Why Are So Many Americans Non Voters?
A record number of midterm voters participated in the congressional elections this November: 47 percent of the voting-eligible population. Yet what about the other 53 percent? We’re calling them the party of non voters. Why Aren’t They Voting? Pew Research into the...
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Study: “Trump Counties” Support Election Reforms Too
We already know that the midterm results were positive for structural election reforms for our political system. A recent analysis by the Election Reformers Network shows that a majority of voters in counties that Trump won in 2016 supported these reforms by more than...
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Former Senator: Our Political System is Rigged Against Compromise
The voters that matter to politicians are the partisan activists that play a dominant role in the major party primaries. Ideological purity and negativity work for this narrow base. A type of “pseudo competition” has evolved in recent decades that avoids...
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Why Changing the Rules is More Powerful than Arguing with Facts & Logic
On December 8, The Economist published a sobering piece entitled: “THE PARTISAN BRAIN: What psychological experiments tell you about why people deny facts.” Cognitive scientists argue that reasoning did not evolve to “help individuals achieve greater knowledge and...
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Structural Reform the Big Winner in November
The midterms were great win for structural reform from the passage of anti-gerrymandering legislation and anti-corruption acts to the successful use of ranked choice voting. Furthermore, political reform at the federal level promises to the first piece of legislation...
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The Role of Gerrymandering in the U.S.
When partisan state lawmakers redraw the congressional maps every 10 years, the bias can be so extreme as to “effectively nullify democracy.” For example, an independent study found that Republicans won as many as 22 additional U.S. House seats over what would have...
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Reforming the American Political System: News Roundup
In case you missed any of these articles we here at Change the Rules think are important talking points in the national conversation on how we can change the rules of our political system, we've compiled a list of September news articles for your reading pleasure....
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4 Tactics to Open Competition in U.S. Elections
Why do voters keep re-electing incumbents in a system they hate? Because election rules are set up to preclude genuine competition. If we want to change these rules, we need to open up competition within the DNC and RNC. We also need to allow independents to compete...
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4 Ways the Current Political Rules Limit Who Matters in Elections
The current political rules guarantee control by a small set of voters. There are four layers of rules that severely limits “who matters” to politicians and the major political parties: Non-voters don’t matter Gerrymandering excludes voters Unaffiliated voters...
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Our Two-Party Monopoly Practices Pseudo-Competition
Political parties thrive by emphasizing social and economic issues. These are wedge issues – such as pro-choice vs. pro-life – designed to drive people apart. These types of wedge issues present citizens with extreme alternatives that don’t actually solve any...
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