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      US House passes voting rights bill, restoring critical provision of landmark law

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      US voting rightsUS House passes voting rights bill, restoring critical provision of landmark lawBill that requires places with history of discrimination to be under federal supervision passes 219-212 – but could fail in the Senate Sam Levine in New YorkTue 24 Aug 2021 19.25 EDTLast modified on Tue 24 Aug 2021 22.25 EDTThe US House of Representatives has passed an update to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, restoring a critical provision of the landmark civil rights law that requires places with a history of voting discrimination to be under federal supervision.The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed 219-212 on a party-line vote.Kamala Harris Vietnam trip delayed after two US officials report Havana syndromeRead moreThe bill now faces an uncertain future in the US Senate, where it needs the support of 10 Republican Senators to overcome the filibuster and pass. While Senator Joe Manchin, a key Democratic swing vote, supports the bill, just one Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has indicated that she does.The House passed a similar version of the legislation in 2019, gaining just one GOP vote, but it never passed the Senate, which was then under GOP control.The legislation is one of two pillars of congressional Democrats’ push to protect voting rights. It sets a 25-year look-back period for assessing voting rights in jurisdictions. If courts have documented at least 15 voting rights violations in a state over that period, the state will have to get any change in voting rules approved by the federal government before it goes into effect (if the violation is committed by the state as a whole only 10 violations are required to trigger federal oversight).The updated formula comes eight years after the US supreme court said the formula in the law that determined which states were subject to pre-clearance was outdated and struck it down. Voting advocates have said that ruling, in a case called Shelby County v Holder, has offered states a green light to discriminate against Black voters.“Old battles have indeed become new again. While literacy tests and poll taxes no longer exist, certain states and local jurisdictions have passed laws that are modern day barriers to voting,” Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat who represents Selma in Congress, said on the floor of the House Tuesday.The states that would have to get election changes approved are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, Peyton McCrary, a former Justice Department historian, testified earlier this month. Several large counties in the US, including Los Angeles county in California, Cook county in Illinois, Westchester county in New York, Cuyahoga County in Ohio, and Northampton County in Virginia could also be covered, according to McCrary.The law also outlines several procedures that would be subject to federal pre-clearance everywhere in the country, including changes to voter ID laws, reductions in polling locations and changes in policies that determine who gets removed from the voter rolls.Republicans decried the measure as unnecessary, saying it gives the federal government too much power to oversee elections.“If you vote for this legislation, you are voting for a federal takeover of elections,” said congressman Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican. “I hope my colleagues and the American people will see this bill for what it is, a partisan power-grab.”During debate on the bill, Democrats scoffed at the notion that the bill was not needed. They noted it came as Republican lawmakers across the country have taken up hundreds of bills to enact voting restrictions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described it as “the worst voter suppression campaign in America since Jim Crow”.While federal pre-clearance is the most touted portion of the bill, the legislation also includes several other new provisions to protect voting rights. It essentially undoes a supreme court decision from earlier this year that makes it extremely difficult to bring challenges to voting laws under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It also strengthens protections under the Voting Rights Act for minority voters during the redistricting process.The legislation would also address two issues that emerged in the unprecedented slew of litigation during the 2020 election. First, courts could not simply decline to strike down a law because an election is close – something that several courts did in 2020. Second, courts would have to offer an explanation for their reasoning in voting rights cases, a provision designed to take aim at the supreme court’s practice of not issuing explanations in emergency cases on its “shadow docket.”Beyond the John Lewis bill, Democrats are also trying to pass the For The People Act, sweeping legislation that would outlaw severe partisan gerrymandering, set minimum requirements for early voting and require automatic, same-day and online voter registration, among other measures. Voting rights experts say both measures are needed to fully protect voting rights, though Democrats have not unveiled a plan to get either around the filibuster.TopicsUS voting rightsUS politicsDemocratsUS CongressRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Our Own Worst Enemy review: a caustic diagnosis of America after Trump

