Remaking the Ballot

American democracy is broken.

Political polarization is driving our country apart. Politicians spend the majority of their time fundraising, rather than lawmaking. Feeling that their votes don’t matter (in many cases, rightly so), voters sit out election day. Congress sits paralyzed as a capricious executive and biased judiciary continue to grab power and wield it on a whim.

Meanwhile, the real problems our country faces — a skyrocketing cost of living, shared infrastructure crumbling, the first waves of the climate crisis beating on our shores — sit unaddressed.

This isn’t how it ought to be. It’s still possible to picture a world where Congress solves the great problems of our time, oversees a functioning government, and feels accountable to voters.¹

But is this dream unattainable in our modern world of social media and nationalized politics?

In short: no.

This isn’t how it has to be. Our situation is not one of chance, but rather the inevitable result of how our electoral system — the set of rules of how we elect representatives — was designed. Those rules aren’t set in stone; it’s possible to reform them.²

The question — the challenge — then before us: how should we reform our government?³

There are a dizzying number of options. Top-two primaries? Algorithmic redistricting? Term limits for Congress? I intend for this blog to serve as a resource explaining the various options, pointing out any counter-intuitive drawbacks,⁴ and discussing how feasible it would be to actually enact each one.

This site is very much a work in progress. New pages will continue to be added. If there’s a topic you’d like to see, something you think I’ve missed, or feedback on the site, you are welcome to email me at remakingtheballot@gmail.com.

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1. I had originally written “listens” to voters, but I’d rather have perceived accountability.
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2. Indeed, we’ve done so before! As an example, the direct election of Senators is a relatively recent major change (as the 17th amendment was ratified in 1913) — and the modern primary system only dates back to the 1980s. ↩︎
3. This is an old question, the same one the Framers faced when they accepted the failure of the old Articles of Confederation. ↩︎
4. For example, those three examples I just gave all have clear downsides. ↩︎