Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow

Our Work

Sustainable democracy requires governing institutions that are representative of and responsive to the needs of all — not just the few or the loudest.

Why Is This Important

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.

The kinds of outcomes we seek

  1. Make our political parties more responsible promoters of democracy.
  2. Replace winner-take-all elections with more proportional systems of representation.
  3. Legalize fusion voting to help break the two-party doom loop.

What Impact Have We Had

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.

Impact in the News

Fusion voting, explained

Fusion voting allows more than one political party to nominate the same candidate on the ballot, empowering minor parties to unite a cross-ideological coalition behind a single candidate

December 19, 2023

  • Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow
  • Analysis
Pro Rep Collage

Proportional representation, explained

Proportional representation is an electoral system that elects multiple representatives in each district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them.

December 5, 2023

  • Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow
  • Analysis
Voters voting in 2020.

How electoral reform happens

The experiences of New Zealand, Italy, and Japan provide a template, and show how reforming electoral systems can be a powerful way to address problems of parties, legitimacy, and democracy.

September 12, 2023

  • Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow
  • Analysis
Michigan Stop Gerrymandering booth

Proportional representation and gerrymandering

Proportional electoral systems largely eliminate both the built-in bias inherent to the single-seat model and the effects of partisan manipulation.

September 12, 2023

  • Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow
  • Analysis
Presidential podium in front of the White House.

Proportional representation and presidentialism

A myth haunts conversations about proportional representation in America. It is the belief that proportional representation requires a parliamentary system. We’re here to kill this myth.

September 12, 2023

  • Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow
  • Analysis
Protestors and counterprotestors at a MAGA march in 2020.

Proportional representation and polarization

With better representation and more equal weight given to citizens’ votes in elections, the zero-sum nature of politics could begin to change.

September 12, 2023

  • Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow
  • Analysis
Joe Biden and Donald Trump at the 2020 presidential debate.

Proportional representation and political parties

Under PR, a party’s share of members in a legislature would roughly match its share of the vote in the last election, even for parties that only get 10 or 20 percent of the vote.

September 12, 2023

  • Shaping the Democracy of Tomorrow
  • Analysis