News & Insights

This post by By Kevin Johnson originally appeared on TalkingPointsMemo. If the stars align, Congress could soon pass a much-needed overhaul of the Electoral Count Act (ECA), the 19th-century law governing presidential electoral-vote counting, whose ambiguities helped spawn chaos on January 6th. In pushing to reform the ECA, a bipartisan group of senators is acknowledging a dangerous...

Originally published on the AP News website. [F]ederal courts have gained more legal authority to examine evidence and question witnesses, and to address claims related to state-level elections, said Kevin Johnson, executive director of the Election Reformers Network. The nonpartisan group advocates for ranked choice voting and independent redistricting among other election reforms. Mutual policing...

Originally published on the Democracy Journal website by Spenser Mestel. Of the 137 elected secretaries of state serving since 2000, one-third have endorsed a candidate running in a race under their supervision. Twelve have served as co-chair (or equivalent) of a presidential election campaign, according to Election Reformers Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to

Election Reformers Network joins with democracy activists domestically and abroad in mourning the death of W. Lindsay Lloyd, a lifelong advocate for democracy and freedom.

This op-ed originally ran on The Fulcrum. This has been a summer of gut punches to the body politic. A Supreme Court bloc cobbled together by minority-backed presidents and a norm-abusing Senate has trampled precedent and lurched to extremes on the most divisive issues of our time. A presidential election that should have been laid...

This op-ed by ERN Board Members Larry Garber and Edward McMahon originally appeared on The Hill. The power of the more than 200-year-old American model of democracy has encouraged people across the globe to fight for their rights and freedoms, often in the face of brutal authoritarians. We have personally seen the impact of U.S.

This op-ed by ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson and The People's Katie Fahey originally appeared in Bridge Michigan. In 2018, Michiganders of all sides won one of the greatest battles for basic fairness in the states history. Michigan slayed the dragon of partisan gerrymandering, taking election district drawing out of the self-dealing hands of legislators...

Originally published on The Economist website. A mostly bureaucratic endeavour is becoming a partisan battleground. Otero County, in New Mexico, is home to fewer than 70,000 people. Yet the rural municipality found unfortunate fame recently when local officials refused to certify the results of their primary elections, held on June 7th. New Mexico's secretary of state...

This post by By Kevin Johnson originally appeared on The Fulcrum. In recent months, we've gotten a crash course in the ways that our election systems are now dangerously vulnerable to partisan interference and disorder. Numerous candidates for secretary of state deny the results of the 2020 election, including several who are, or likely will...

In this session, we will take a look at the challenges facing our elections, particularly at the structures the country has used for many generations that in an era of hyperpartisanship have become sources of national vulnerability. To...