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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.


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Texas Is Cross-Referencing Its List of Potential Noncitizen Voters With Driver’s License Records

Texas Department of Public Safety Region II Headquarters on Oct. 1, 2025 in Houston. The state is using DPS records to cross-check a list of registered voters it flagged as potential noncitizens using a federal database.

Antranik Tavitian for The Texas Tribune

Texas Is Cross-Referencing Its List of Potential Noncitizen Voters With Driver’s License Records

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office is now checking whether 2,724 registered voters it flagged as potential noncitizens may have already provided proof of citizenship to the Texas Department of Public Safety, elections division director Christina Adkins said during a meeting with county election administrators earlier this month. That check comes after county elections officials found the federal database used to generate the list flagged some voters who had already given citizenship documentation to DPS when they registered to vote.

Texas officials in October sent counties the list of potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s voter roll of more than 18 million registered voters against a federal database used to verify citizenship. Soon after the state released the list, counties began to investigate the flagged registrants and mail notices asking them to provide documented proof of citizenship.

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President's Trump National Address On Iran Is Watched By New Yorkers In Manhattan

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Adam Gray / Getty Images

When Duty Isn’t a Priority: A Megalomaniac President Abuses the Nation

What does it mean when the presidential oath becomes a performance instead of a promise? It means the nation is left vulnerable to a leader whose actions suggest that personal power may matter more than the Constitution he swore to defend.

He raised his right hand and swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” Yet millions of Americans have watched a president whose conduct repeatedly raises doubts about his commitment to that oath. His attacks on constitutional limits, his hostility toward oversight, and his tendency to treat institutional constraints as obstacles to personal objectives have led many to conclude that constitutional duty is no longer his governing priority. When the oath becomes symbolic rather than binding, the consequences are carried by the public.

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A Georgetown student reflects on democracy, political polarization, civic engagement, and why empathy, dialogue, and informed citizens are essential to America's future.

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Democracy is a Responsibility, Not a Guarantee

The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. To learn about the many NextGen initiatives we are leading, click HERE.

We asked Alexis Tamm, a student at Georgetown University and a Fulcrum Fellowship cohort member, to share her thoughts on what democracy means to her and her perspective on its current health.

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