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This week’s featured 2019 Democracy Champion: Harvard University professor Danielle Allen

Please join us for our annual Champions of Democracy celebration in Washington, D.C. on Monday, November 18 at 6:30 p.m. <[link removed]> We will toast the national momentum behind Ranked Choice Voting and electoral reform in general and salute the passion and dedication of the people who helped make it possible.

This year's champions include tireless redistricting activists, influential academics, and even a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. We will honor U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD); Nirvana bassist and FairVore board chair Krist Novoselic; Harvard University professor and political theorist Danielle Allen; Virginia redistricting advocates One Virginia 2021; as well as state and city achievements by FairVote Washington, and courageous, forward-looking public officials in New York City and Utah.

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Our featured honoree this week is Dr. Danielle Allen, who earns a 2019 Democracy Champion Award for achievement in national communications. Dr. Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard, and director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. She is co-chair of the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, which is a product of the American Academy of  Arts and Sciences.

The Harvard University political theorist is a brilliant writer and storyteller, steeped in history, and willing to embrace bold ideas to better perfect our democracy. In a Washington Post column <[link removed]> last year, for example, she embraced the key provisions of the Fair Representation Act in a piece that moved seamlessly between James Madison, Donald Trump, and social media. “How do we build institutions that can ward off the threat of faction?” she asked. “We actually need to rethink our system of representation, perhaps adopting measures such as multi-member districts and ranked-choice voting to broaden representation.”

This year, she argued compellingly in the Post that “We are in our Articles of Confederation Moment <[link removed]>,” featuring a recommendation to: “...introduce ranked-choice voting in presidential, House and Senate elections. This system would force politicians to campaign and spend money so as to be not only some voters’ first choice but also other voters’ second or third choices, forcing candidates to cease demonizing other candidates whose supporters they hope to win over as a second choice. Ranked-choice voting, as recently adopted in Maine, can be done state by state and would yield a less polarized, more functional Congress. Our world is very different from the one the founding generation lived in. We can and should adopt the founders’ principles — the need to balance republican safety and energy. But we will need to think for ourselves, in our new circumstances, about how to design our institutions to achieve that balance. Let the thinking begin.”

Please come celebrate with us at this special event, which will be held in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. Get your tickets here <[link removed]>. We look forward to seeing you once again, and appreciate your support throughout the years. If you can’t make it to the event but would like to signal your support, we welcome your donation <[link removed]>.

Thank you!

Rob Richie 
President and CEO of FairVote
<[link removed]>[link removed]



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