Each election reform category listed on this page is designed to help you explore the many ways American democracy can be improved and to expose you to the ongoing debates of experts in the field. This is the battle to save American democracy.
Our main page about American democracy, voting, and election reform has news related to money politics, third parties, voting methods, election technology and more.
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Where Megadonors Are Spending Big to Shape The Democratic Party (5/18/2022) - Even though Democrats are practically certain to lose their majority in the House, their primaries… 
Moneyed Interests, Information Provision, and Congress (5/17/2022) - Politicians wrongly assume their self-interests are compatible with constituents' interests, the rich tend to have… 
Unprecedented Lobbying Haul Puts 2022 On Track For Record Year (5/8/2022) - This year is on track for record lobbying spending after lobbyists collectively clocked the biggest… 
Pro-Crypto Cash Floods Democratic Primaries, Rankling Some Lawmakers (5/4/2022) - McBath has something Bourdeaux does not: backing from a 30-year-old billionaire who co-founded a cryptocurrency… 
A Hard Look At Corporations, Political Spending And Democracy (5/3/2022) - There is a crisis of democracy in America which poses fundamental questions for company engagement… 
The Brokers Who Make Millions Selling Your Data To Political Groups (4/24/2022) - OpenSecrets has tracked roughly $6 million in payments to brokers from congressional seats and super… 
Why It’s Now Illegal for Some With Disabilities To Vote (5/3/2022) - The pandemic helped improve access, but new barriers in states like Wisconsin are rolling back… 
Aging White Men Who Commit Voter Fraud Have Nothing To Fear (4/22/2022) - The sentences stand in contrast with the actions of the Governor who recently got the… 
New York Plans to Make it Easier for Blind People to Vote (4/12/2022) - The state promised to enhance voting access for citizens with disabilities such as blindness and… 
Conspiracies Threaten To Further Starve Local Election Systems (4/5/2022) - Conservatives are sowing fears about outside funding of elections, cutting out nonprofits that help prop… 
Gerrymandering And The Limits Of Representative Democracy (3/28/2022) - Unrestrained gerrymandering can greatly distort the composition of a legislature, possibly leading to loss of… 
Bill Easing Access To Connecticut Absentee Voting Passes (3/27/2022) - The bill that would allow out-of-town commuters and caretakers to vote by absentee ballot won… 
A Top Online Voting Company Is Ramping Up Its Cyber Vetting (5/8/2022) - Democracy Live, which ran online voting pilots in 2020 is continuously testing its platform for… 
So Long, Paperless Mississippi Voting Machines (5/6/2022) - It took a false election controversy to persuade Mississippi politicians and election officials of the… 
States Struggle to Add Paper Trails to Voting Machines (5/3/2022) - Voting machine upgrades... in several states have gained new urgency amid a flood of right-wing… 
Securing the Midterms: Smarter Tools Watch Over Voter Records (3/27/2022) - Harvard University technology lab and Protect Democracy think that automated alerts and machine learning can… 
PODCAST: Ro Khanna On Dignity And Democracy (3/22/2022) - Representative Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley in Congress and addresses the question of dignity in… 
Digital Human Rights Need A Single Home In U.S. Government (3/16/2022) - Autocrats have always tried to tightly control their people and today's modern means of communication… rebirth of american democracy
The most important and revolutionary attribute of the American republican form of government has always been that it utilizes a system of popular elections to fill key positions. As everyone knows, the first American elections were only for white landowning men. But despite these extreme limits on access and often violent policy making (Native American genocide and the institution of slavery in particular), it really was the world’s first mass democratic election. This wasn’t an election among a few thousand nobility in a single city.
In George Washington’s first election in 1789, nearly one million people voted in an honest contest to choose their own leadership. The Founding Fathers‘ greatest legacy is that the country has been holding increasingly inclusive free and fair elections at the national, state and local levels at least every two years for over 230 years without interruption. Despite all the faults of the Founding Fathers, this is quite a legacy.
That being said, the quality of elections in modern America is arguably worse than it used to be. Democracy Chronicles hopes to include the latest news on all efforts to examine and reform American elections and to expose our readers to discussion on this topic in such a way as to reflect the diversity of debate on the subject. This rigorous focus on every aspect of election law in the United States should be interesting to even international readers and we have intentionally set up our website to place American democracy news right next to our coverage on world democracy. After all, the struggle for more democracy is universal.
A Rational Two-Party System? (5/8/2022) - Partisan primaries followed by a plurality-winner general election is a sensible way for an electorate… 
The Conservative Case For Proportional Representation (5/1/2022) - Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen calls on Congress to find a bipartisan accord to abolish… 
Gubernatorial Plurality Wins Highlight the Need for Ranked Voting (5/1/2022) - When a candidate takes office without a majority vote the question is whether the outcome… 
Mock M&M Election Teaches Alaskans About Ranked Voting (4/26/2022) - There are paper cups with eight different kinds of M&M near the entrance to Amalga… 
San Diego Considers Ranked Choice Voting For City Elections (4/24/2022) - Except in contests with at least six candidates, the plan would remove the primary. Only… 
Deep-Red Utah Embraced Voting By Mail. Then Came 2020 (4/24/2022) - Utah is the second-most Republican state. The state had embraced mail voting but things have… Moneyed Interests, Information Provision, and Congress (5/17/2022) - Politicians wrongly assume their self-interests are compatible with constituents' interests, the rich tend to have… 
Adolescents In The US Are Becoming More Politically Polarized (5/6/2022) - In contrast to the findings of the 1960s an update to the socialization literature shows… 
Left-Wing Authoritarians Share Key Psychological Traits With Far Right (5/6/2022) - People with authoritarian views, left or right, have surprisingly similar behaviors and psychological characteristics, a… A Hard Look At Corporations, Political Spending And Democracy (5/3/2022) - There is a crisis of democracy in America which poses fundamental questions for company engagement… 
Faces of Genders Are Perceived Differently By Liberals And Conservatives (4/14/2022) - Liberals and conservatives differ in how they perceive dominance in women, which may influence their… 
FairVote Releases State Rankings Of Democracy (4/11/2022) - FairVote, a nonpartisan group dedicated to improving elections, has released its "Dubious Democracy" state rankings… 
How Public Campaign Financing Empowers Small Donors Nationwide (4/14/2022) - Mounting evidence...[shows] that public financing amplifies underrepresented voices and makes democracy work better for all… 
Redistricting Cycle Failed To Increase Representation For Minorities (3/20/2022) - It may get the most attention, but partisanship is not the only way to measure… 
Attacks Against Election Officials Are Taking a Toll (3/18/2022) - Election officials so essential to the functioning of American democracy have increasingly come under attack… 
57 Years After The Selma Voting Rights Act March (3/8/2022) - The Voting Rights Act is linked to the events of Bloody Sunday, what preceded them,… 
Native American Tribes Sue North Dakota Over Gerrymandering (2/22/2022) - The suit charges that diluting Native power violates their voting rights and will handicap tribe… 
Georgia Republicans Try To Undo Local Elections (2/12/2022) - A new wave of power grabs by Georgia’s GOP legislators is threatening to wrest control… join the democracy movement with DC!
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