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      BooksOur Own Worst Enemy review: a caustic diagnosis of America after TrumpTom Nichols quotes Abraham Lincoln – on how American democracy can only be brought down from within Lloyd GreenSun 22 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 22 Aug 2021 02.01 EDTLiberal democracy is under attack from within. Institutional trust erodes. Fewer than one in six Americans believe democracy is working well, nearly half think democracy isn’t functioning properly, and 38% say democracy is simply doing meh. Atomization, bowling alone and nihilism have converged at the ballot box.The Reckoning by Mary L Trump review – how to heal America’s traumaRead moreRepublicans are hellbent on shoving the events of 6 January, when supporters of Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol, down a deep memory hole. GOP governors in Florida, Mississippi and Texas remain sanguine as Covid-19 dispatches children to intensive care. Seven months into his presidency, Joe Biden looks to some like Jimmy Carter redux, competence and judgment seriously doubted, allies strained and divided. FDR, he’s definitely not.Into this morass parachutes Tom Nichols, with a meditation on the state of American democracy. Nichols grew up in a working-class home in Massachusetts and is now a professor at the US Naval War College and the Harvard Extension School. He is also a Never Trump conservative.In his eighth book, Nichols is pessimistic. “Decades of constant complaint,” he writes, “regularly aired in the midst of continual improvements in living standards, have finally taken their toll.”The enemy, Nichols asserts, is “us”. Citizens of democracies, he writes, “must now live with the undeniable knowledge that they are capable of embracing illiberal movements and attacking their own liberties”.As if to prove his point, Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, recently made light of Trump’s attempts to have the Department of Justice subvert the election result. Even with Trump out of office, Senator Lindsay Graham continues to play first golf buddy, Renfield to Trump’s Count Dracula. A majority of congressional Republicans voted against certifying the 2020 election.In 2016, Nichols urged conservatives to vote for Hillary Clinton because Trump was “too mentally unstable” – far from the “very stable genius” he would later claim to be.In Our Own Worst Enemy, Nichols quotes Abraham Lincoln on how threats to American democracy always come from within: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” Nichols sees the internet and the “revolution in communications” as the means by which we reached this dark point.Public life has become ever more about dopamine hits, instant reaction and heightened animus. Our fellow citizens double as our enemies. Electronic proximity breeds contempt, not introspection. Social media and cable television provide a community for those who lack a three-dimensional version.Nichols looks to ancient Greece for a reminder that nothing lasts forever. Admiringly, he quotes Pericles, the Athenian general and orator – but observes that Pericles was not around when his city state collapsed. He died two years earlier, behind “the besieged walls of Athens – from a plague”.History can repeat itself.In September 2016, writing in the Claremont Journal of Books under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, Michael Anton declared the contest between Trump and Clinton the “Flight 93 Election”: a reference to the plane that came down in Pennsylvania on 9/11 when passengers attacked their hijackers. Clinton, he argued, simply had to be stopped. First principles of conservatism could therefore be jettisoned.“Charge the cockpit or you die,” Anton thundered. “You may die anyway … There are no guarantees.”What, he asked, must be done “against a tidal wave of dysfunction, immorality and corruption?” To Anton, for the right, respect for “democratic and constitutional niceties” was ultimately a sucker’s game. Culture was stacked against them.After a stint as a Rudy Giuliani speechwriter, and other stops along the way, Anton joined Trump’s national security council.Later this year the Claremont Institute will honor Ron DeSantis. At a press conference earlier this month, the Florida governor asked: “Would I rather have 5,000 [Covid-19] cases among 20-year-olds or 500 cases among seniors? I would rather have the younger.”A few weeks later, the Sunshine State is getting the worst of both worlds.Simple decency, it seems, is for losers. Amid the last presidential campaign, comparisons between the US and the Weimar Republic were rife. The January insurrection was seen as our “Reichstag fire”. The attackers came from the right.Nichols absorbs and abhors it all. Not surprisingly, he takes particular aim at the populist right, which he says has been the “main threat” to liberal democracy over the past two decades. That is subject to debate, which Nichols acknowledges. Regardless, he writes that the populist right “is a movement rooted in nostalgia and social revenge”.As if to make Nichols’ point, Lauren Boebert, the hard-right, QAnon-adjacent Republican congresswoman from Colorado, recently trashed Biden for having left America’s friends in Afghanistan in the lurch – after voting last month against granting 8,000 immigration visas to Afghans who assisted the US military.‘We dodged a mortar round’: George Packer on America in crisisRead moreOther GOP diehards who opposed the legislation include Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks and Paul Gosar. Greene and Gosar were charter members of the de facto white nationalist America First caucus. After a bomb threat on the Capitol this week, Brooks tweeted: “I understand citizenry anger directed at dictatorial socialism and its threat to liberty, freedom and the very fabric of American society.”Considering what ails America, Nichols offers limited prescriptions. He supports bridging the gap between civilian and military life. The progeny of the coastal elites opt for Ivy League colleges over the service academies, reinstatement of the draft isn’t likely and notions of national service all too frequently amount to “little more” than a paid internship, he writes.Concurrently, rightwing “Spartanism” breeds the unsustainable notion that “‘citizens’ and ‘soldiers’ are not the same people”.Nichols urges America’s youth to spend a summer in uniform, exposed to military life and skills. Most won’t join the army, he thinks, but will come away with a better knowledge of the soldier’s life. Right now, he laments, “there is no longer any common experience related to national defense”.Indeed. America has become one nation separated by a common language.
      Our Own Worst Enemy is published in the US by Oxford University Press
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      Congress Adjourns While the Nation Burns

