
Advantaging Authoritarianism: the U.S. Electoral System
The U.S. electoral system is uniquely advantaging authoritarian actors and behaviors. Electoral reform can help shift incentives and outcomes.
Sustainable democracy requires governing institutions that are representative of and responsive to the needs of all — not just the few or the loudest.
Today, the authoritarian threat doesn’t just come from specific politicians or political factions. Authoritarian-enabling features of our system — such as the non-representative composition of Congress or the inability of political parties to preserve democratic norms — are feeding cycles of polarization and rewarding authoritarian politics.
Stopping this threat requires bold and ambitious long-term strategies to ensure that the Democracy of Tomorrow better reflects the will of all Americans and is oriented towards collaboratively addressing our country’s most pressing challenges.
Begun to shift momentum towards proportional multi-member districts through original research, organizing hundreds of top political scientists to publicly speak out, and generating new media coverage.
Several provisions of the Protecting Our Democracy Act, a package of democratic guardrails reforms we helped Congressional leaders assemble, were signed into law by President Biden.
Learn how fusion voting can break the doom loop Learn how fusion voting can break the doom loop
The U.S. electoral system is uniquely advantaging authoritarian actors and behaviors. Electoral reform can help shift incentives and outcomes.
A right-wing minority has outsized power in the House today. With proportional representation, that problem would be much less likely.
Unlike in the United States, major political allies of Bolsonaro acknowledged his opponent’s win right out of the gate and spoke out quickly in support of democracy.
Today, the Moderate Party and three centrist voters filed a brief in the N.J. Appellate Division explaining why state laws prohibiting fusion voting violate the New Jersey Constitution.
Every election, I’m barred from honestly expressing my views at the ballot box.
On November 15th, Fix Our House, New America, and Protect Democracy hosted a discussion about the collapse of competitive elections in our democracy and pathways for reform.
Protect Democracy has led in the effort to reform the national emergency system to build stronger checks on the use of national emergencies.
More than 200 political scientists, legal scholars, and historians released an open letter calling on Congress to reject the United States’ winner-take-all elections.
Protect Democracy's Farbod Faraji partners with Lee Drutman to write about the US's role in Viktor Orbán's rise to power.
In New Jersey and other states, anti-democratic extremism and polarization are rapidly accelerating. Fusion voting is the off-ramp we need to break this cycle.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Missouri and dozens of other states could bring back fusion voting, which was lawful and practiced nationwide throughout the 1800s.
Defeating authoritarianism is going to take all of us. Everyone and every institution has a role to play. Together, we can protect democracy.
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