We can change the structure of elections in America to make them more free, more democratic, and more fair to every voter.
The Median Voter Theorem is a Clarity Trap
What the Democratic party needs - what it demands - is bold, persistent experimentation
How Media – Namely News, Ads and Social Posts – Can Shape an Election
How Media – Namely News, Ads and Social Posts – Can Shape an Election
Priorities | celeste4sos.com
The right to vote, better representation and election integrity.
The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy
Abstract The Dispersion of Power is an urgent call to rethink centuries of conventional wisdom about what democracy is, why it matters, and how to make it better. Drawing from history, social science, psychology, and critical theory, it explains why elections do not and cannot realize the classic ideal of popular rule, and why prevailing strategies of democratic reform often make things worse. Instead, Bagg argues, we should see democracy as a way of protecting public power from capture—an alternative vision that is at once more realistic and more inspiring. Despite their many shortcomings, real-world elections do prevent the most extreme forms of tyranny, and are therefore indispensable. In dealing with the vast inequalities that remain, however, we cannot rely on standard solutions such as electoral reform, direct democracy, deliberation, and participatory governance. Instead, Bagg shows, protecting and enriching democracy requires addressing underlying inequalities of power directly. In part, this entails substantive policies attacking the advantages of wealthy elites. Even more crucially, deepening democracy requires the organization of oppositional, countervailing power among ordinary people. Neither task is easy, but historical precedents exist in both cases—and if democracy is to survive contemporary crises, leaders and citizens alike must find ways to revive and reinvent these essential democratic practices for the twenty-first century.
Five dimensions of scaling democratic deliberation: With and beyond AI
DemocracyNext's new paper on Five dimensions of scaling democratic deliberation: With and beyond AI
Donate to the candidates on the front lines of the fight against MAGA gerrymandering
These are Democratic state candidates in *extremely* close races
Contextualizing the 2024 Election: It's the (Knowledge) Economy, Stupid
The urban v. rural divide, the gender divide and the diploma divide are all proxies for the most fundamental division in contemporary U.S. politics
Opinion | This Is What Will Ruin Public Opinion Polling for Good
Instead of navigating the obstacles to conduct polls with human respondents, pollsters are running A.I. simulations instead. Why?
Likely voters lean more Democratic for November's midterms, a change from past cycles
In every wave of our poll this year, screening for likely voters has nudged the congressional generic ballot a point or two bluer
Another now: dispatches from an alternative present
What would a fair and equal society actually look like?…
New Project to Tackle the Challenge of Scaling Democratic Innovations | CoP CC on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy
The “Missing Link” between Research and Society
Cambridge Analytica and the end of elections
The latest Cambridge Analytica leaks show just how compromised voting - one of the pillars of democracy - has become.
Heterogeneous participation and allocation skews: when is choice "worth it"?
A core ethos of the Economics and Computation (EconCS) community is that people have complex private preferences and information of which the central planner is unaware, but which an appropriately designed mechanism can uncover to improve collective decisionmaking. This ethos underlies the community's largest deployed success stories, from stable matching systems to participatory budgeting. I ask: is this choice and information aggregation ``worth it''? In particular, I discuss how such systems induce \textit{heterogeneous participation}: those already relatively advantaged are, empirically, more able to pay time costs and navigate administrative burdens imposed by the mechanisms. I draw on three case studies, including my own work -- complex democratic mechanisms, resident crowdsourcing, and school matching. I end with lessons for practice and research, challenging the community to help reduce participation heterogeneity and design and deploy mechanisms that meet a ``best of both worlds'' north star: \textit{use preferences and information from those who choose to participate, but provide a ``sufficient'' quality of service to those who do not.}
Democracy is an epistemic discipline, it only works if truth can constrain power. Without a faster, more transparent architecture for shared reality, the arc of democracy bends away from substance, through simulation, and toward authoritarianism. Without major action, it's the inevitable end state.