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      While the fate of many in Afghanistan hangs in the balance, at least Americans at home can breathe a sigh of relief. Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate are on vacation for weeks to come. Citizens of the nation’s capital can recapture their identity from the out-of-town blowhards who give Washington a bad name. The trick now will be to encourage as many Republicans as possible to stay away for good. Admittedly, this may take another election to accomplish, but it is important to get to work on it now.

      On the Senate side of the Capitol, both Democrats and Republicans are leaving town with their party balloons still in the air in celebration of a bill to fund repair and replacement of a portion of the nation’s hard infrastructure that has crumbled before their very eyes for decades. It has become so rare that both parties can agree on anything that the celebration far outweighs the accomplishment. After all that hard work, it seems that it is time for a “well-deserved” weeks-long vacation, the other topic that receives regular bipartisan support.

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      On the House of Representatives side, things are a little more complicated. That group of dedicated public servants adjourned on July 30 for seven weeks, although a short recall is possible for a symbolic vote or two along the way. To be fair, they did pass some meaningful legislation in the last few months. However, only one such piece of legislation has passed the Senate as well and been signed into law — Joe Biden’s initial COVID-19 relief bill (American Rescue Plan). But at least they tried to find legislative solutions on some significant issues, the most important of which are voting rights and police reform.

      With all those senators and representatives now vacationing, it would be easy to conclude from this casual approach to governance that the nation is smoothly sailing to its appointed destiny of renewed greatness. Nothing could be further from the truth.

      There is so much that is so obviously wrong at the moment in today’s America that even the appearance of a weeks-long hiatus should ethically disqualify those vacationing legislators from further service. A “grateful” nation should retire all of them. But that won’t happen, in part because each of them will have a spin machine at work full-time rolling out the tale of just how hard they are working on the issues of the day back in their districts.

      While You Were Vacationing

      Lest you think that I am being a little hard on these self-congratulatory public servants, let’s take a look at what is going on around the nation and around the world while the US Congress has freed itself of its legislative responsibilities.

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      First, and most obvious, COVID-19 is again ravaging the nation. So, instead of collectively working on urgent public health initiatives, like vaccination mandates, the vacationing legislators are individually on the stump creating more public health confusion. Much of the idiocy makes enough local news that it fortifies those in the caves, covens and churches in Republican districts and states as they go about their communities spreading the disease. The only upside is that many of the vacationing Republican congresspersons are spending their time hanging out with their unmasked and unvaccinated constituents.

      Meanwhile, a country that clings to the notion that the current version of universal suffrage has become a critical component of its “democratic” foundation is in the throes of an unrelenting Republican-led effort to do everything possible to make voting more difficult and less universal. The reasons for this are simple: racism and privilege. Universal suffrage to white conservatives is only a good thing if the “universe” is overwhelmingly composed of right-wing white people. Unfortunately for that dwindling crowd, the universe includes a lot of black and brown people, and a whole bunch of young people who see “universal” as a plus.

