Jan. 6, 2021, was a very bad day for our nation. A mob gathered on Capitol Hill. Some of them erected gallows. Others smashed onlooking journalists’ cameras and equipment. Still, others flew Confederate battle flags, the banner of mid-19th century southern insurrectionists. Then the crowd assaulted police officers and broke through the doors and windows […]
Blog
What is the one-vote system? A Q&A with
Across the country, debates are erupting over the use of partisan primaries and first-past-the-post voting. There is a concern that this century-old way of voting is producing extreme candidates who have little incentive to govern competently. Various municipalities and states are experimenting with open primaries, ranked choice voting (RCV), and other systems to try to […]
Fixing Congress requires fixing how it l...
How should Congress work? If you put that question to the average American, the answer would go something like this: Legislators are elected to represent states and districts all over the country. These elected officials have different ideas about what government should do. Any one of them can introduce a bill, then Congress can debate […]
The budget wreck is Congress’ fault — an
Despite being in Washington, D.C. for nearly 20 years, I sometimes feel like Alice who has fallen down the rabbit hole into a crazy place where words are used in ways that don’t make sense anywhere else. Take the word, “budget.” To the average American, it connotes the exercise of tabulating how much money is […]
Election Q&A: David Levine explains what
Windham, New Hampshire, a town with 14,000 residents, found itself in the public eye after the 2020 election. Eight candidates ran for four open seats in the state legislature, and Republicans swept them. Kristi St. Laurent, a Democrat, requested a hand recount. The recount revealed that she had lost by even more votes than initially […]
Election reform in the states is not all...
Throughout 2021, many media and progressive thinkers have propagated a distressing narrative around state elections: GOP state legislators and governors in the grips of a “stolen election myth” are ramming through policies to quash access to the ballot. Democracy is being crushed, they lament…. (Read more)