Power to the People? Free and Fair Elections in a Deeply Divided America
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Benjamin Franklin famously warned that our government is a republic, if we can keep it. Most Americans don’t follow the highly pitched partisan battles that are waged over the redrawing of electoral districts after each decennial census. Yet, as we head into the 2022 midterm elections, a flurry of court rulings have upended the maps put in place by state legislators, finding them to be the product of illegal gerrymandering. And in the wake of the contentious 2020 election and the ongoing pandemic, states have enacted new voting laws, while local election administrators have become the targets of political ire, leading to significant turnover in their ranks. Under such circumstances, how can we ensure that our democracy is truly representative?
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