American Democracy in Peril

“Protect our democracy” has been the clarion call for those opposed to another Trump presidency and a warning for those who remain on the fence.  Not without good reason.  During his presidential term and in the four years that followed, Trump has shown a disregard or active hostility to the institutions and procedures meant to…

Federal law mandates that when a voter is turned away because her name cannot be found on the voter rolls, she must be offered the opportunity to cast a ‘provisional ballot.’[i]  That ballot is set aside and later counted if election officials can verify the voter’s eligibility.  The idea is that no eligible citizen should…

The United States Constitution is and has been the cornerstone of American democracy. For more than a century, Americans have revered our governing document. But it was not always that way. In an 1854 speech at an Anti-Slavery Society rally in Boston, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution “a covenant with death and an…

If democracy is government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” then there exists, to this day, a residuum of democracy in America. It is found mainly at the local level, in towns and smaller cities, and even up to the scale of some of the smaller states. Even at these levels it…