      There is an easy way to stop the reversal of the democratic process in America. It is to pass legislation at the national level that sets clear voting rights standards, that increases access to the ballot for all eligible voters and that provides fierce enforcement measures to ensure legal compliance. But you can’t do any of this on vacation.

      While many of those vacationing legislators may come face-to-face with constituents in places where everything is burning, and heatwaves, drought and smoke spread daily devastation, nothing can be done about this either while on vacation. Therefore, environmental laws, climate change legislation, and economic incentives and regulatory mandates remain on hold. The legal framework for cleaner energy production, research and use remains unchanged and woefully inadequate to meet today’s planetary challenges.

      While climate change is taking its deadly toll during the congressional vacation season, we should not forget about gun violence and police violence. Hardly a day goes by in America without multiple firearm deaths and some measure of police overreaction or undertraining resulting in the death or serious injury of someone in some community that the cops are supposed to be protecting. It will be hard to get a full tally from these events over the coming vacation weeks, but every congressperson knows that critically-needed federal legislation to address rampant gun violence and police reform will be on hold, as well.

      No matter how completely oblivious most Americans have become to gun violence (until it hits very close to home), America remains the most likely developed country in which at any moment someone is being killed or killing themselves with a firearm. Since it has been a few weeks now since the nation’s latest high-profile mass killing, it will be hard to make it to the end of this congressional vacation without another one. Thoughts and prayers are all we get when Congress is in session, so their absence shouldn’t change the landscape much on this one. But we should all be disgusted that these public servants can go on vacation while the gun carnage continues unabated and has remained unaddressed in meaningful federal legislation for decades.

      The List Goes On

      I could go on. The list is long. But so is the vacation. Think about how a functioning legislature might be able to make some legislative progress in the coming weeks on universal access to meaningful health care, child care and family leave, a living minimum wage, tax reform and access to quality education.

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      There might even be the opportunity to debate the crippling and continuing impact of America’s systemic racism and how to do something about it. And maybe if they weren’t all on vacation, they could do something constructive, instead of sound bites, about the implementation of America’s long-overdue withdrawal from Afghanistan and its human rights implications, about immigrants and refugees, and about ensuring that the vaccines that Americans are throwing away get into the arms of those begging for them elsewhere.

      They could be doing some of this, but they are doing none of it. They are on vacation.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Democrats’ divisions could still derail infrastructure bills

