This post by By ERN Board Member Amber McReynolds and ERN VP of Programs Heather Balas originally appeared on TPM. Amid growing concern about the prospects for a free and fair election in 2024, last week brought a rare piece of good news: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who famously stared down President Donald…
This post by ERN Fellow Al Vanderklipp originally appeared on The Fulcrum. Only hours after the riot of Jan. 6, 2021, with the calls to “stop the steal” still reverberating under the Capitol Rotunda, 139 Republican members of the House of Representatives voted to oppose the valid electoral votes sent from Arizona and Pennsylvania, in…
This post by ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson originally appeared on The Fulcrum. As recent reporting has emphasized, elections in 2022 for secretary of state will feature well-funded “stop the steal” candidates who appear ready to undermine elections to help their side win. Similar threats are emerging at the local level, where most of the…
This post by ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson originally appeared on The Hill. With Jan. 6 dominating headlines last week, Senate Republicans raised a topic they are not often associated with: election reform. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Republican Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) and others proposed fixing the Electoral Count Act (ECA), the archaic law governing the count of…
This post by Kevin Johnson and Al Vanderklipp originally appeared on The Fulcrum. Johnson and Vanderklipp are, respectively, the executive director and research fellow for the Election Reformers Network and the co-authors of “Nonpartisanship Works: How Lessons from Canada Can Reestablish Trust in U.S. Election Administration.” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has repeated the call for his state’s legislature to seize…
This post by Kevin Johnson originally appeared on The Fulcrum. Absent a remarkable change of heart from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the For the People Act seems headed for defeat. Democratic congressional leaders insist on binding the bill’s many elements as one package, but they should now shift focus to the individual components with at…
This post by Kevin Johnson, Miles Rapoport, and Larry Diamond originally appeared on The Hill. Two secretaries of state were honored recently by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s Democratic secretary of state, and Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana’s Republican secretary of state, received the organization’s prestigious Patriot Award on behalf of all U.S election…
This post by Kevin Johnson and Larry Garber originally appeared in The Fulcrum. Garber and Johnson advise The Carter Center, the global human rights and democracy foundation based in Atlanta, and helped create the Election Reformers Network, international election specialists who promote voting improvements in the United States. They are among the authors of the group’s September report,…
This post originally appeared in GOVERNING. Disregard for the judgments of courts is a sure sign that democracy is in trouble. Donald Trump’s machinations after the Nov. 3 election centered, fundamentally, on overturning the many court rulings rejecting his claims of fraud. Channeling fomented partisan anger, Trump and his allies sought to replace the verdict…
This post originally appeared in The Fulcrum. It has become clearer to Americans than ever before that the Electoral College is archaic and represents a threat to our democracy — and needs to be significantly altered if not abolished. But what’s the best way forward? Relying on electoral votes is cumbersome and can be so…
