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Posts by Kevin Johnson

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson
This opinion piece originally appeared on The Fulcrum. A massive 11th hour spending bill stuffed with thinly vetted backroom deals might seem proof of our political dysfunction. But the omnibus bill approved by Congress last week has democracy fans cheering – because it includes changes to presidential vote counting that could literally save our democracy....

Back to Normal Isn’t Good Enough for US Democracy after the 2022 Midterms

Kevin Johnson
The midterm elections have raised hopes that democracy-distortion fever is breaking at last. Prominent swing state candidates who ran on election lies lost because of it. Local officials trying to block results they didn't like were easily brought to heel. Warnings from pundits about an underground right-wing takeover of local election infrastructure proved wildly exaggerated.    In short, a...

ERN in the News: From Brooks to Bangor

Kevin Johnson
ERN in the Post-Election News — Summary: David Brooks cites our work on election deniers running for secretary of state on PBS NewsHour.  ERN opinion piece on the message from voters published in Talking Points Memo. Our call for secretaries of state running for office to recuse gets results in Washington. The Bangor Daily News editorializes in support of our position on...

Voters Want Impartial Election Administration—And Tuesday’s Results Confirm It

Kevin Johnson

This op-ed by ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson originally appeared in TPM. With attention focused on the battle for control of Congress, some of the signs went under the radar. But last week’s results offered evidence for an encouraging takeaway: that voters understand the threat posed by our party-driven system of election management in today’s hyper-partisan…

Election Reformers Network Calls for All Secretaries of State Who Are Candidates to Recuse Themselves From Key Roles in Close Races

Kevin Johnson
Statement from ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson:  In Tuesday’s elections, fifteen secretaries of state (listed in the table below) who serve as their state’s most senior election administrator are themselves on the ballot in contested races, either for re-election or for governor. Although many secretaries of state manage such situations of potential conflict of interest...

Why We Need to Take the Partisanship Out of Certifying Elections

Kevin Johnson

This op-ed by ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson originally appeared in GOVERNING. It may be hard to remember now, but Jan. 6, 2021, wasn’t the first time the 2020 presidential election nearly went off the rails. Several swing states had already seen organized efforts to seriously challenge results, nowhere more dangerously than in Michigan, where party…

To defeat election denialism, we need partisans out of election management

Kevin Johnson

This op-ed by ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson originally appeared in The Fulcrum. The threat could hardly be clearer: Some candidates for secretary of state deny the verified outcome of the 2020 election, raising serious questions about whether they’ll reject results – and the rule of law – if they gain office. In response, political opponents…

Declaring Who Wins Elections Is Not A Job For Partisans

Kevin Johnson
This post by By Kevin Johnson originally appeared on TalkingPointsMemo.  If the stars align, Congress could soon pass a much-needed overhaul of the Electoral Count Act (ECA), the 19th-century law governing presidential electoral-vote counting, whose ambiguities helped spawn chaos on January 6th. In pushing to reform the ECA, a bipartisan group of senators is acknowledging a dangerous...

The only major democracy in the world…

Kevin Johnson
This op-ed originally ran on The Fulcrum. This has been a summer of gut punches to the body politic. A Supreme Court bloc cobbled together by minority-backed presidents and a norm-abusing Senate has trampled precedent and lurched to extremes on the most divisive issues of our time. A presidential election that should have been laid...
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