Friend -- 

We are getting ready for our big Symposium on the Fair Representation, “A Congress for Everyone: The Impact of the Fair Representation Act <[link removed]>,”. It's free and will be held at the New York University campus in Washington, DC on February 4th beginning at 3pm. We'll have three authors of new books that all include cogent cases for why the Fair Representation Act makes sense in the United States.

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At a time when Americans increasingly feel like our elections are broken, a bold new proposal has been put forward that could, in the words of the New York Times editorial, create "A Congress for Every American." The Fair Representation Act is intended to solve our problems of partisan gerrymandering and uncompetitive elections by replacing our winner-take-all system with a fair and proportional system: ranked choice voting in multi-winner districts. Join us for our symposium to hear from scholars and practitioners as they discuss the impact of the Fair Representation Act would have on our democracy.

RSVP to save your spot for the A Congress for Everyone: The Impact of the Fair Representation Act symposium <[link removed]>. 

Lee Drutman 

Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America. He is the author of a new 2020 book called, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America," which dives deep into the zero-sum partisan trench warfare and deteriorating political institutions. Drutman also wrote, The Business of America is Lobbying"(Oxford University Press, 2015) and is a winner of the 2016 American Political Science Association's Robert A. Dahl Award, given for "scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy." In addition, he writes regularly for Polyarchy, a Vox blog. He is currently writing a book about the crisis of the two-party system in America.

Allison Riggs

Allison Riggs leads the voting rights program at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, an organization she joined in 2009.  Her voting rights work has been focused on fighting for fair redistricting plans, fighting against voter suppression, and advocating for electoral reforms that would expand access to voting.

Dave Daley

David Daley is a senior fellow for FairVote, the author of "Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy" (W.W. Norton/Liveright) and a frequent lecturer and media source about gerrymandering. Dave's second book, "Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy", chronicles the victories and defeats in state efforts to reform elections and uphold voting rights. He is the former editor-in-chief of Salon.com, and the former CEO and publisher of the Connecticut News Project. He is a digital media fellow at the Wilson Center for the Humanities and the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. His work has appeared in New York magazine, the Atlantic the Boston Globe, the New Yorker, The Washington Post, USA Today, Rolling Stone, Details, and he's been on CNN and NPR. He earned a bachelor's degree in political science at Boston College and a master's degree in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When writing for the Hartford Courant, he helped identify Mark Felt as the "Deep Throat" source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Congressman Don Beyer (VA-8)

Congressman Don Beyer is serving his third term as the U.S. Representative from Virginia’s 8th District, representing Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, and parts of Fairfax County. He serves on the House Committees on Ways and Means and Science Space and Technology, and is a Co-Chair of the New Democrat Coalition's Climate Change Task Force. He was the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia from 1990 to 1998, and was Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein under President Obama. Congressman Beyer is the original sponsor of the Fair Representation Act. 

Neal Simon 

In 2018, Neal Simon was an independent candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland, polling as high as 18 percent in the three-way race. Unaffiliated with any political party, he ran to unite the country and to bring pragmatism back to Washington.

Running as an independent, Simon witnessed the destructive nature of modern American politics. He experienced firsthand the perverse incentives that push candidates and lawmakers to ideological extremes. He saw the resistance of party leaders to pragmatic solutions to our nation's problems. And he watched politicians prioritize loyalty to their party bases over progress for the American people.

That's why Neal Simon wrote "Contract to Unite America: Ten Reforms to Reclaim Our Republic," providing specific, practical solutions for an improved government and a better tomorrow.

Click here to see full line-up of moderators and panelists.  <[link removed]>

Agenda:

3:00 PM Program Start
6:00 PM Reception
7:00 PM Program End

Address:

NYU - DC Campus
Abramson Family Auditorium
1307 L Street, NW
Washington, DC xxxxxx

RSVP HERE <[link removed]>

I hope to see you there! 

Sincerely,

Drew Penrose
Law and Policy Director, FairVote
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