracy Leaders program at Penn State University. Nevins graduated with honors in economics from Penn State in 1969 and received an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
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Today, The Fulcrum continues its biweekly feature "What is Your Take?" where we ask our readers a question and share various responses.

We look forward to engaging with our readers as we create a dialogue around different topics and issues that are important to all of us.

This week's question is: What actions, if any, would you like to see Congress take on voting reform?

Please share your responses by emailing pop-culture@fulcrum.us.

Below are responses to our previous question:

Last time, we posed the following question:

One of the most popular songs in the Broadway show "Hamilton" is "My Shot." As we strive to help protect and improve democracy in America, what do you see as "Your Shot" to make a difference?

Following are some responses from our readers, edited for clarity, length and style.

· I'm in my 70s and am convinced that my destiny is to fix the Electoral College before my death. I propose that each state implement ranked-choice voting and utilize instant runoff rounds to eliminate all but the top two winners. Then apply the method — proposed by Thomas Jefferson to fill Congress after the first U.S. census — to proportionally allocate Electoral College votes to the top two winners. Anonymous.

· As a longtime League of Women Voters member, I will continue the League's goal of "Making Democracy Work" and actively battling disinformation by informing voters through more civic education (especially in schools) and badgering them to vote. As more voters become disillusioned with politics and government and distrustful of elections, we have our work cut out for us. Mary Ann Moxon.

· At 46 years old, I'm taking "my shot" to save American democracy by leaving a successful career in real estate and starting Veterans for Political Innovation. Our mission is to mobilize veterans to advocate for the most powerful election innovations to make our system less toxic and more competitive.

We strongly believe that the reform community, and veterans across the country, need to unite around the most powerful, achievable political innovation — final-five voting. Once we implement top-four or final-five Instant runoff general elections, in all 50 states, then we can elect leaders who are truly accountable to the majority of their constituents. More choice, through final-five voting equals more power for voters and less outside influence.

Final-five voting incentivizes problem solving and good policy making. Once we start electing more consensus-based candidates and more broadly accountable leaders, we can start truly addressing the myriad policy concerns that are not receiving adequate attention (immigration reform, health care, infrastructure, education, etc.). A bad system will beat a good person every time. Our current political system is built on faux competition and faulty incentives that encourage partisan extremism and gridlock.

That's "my shot"! Eric Bronner

We are more convinced than ever that by engaging our readers through music, theater, poetry, dance and all the arts, The Fulcrum can help us all find our shared humanity despite the sharp elbows of the day-to-day in American life and politics. And by doing so we hope to build upon The Fulcrum's mission of being a place where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives.

David L. Nevins

Co-Publisher, The Fulcrum


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Bruce Springsteen has always spoken his mind through politics and expressed it through his music. For decades, he has treated the stage as a platform for the causes he believes in — a place where songs become arguments, and performance becomes a form of public conscience. His work has long insisted that American culture and American democracy are intertwined, that the stories we tell ourselves shape the country we become. So when he steps onstage in October for the “Power to the People Festival” in Washington, D.C., it is likely that this will just be the next chapter in his lifelong effort to defend democratic values through art.

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A Hollow Song for a Hollow Patriotism: Reclaiming the Real Patriotic Ballads
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After musician after musician pulled out from Trump’s June 24 “Freedom 250” concert, we’re left with Lee Greenwood and an opera tenor. The anthem that made Greenwood a star, “God Bless the USA,” was written in 1985 during the height of the Cold War. It begins with the specter of loss—“If tomorrow—all the things were gone, I’d worked for all my life / And I had to start all over with my children and my wife.” Then the wounds disappear before they’re felt: “I’d thank my lucky stars to be living here today / Because the flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away.”

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