A Roadmap To Ensure All Americans Are Effectively Represented by Their Government

Americans must transform their outdated democracy into one that is strong and effective for the 21st century. The good news is that commonsense reforms can update the broken structures of government, allow people to meaningfully choose their elected leaders, and enable them to share political power so that those leaders collaborate on solutions to improve the lives of all Americans. A modernized democracy would help ensure that the U.S. system is less subject to the corrupting influences of political minorities or wealthy special interests that rig the rules or stoke extremism to protect their power.

A roadmap to reimagining democracy should focus on the following areas, among others:

• Protecting and expanding the right to vote. Citizens have no voice if they cannot vote. It is critical that Congress pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and that federal and state lawmakers implement a range of policies to remove and prevent discriminatory barriers to voting, make voting more accessible, and protect the election process—including from harmful foreign influence.
• Drawing fair and competitive district maps. New federal laws, such as the Freedom to Vote Act, and state laws are needed to ensure district maps are drawn in a nonpartisan, neutral manner. Voters should be able to pick their elected officials, rather than politicians picking their voters. This reform would help reduce extreme partisanship that often grinds government to a halt.
• Restructuring elections and ensuring Americans have a stronger voice in policy. Changes to electoral systems, such as open primaries with ranked choice voting, among others, can provide voters with better representation, more choices, and incentivize candidates to focus on consensus building and governing. And where state legislatures are unwilling or unable to pass laws reflecting the will of the people, ballot measures can help provide voters with the power to bypass these barriers and make the change they want.
• Electing presidents via popular vote. Voters should directly elect presidents, instead of via the outmoded Electoral College. In two of the last six presidential elections, the United States elected a president who did not win the most votes nationwide, undermining the principle of one person, one vote.
• Reforming the U.S. Senate filibuster. Senators should rewrite their self-imposed rules, which have been abused in recent years by a small minority in the chamber to halt progress on popular policies. New filibuster rules should give the political minority meaningful rights to debate and amend legislation, while still providing the majority a path toward eventual passage. This would incentivize senators to cooperate on shaping policies that Americans care deeply about.
• Statehood for Washington, D.C. The more than 700,000 residents of the District of Columbia deserve the rights and privileges of statehood. Congress should pass a law to make Washington, D.C., a state.
• Reforms to help ensure politicians listen to people, not money. In a vibrant democracy, every citizen’s voice should matter, regardless of how much money they have. Enacting strong disclosure laws, implementing campaign finance reforms that empower small donors, and prohibiting political spending by foreign-influenced U.S. corporations can help Americans take back political power from corporations and wealthy special interests.
• A stronger system of checks and balances. U.S. democracy needs a stronger system of checks and balances and limits on executive branch abuses of power and corruption. Necessary reforms include fortifying the protection of the civil service and reforming the Insurrection Act to make it harder for a president to misuse the military—within U.S. borders—to suppress constitutionally protected protest. A broad range of antiauthoritarian reforms are contained in the federal Protect Our Democracy Act.
• Ethics laws with teeth. Passing ethics and lobbying reforms, such as banning individual stock ownership by members of Congress and imposing stronger ethics requirements for presidents, can help reduce the corrupting influence of wealthy special interest money and help Americans hold elected officials accountable.
• Protecting fundamental rights and stopping the politicization of the minoritarian U.S. Supreme Court. To help ensure that the Supreme Court is acting in the best interests of all Americans and protecting fundamental rights, justices must be subject to a binding, enforceable code of ethics. Broader reforms such as term limits, ending judge and forum shopping, and expanding mandatory jurisdiction are also necessary to ensure that the court places facts over partisan agendas.

These commonsense reforms are the keys to a robust, effective, and responsive democracy. Americans should work together across the ideological spectrum to implement these solutions and build the modern democracy they deserve.