More like Three Things Friday.
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Hi Friend,
On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president of the United
States and was left to face the calamity of our nation’s worst economic period:
The Great Depression. Standing before a divided, despondent, and fearful
nation, he delivered his famous inaugural address outlining his plan for theNew
Deal — “an expansion of the federal government as an instrument of employment
opportunity and welfare
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Channel put it succinctly.
More than FDR’s specific policy agenda, however, the speech stands out in
history for its hopeful and unifying rhetoric, including the famous line “the
only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” It closes with:
“We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the
national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral
values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stem performance of
duty by old and young alike. [...] We do not distrust the future of essential
democracy. The people of the United States have not failed.”
Today, our nation faces its own set of unique — and generational — challenges.
Our current political system places party over country, resulting in a divided
government that is not truly representative of all voters. Yet, amidst the
division and mudslinging in Washington, we’re called to come together in the
same spirit FDR urged his fellow Americans to. Now is a time for putting
country over party, instead, by elevating election reforms that ensure the
future of that “essential democracy” is upheld. While it has been nearly a
century since FDR’s address, the sentiments remain true: the people of the
United States have not failed. From our point of view, in fact, the recent
victories in the reform movement show that we’re headed on the right track.
Check out the Bipartisan Policy Center’s new report, “2022 Primary Turnout:
Trends and Lessons for Boosting Participation”
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As promised last week, the Bipartisan Policy Center has released a new report
detailing the state of primaries. The topline finding is that nonpartisan
primaries see higher voter participation rates than partisan primaries, and the
data from 2022 backs up this assessment. According to the report, in the last
election, about 37% of eligible voters participated in Alaska’s first top-four
nonpartisan primary, while states with top-two systems averaged nearly 30%
turnout — and mind you, the top-two models still yielded higher participation
than states with partisan primaries, which struggle to average over 20%
participation. As seen in the graphic below, low primary turnout directly
correlates with the state's primary system and directly contributes toThe
Primary Problem <[link removed]>.
The report concludes with several recommendations for states to increase
future participation in primaries, including opening up primaries to all voters
and establishing a single national primary day. To learn more about the
highlights from the report, check out ourblog post
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.
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Ranked choice voting saw more victories this week in Redondo Beach, CA, and
Burlington, VT
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Even though this isn’t a big election year, there’s still movement at the
local and municipal level on election reforms, including ranked choice voting.
On Tuesday, Burlington, Vermont, and Redondo Beach, California voters said YES
to adopting RCV for future city elections. This win comes on the heels of
renewed attention and interest in ranked choice voting (RCV) — also known as
instant runoff voting (IRV). 2022 saw RCV’s second statewide implementation in
Alaska, and 10 new jurisdictions voted “yes” to using RCV in the future. And
traction for RCV hasn’t ended there. Since the 2022 election, lawmakers in 14
states have already introduced 27 bills proposing ranked choice voting models,
according to anNBC News review
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.
The bottom line: Interest in election reforms is snowballing across the
nation, and it’s not limited to ranked choice voting. Momentum is growing for
other election models, includingnonpartisan primaries
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and Top-Four + Top-Five voting.Check out our Tweet thread
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more about the races' highlights this week.
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The Alaska Model is garnering national attention and support
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How can we fix our broken government? According to Katherine Gehl, founder of
theInstitute for Political Innovation <[link removed]>
(IPI), the solution is simple: the Alaska Model of voting, which IPI labels
“Final Five Voting" <[link removed]>:
“Final Five Voting is designed to elect Democrats (or Republicans or moderates
or centrists). The purpose of the system is not to elect someone from a
particular party or ideological group, or perspective. It is to change the
incentives of legislators, whatever their ideology, by freeing them from the
harmful grip of the party primaries on both sides.
In an ironic way, Final Five Voting has already unified left and right. [...]
In Alaska and Nevada, both parties opposed the ballot measures, with the
Democrats spending in the seven figures in a failed attempt to defeat the
Nevada referendum. Yet FFV has also begun to unite voters and donors from both
sides in support of the measure. The ballot initiatives in Alaska and Nevada
passed with bipartisan voter support, and well-known Republican and Democratic
donors contributed to the FFV effort — even as they remained on opposite sides
of the candidate races.”
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Regards,
Alana
__
Alana Persson
Unite America
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