The sun may be setting on American Democracy.
We can’t let that happen.
Fortify Democracy supports common-sense electoral reforms that address the root cause of today’s political dysfunction.
We support upgrading the American electoral system in order to protect democracy from rising authoritarian threats and ensure all voters have genuine choices at the ballot box.
By championing approval voting, final-four nonpartisan primaries and abolition of the Electoral College, Fortify Democracy aims to future-proof our democracy by reducing partisan extremism and empowering voters to support every candidate who reflects their values.
We call for broad nationwide adoption of these reforms, making expanded voter choice the central issue for the upcoming midterm elections and uniting diverse groups—displaced conservatives, independents, and frustrated liberals—behind a common cause of restoring representative government
How did it come to this?
It doesn’t matter who you voted for before now. If we’re going to fix the problems with our country, what matters most is what we do next. And we can all play a role in addressing the root causes that led us to this moment.
But in order to understand how we fix this — how we get back to the America that we once knew and loved – we first have to understand how we arrived at this moment.
This is not the America our Founding Fathers envisioned.
In Federalist 10, James Madison warned of the danger of what he called “Faction.”
Madison believed that as our country grew, so would its diversity of thought. He believed that the larger number of groups would stop our country from being taken over by any single one of them, protecting us from those who would trample on the rights of others to get their way.
Madison and his fellow Founding Fathers didn’t realize — and couldn’t have known — that the voting system we use would ultimately make the very thing that worried them most a reality.
Fortifying Democracy through Electoral Reform
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Approval Voting
The plurality voting system we use today is the root cause of the problems our country now faces. The best solutions address root causes. That’s why we support a simple change to how we select candidates when we vote.
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Nonpartisan Primaries
The partisan primary process contributes to the ever-increasing gap between right and left. When politicians need to seek appeal beyond their base, we all win.
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National Popular Vote
The Electoral College is problematic on its own. it makes votes in one state more valuable than another, and it dictates which constituencies presidential candidates care about. A national popular vote is just common sense.