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The reform landscape has changed over the last few years. Solutions that were once presented at odds with each other have combined efforts to give voters fairer, more equitable, and more accountable elections. The first success story of this can be found in Alaska, where the state conducted its first top-four nonpartisan primary for most of its elections on August 16, and used ranked choice voting for the first time in a special election for the state’s single congressional seat. A majority of

The ballot measure process has been critical to the success of nonpartisan reforms across the country. However, according to new research by RepresentUs, 11 states have proposed over 60 laws to make it harder for citizens to have a direct say in the way their state’s political process works. Citizens have used ballot initiatives to approve independent redistricting commissions, primary reform, new voting methods, anti-corruption laws and more. It has been the single greatest tool to challenge t

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum, and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ In 2020, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated more than $400 million to state and local governments to boost election administration funding. Since then, more than a dozen states, nearly all controlled by Republicans, have passed laws banning such private contributions. The funds, which were administered by a pair of nonprofit

On September 6, 2021, Alan Braid, a seventy-six-year-old OBGYN in San Antonio, Texas, performed an abortion on a woman in her first trimester. A few years ago, this procedure would have attracted little attention. This time, however, Dr. Braid became a national headline. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, he wrote, “I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.” What made Dr. Braid’s decision notew

Editor's Note: This article originally published on The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ More than halfway into the year, and with most state legislative sessions concluded, the full scope of voting changes spurred by the 2020 election is coming into view. As of last week, 18 states have enacted 30 laws that limit voting access, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public policy institute at New York University Law School that ha

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Fulcrum, and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ Nearly every state legislature is considering bills to either roll back pandemic-era voting easements or make permanent the rules that allowed a record-breaking number of Americans to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day. But with election officials already looking ahead to the 2022 midterms, the Center for Election Innovation and Research is concerned wit

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Forever, and ever, and ever...

2020 was a weird year. Can we all agree on that? Here’s something weird about 2020 that you may not have noticed amid all the shouting and freaking out: Democrats nominated and successfully fielded a presidential candidate who is the exact same as Donald Trump in a curiously suspicious number of ways. And they’re not trivial. At least not to the Democrats who maligned Trump for four years in a furious and inexhaustible frenzy of partisan political note writing over hours, days, and weeks no

It’s been a month since Election Day, and we still don’t know who won the 2020 election! While it’s looking more and more clear every day that Joe Biden will be inaugurated in January, Donald Trump has yet to concede. At least the president has confirmed that he will step aside if the Electoral College votes for Joe Biden. Looks like we dodged WWIII and Civil War II this year: ‍ ‍ Adding to the confusion, is the fact that a 73,700 vote swing Trump’s way in AZ, PA, and GA would have changed th

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ Next year's redistricting landscape is, at best, a mixed bag for good-governance advocates. Although the mapmaking process has become fairer and less politicized in a handful of states over the past decade, partisan gerrymandering will still have a profound impact on representation across most of the country. Democrats had high hopes of taking back enough power