| By: Hedrick Smith
Washington – What gets lost in the partisan passions in the homestretch of American elections is that political reforms to make our democracy fairer and more open are also on the ballot, thanks mostly to grass roots activists sick of the hyper-partisan warfare in Washington and tired of We the People being shut out of power.
In Michigan this year, a grass roots movement spread like wildfire from a single Facebook post by Katie Fahey a 28-year-old grad student, who was fed up with rigged elections. In 2011, Michigan’s Republican-led legislature drew district maps that enabled Republicans running for Congress to get almost two-thirds of the state’s seats while winning less than half of the statewide popular vote. Fahey sparked a petition drive that put gerrymander reform on the ballot next month. Ohio voters have already passed gerrymander reform this year and it also goes before voters in Colorado, Missouri, and Utah next month.
In Baltimore and Denver, voters get to decide on public funding of political campaigns to offset the power of Mega-Donors, whether corporations, unions or billionaires. Late May, in Montgomery County, Md, a region with a new public funding program and more population than six states, a publicly funded candidate beat a wealthy businessman in a race for the county’s top political job.
In Florida, a ballot initiative will let voters decide whether to restore the voting rights of 1.5 million former felons who have served their time. In Massachusetts, another ballot measure promoted by the non-profit group American Promise would put bite behind the state’s call for a constitutional amendment to roll back the Citizens United decision and restore the power of Congress to regulate campaign finances.
Rebellion at the Grass Roots
For every flaw in our politics – dark money, vote suppression, gerrymandering, Citizens United, Mega-Donors, hyper-partisanship – grassroots reformers are putting solutions to work at the state level. This is not a story of left vs right, Republicans vs Democrats. It’s often a story of the People vs the Politicians, of We the People rising up against fat cats and entrenched power brokers in order to take back our democracy. |
