Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Democracy reform: Do you have a plan for that?

Got a great idea for how to fix the electoral system? Now you can share your ideas with some of the reform community's leading researchers.

The newly created Electoral Reform Research Group put out a call this week for research papers "into how changes in electoral rules impact political participation, processes, partisanship, power, and policy outcomes."

Proposals are due Dec. 6 and selections will be discussed at a workshop in Washington in February. Chosen participants will receive a $500 honorarium and additional funds will be made available to run research programs based on the proposals.

The group is primarily focused on ranked-choice votingat this point, although its members acknowledge RCV is just one piece of the larger electoral reform debate.


"We're heavily focused on RCV because that's the live issue right now," said New America's Lee Drutman, one of the organizers of the research group. "It's getting a tremendous amount of momentum."

In addition to Drutman, this effort has been organized by Avi Green of the Scholars Strategy Network, Kevin Kosar of R Street Institute and Didi Kuo of Stanford University.

More details, including sample questions to guide proposal writing, are available here.

Read More

Does Donald Trump Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, holds the Nobel medal at the Kyiv railway station on December 18, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

(Photo by Yevhenii Zavhorodnii/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)

Does Donald Trump Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sparked widespread debate Thursday by calling for President Donald Trump to receive a Nobel Peace Prize.

Leavitt asserted that Trump merits the prestigious recognition, citing his role in negotiating peace deals and ceasefire agreements across six major international conflicts. However, the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip are still ongoing.

Keep ReadingShow less
Avoiding Policy Malpractice in the Age of AI

"The stakes of AI policymaking are too high and the risks of getting it wrong are too enduring for lawmakers to legislate on instinct alone," explains Kevin Frazier.

Getty Images, Aitor Diago

Avoiding Policy Malpractice in the Age of AI

Nature abhors a vacuum, rushing to fill it often chaotically. Policymakers, similarly, dislike a regulatory void. The urge to fill it with new laws is strong, frequently leading to shortsighted legislation. There's a common, if flawed, belief that "any law is better than no law." This action bias—our predisposition to do something rather than nothing—might be forgivable in some contexts, but not when it comes to artificial intelligence.

Regardless of one's stance on AI regulation, we should all agree that only effective policy deserves to stay on the books. The consequences of missteps in AI policy at this early stage are too severe to entrench poorly designed proposals into law. Once enacted, laws tend to persist. We even have a term for them: zombie laws. These are "statutes, regulations, and judicial precedents that continue to apply after their underlying economic and legal bases dissipate," as defined by Professor Joshua Macey.

Keep ReadingShow less
Build America With Energy Abundance: A Bipartisan Path to Prosperity

Build America With Energy Abundance: A Bipartisan Path to Prosperity

We, here at Washington Power and Light, (washingtonpowerandlight.org, not a public utility, rather a D.C.-based virtual think tank founded by an iconic software developer and an economic policy geek) contend that pragmatism is the new radicalism. Romantics and fanatics now dominate the agenda-setting of the two major political parties.

That’s ending.

Keep ReadingShow less
Migrant Children: Political Pawns in U.S. Border Policy Debate
Crime, immigration and the peaceful transfer of power
Eskay Lim / EyeEm

Migrant Children: Political Pawns in U.S. Border Policy Debate

WASHINGTON — Republicans have warned against the sex trafficking risks migrant children face when illegally crossing the southwest border. Democrats have countered that their concerns lie in hypocrisy.

“Democrats are standing with survivors, while Republicans are shielding abusers,” said U.S. House Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa, referencing President Donald Trump’s efforts to block the full release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Keep ReadingShow less