We have a President hostile to fixing the system and a Congress currently controlled by reform opponents. However, history makes clear that reform issues are cyclical in nature: the kind of scandalous system that exists today has led to major reforms in the past, and can do so again in the future.

Tag Archive for: Democracy Reforms

D21 Vice President Matt Keller Discusses Status Of Voting Rights Legislation And More In New Interview

  The Surreal News  |  Friday, December 17, 2021   “We’re on the cusp of passing the most transformational reform and voting rights legislation since Watergate,” Democracy 21 Vice President Matt Keller tells Lew Lorini, host of The Surreal News, on his program last week. The Surreal News airs weekly on WSLR-FM in Sarasota, Florida […]

E.J. Dionne Jr. In The Washington Post: President Biden, Push The Voting Bills Now

“It’s time to make it all about democracy.” – E.J. Dionne Jr. “Precisely because the dangers to democracy often don’t become obvious to everyone until it’s too late, Biden needs to make raising the alarm his priority. ‘We are in a battle for the soul of this nation,’ he said in 2019. We still are,” […]

President Biden Must Use His Bully Pulpit On Voting Rights — Now

WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE  |  DECEMBER 16, 2021 Yesterday, President Joe Biden said, “There’s nothing domestically more important than voting rights.” This is an important statement by President Biden, but it belies Biden’s damaging failure over the past 11 months to treat the enactment of voting rights legislation as a top priority for his Administration. Nevertheless, […]

The Democracy Summit Highlights The Urgent Need To Repair Our Own Democracy

  FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE  |  December 9, 2021 As the United States holds its Democracy Summit this week for more than 100 countries, our own democracy has serious credibility problems. The attempted political coup and insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, the baseless, demagogic attacks by former President Trump on the presidential election he lost, […]

Democracy 21 Report: A Timeline Of The Senate Filibuster, 1806 – 2021

  View And Download This Report As A PDF By: Fred Wertheimer, President, Democracy 21  |  December 2021 The United States Senate is facing a decision of historic consequence with the fate of our democracy at stake. Will 50 Senators plus the Vice President be able to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and override […]

As Democracy Summit Approaches, President Biden Must Make The Freedom To Vote Act His Absolute Priority, D21 Vice President Matt Keller Writes In The Hill

As the White House prepares to host a Summit for Democracy on December 9, President Joe Biden is “failing in his efforts to restore faith in American Democracy at home and abroad by standing on the sidelines as The Freedom to Vote Act is being blocked by a filibuster in the Senate,” Democracy 21 Vice President Matt Keller writes in an […]

5 Ways Trump’s Big Lie Is Setting The Stage To Rig & Steal Future Elections

FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE  |  December 2, 2021 We need to be clear-eyed about what former President Trump, his acolytes, and state and congressional Republican officeholders are doing. Trump is a habitual liar who repeatedly claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, without a shred of credible evidence to back that up. Since […]

Sue Halpern In The New Yorker: Biden’s Global Democracy Summit Raises An Awkward Question: Can Ours Endure?

In the months since President Joe Biden took office, “the prospects for improving American democracy have dimmed considerably,” Sue Halpern writes today on The New Yorker website. “It’s against this gloomy backdrop that the Biden Administration will be hosting a virtual Summit for Democracy in early December, with invitees from more than a hundred countries. […]

E.J. Dionne Jr. In The Washington Post: “The Hypocrisy Argument On The Filibuster Is Itself Phony”

In a new op-ed, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. lays out the urgent need to reform the filibuster: “[T]he core reason the filibuster must be reformed is the moral imperative of passing bills to defend democracy.” Reforming the filibuster, Dionne writes, is the only way to “undo the voter suppression and election subversion laws […]

Nearly 9 Months And Still No Senate Action On Voting Rights. Here’s Why.

FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | November 18, 2021 On March 3, the House of Representatives passed the For the People Act, landmark legislation to establish fair voting rules for federal elections and to stop voter suppression efforts in the states. Now, some nine months later, the Senate has failed to act on – or even […]