FairVote Board Chair Danielle Allen reflects on this moment, and a better
vision for tomorrow. John,

We have founded a new nation, recovered from a civil war, brought civil rights
to all, and put a man on the moon.

Time and again, Americans have been told that making big change is impossible.
Tell that to the foot-soldiers who marched for justice across the South, or the
suffragists who went on hunger strikes to give women the right to vote. They
refused to accept that it could not be done. They simply asked how?

When I look at our nation today, I see great division – but also a hunger to
reconnect around our common purpose, and examples of Americans showing how to
come together on behalf of fairness and inclusion. Working through the
challenges our constitutional democracy faces will require focusing resolutely
on what the health and well-being of the American people require. We must
restore our faith in democracy and each other.

How? One important step is adopting ranked choice voting. In this moment, I am
especially thrilled to be FairVote’s board chair, and to help build support for
the important work this extraordinary team is doing. Our politics looks so
frozen and dysfunctional in part because our elections make it easy for
candidates to “win” without an actual majority, especially in primaries.


Donate Today As we all know, ranked choice voting asks candidates to talk to
everyone and build real coalitions. It rejuvenates the art of persuasion. That’s
the opposite of what we have now, when all-important primaries might be won with
as little as 20% of the vote, incentivizing candidates to exacerbate outrage and
stoke division.

Just look at what’s happening in Alaska, one of the most exciting laboratories
of our democracy, where the top four finishers in an open primary move on to a
general election that uses ranked choice voting. Winners need to campaign to
everyone, and always earn a majority. Once in office, lawmakers know they have a
mandate to lead. In Alaska, they have come together to form cross-partisan
coalitions to deliver for the health and well-being of Alaskans.

Alaskans showed their support for this reform by defending it in November, when
extreme partisans sought to repeal it and return to the old ways.

Meanwhile, Portland, OR citizens eager to make their city work again embraced
ranked choice voting for mayor, and a proportional form of ranked choice voting
for City Council. In their first use of RCV, Portlanders elected their most
diverse set of representatives ever. The Council reflects people of all
neighborhoods and races, business owners and progressives, homeowners and
renters. The members will now share a table and a common purpose.

This is a bright spot in our politics. Change can be a long, hard slog – but
change is of our own making. Many of us can recite the beginning of the second
sentence of the Declaration of Independence by heart: “We hold these truths to
be self-evident,” that we are endowed “with certain unalienable rights,” among
them “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”


Support FairVote's Work But it doesn’t end there. The Declaration is really the
reformer’s guide to good government: We build a government that protects our
unalienable rights. When government becomes dysfunctional and unrepresentative,
we have the right – and responsibility – to refashion it to ensure our
collective safety and happiness.

Alaska and Portland have done this. So have Maine and Washington, DC, and
communities from Massachusetts all the way to Utah. Every community can.

We don’t have to agree on every issue. What we do need is to forge new ways of
talking to one another. We can. We must. We will. It is our moment to ask how?
It is FairVote’s moment for these invaluable reforms to revitalize our shared
pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. I hope that you will take this moment
to make agenerous giftto fund FairVote’s work of building an ever-more-perfect
union.

Onward,

Danielle Allen

FairVote Board Chair


Share Post Website Copyright © 2024 FairVote, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
8484 Georgia Ave, Suite 240, Silver Spring, MD 20910

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can unsubscribe from this list.