The last day of the election season, I am seized with the same anxieties that so many people are. But we should also take note of some major positives in this election, which are already true, regardless of Tuesday’s outcome. They confound some of the accepted critiques of our democracy and create a base to […]
Miles Rapoport
Miles Rapoport is the co-author of 100% Democracy and the executive director of 100% Democracy: An Initiative for Universal Voting and a senior fellow at the Ash Center of the Harvard Kennedy School. He served as secretary of state in Connecticut and is a member of the board of The American Prospect.
Posted inSpecial Report
Solve Inequality with Democracy
We both work in New York City, where the deepening inequality documented in the preceding articles is palpable in everyday life. Housing prices in Manhattan recently reached an average of $1 million, a cost that requires annual earnings of about $400,000 to amortize. Looking at the country as a whole, CEOs in the financial sector […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Ballot Boxing
Six months after the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) — whose passage was sparked by the disputed 2000 presidential vote — became law, the action on election reform has shifted to the state level. State governments are now charged with implementing the legislation, and while that poses the danger that some states will take […]
Posted inFeatures
Restoring the Vote
The disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies is one of the great exclusions of civic life in the United States. The problem’s dimensions are large and growing larger. As of 1998, according to the Sentencing Project’s groundbreaking 1999 report Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States, 3.9 million Americans […]
Posted inFeatures
Democracy’s Moment
If nothing else, the 2000 election mess has begun to produce real political engagement and debate about democracy. For some this debate will focus narrowly on improving election equipment and modernizing election administration. Conservatives may even try to turn the debate to one that restricts voting opportunities under the guise of efficiency, racial neutrality, and […]
Posted inHousing and Transportation
Winning With Tax Reform: The Connecticut Story
I n October of 1991, 40,000 furious citizens massed in Hartford at the State Capitol, protesting Connecticut’s new income tax, cursing and spitting on Governor Lowell Weicker, and threatening legislators with political extinction. One month later, Democrats in New Jersey were routed by an irate electorate in retribution for the passage of changes in the […]