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      US politicsDemocrats’ divisions could still derail infrastructure bills Pelosi and Schumer pledging to follow two-track strategy to pass a $3.5tn reconciliation bill first Hugo Lowellin WashingtonSun 15 Aug 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 15 Aug 2021 05.01 EDTJoe Biden’s economic vision has taken a major step toward becoming reality after the US Senate passed two infrastructure measures, but widening political divisions within the Democratic party could yet derail the entire legislative package.The Senate last week advanced a sprawling $3.5tn budget blueprint for “soft” infrastructure projects to tackle climate change and health care, a day after approving a $1tr bipartisan infrastructure bill to rebuild the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges.But even as Senate Democrats congratulated themselves on pushing through both measures, the fate of Biden’s economic priorities rests on House Democrats clearing several more looming hurdles as well as uniting the party’s left and right.The challenges facing the two infrastructure measures reflects the difficulty in trying to force bipartisan compromise in a deeply divided House and Senate where the Democrats possess only narrow majorities.Liberal Democrats who have bristled at seeing their top climate and social priorities jettisoned as Biden sought an elusive bipartisan compromise with moderate Senate Republicans may seek to change elements of the package, which could upend the delicate legislation.At a minimum, progressives have insisted the House delay considering the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the Senate passes a far larger climate and health bill – something not expected until the fall, and against the hopes of centrist House Democrats.In order to deliver the president’s agenda, Democrats are pursuing a two-track approach that involves Congress passing both measures, starting with the $1tn bipartisan compromise that funnels $550bn of new money into traditional infrastructure projects.The second half of the strategy involves the House and Senate passing the climate and health bill, crafted on the basis of the $3.5tn budget blueprint, and passed using reconciliation, a fast-track process that allows Democrats to bypass a Republican filibuster – a procedural convention that can derail legislation.The Democrats’ plan is backstopped by an ironclad commitment from the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, that the House will not take up the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the Senate first passes the reconciliation bill, which will take weeks to hammer out in the 50-50 Senate.The move by Pelosi is aimed at trying to balance the competing demands between progressives demanding maximum spending and more fiscally conservative centrists – all while ensuring that both measures are in the end enacted.When the speaker navigated through a similar two-track strategy to approve the Affordable Care Act under President Barack Obama in 2010, the bill passed notwithstanding the defections of three Democrats in the Senate and three dozen in the House.Pelosi now holds such a razor-thin majority in the House that she can afford only three Democratic defections to pass the bipartisan bill and the reconciliation bill if the votes are along party lines. Protest votes from either faction could sink the entire effort.But growing discontent about the legislation on both sides on Capitol Hill signals the prospect of an even more bitter and protracted intra-party fight over the future of the legislation in the coming weeks and months.The speaker on Wednesday reaffirmed her position to House Democrats during a closed-door caucus meeting that the Senate would have to first pass the $3.5tr reconciliation bill before the House would move to consider the bipartisan bill.“The votes in the House and Senate depend on us having both bills,” Pelosi told House Democrats, referencing the thin majorities in both chambers, according to a source familiar with the speaker’s remarks.That means the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, will need his committee chairs to finalize the language for the reconciliation bill and gain the approval of centrist Senate Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin before the House can proceed.In an added complication, both Sinema and Manchin have sounded the alarm in recent days over the cost of the $3.5tr budget blueprint that will guide the reconciliation bill, though they joined their colleagues in voting to allow the framework to pass.The possibility that Democrats could get both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the reconciliation bill has outraged Republicans, who have vowed to try to derail the $3.5tr package, which Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell likened to a “reckless tax-and-spending spree”.Challenges in the House also returned on Friday after a group of nine House Democratic moderates threatened in a letter to vote against the $3.5tn budget blueprint when the House returns the week of 23 August, if Pelosi didn’t pass the bipartisan bill first.The missive called on the speaker to abandon her two-track timetable so members vulnerable in 2022 could sell the bill to voters. “We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law,” the nine moderates wrote in a letter, which a House Democratic leadership aide described as “highly problematic”.Threats from moderates have infuriated progressive Democrats, who, emboldened by their successful effort to twist the Biden administration to introduce a new eviction moratorium, have repeatedly warned House Democratic leaders not to deviate from their original plan.In a letter to Pelosi on Tuesday, the leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said a poll of their 96 members confirmed a majority would withhold their support for the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the Senate passed the reconciliation bill.White House officials have said that they remain closely attuned to the growing tensions in the House and Senate. Pelosi and Biden speak regularly, and aides have started holding thrice-weekly conference calls, according to sources familiar with the matter.But top Democrats in Congress see no alternative to the path they are headed down and are hopeful that the two-track strategy will prove successful as in 2010. “I am very pleased to report that the two-track strategy is right on track,” Schumer said.TopicsUS politicsUS CongressInfrastructureDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      What does Biden’s infrastructure bill tell us about the health of US democracy? | David Litt

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      OpinionUS politicsWhat does Biden’s infrastructure bill tell us about the health of US democracy?David LittThis was the kind of bipartisan bill many observers never thought would be possible in 2021. But don’t be too quick to celebrate Thu 12 Aug 2021 06.27 EDTLast modified on Thu 12 Aug 2021 07.47 EDTIs Washington functional? This week would seem to suggest that the answer is a resounding and surprising yes. On Tuesday, 69 senators – 19 Republicans and 50 Democrats – passed the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework”, a $1tn bill that invests in everything from roads and bridges to electric grids and public transit.Kathy Hochul vows to change ‘toxic’ culture as she waits to become New York governorRead moreThis was the kind of bill many observers of American politics never thought would be possible in 2021: a major new piece of legislation that won support from both parties and will concretely improve people’s lives. The president, his staff and his allies are rightly proud of their big-deal infrastructure bill – and of the legislative skill it took to negotiate and pass it, and with final passage in the House all but inevitable, President Biden took a well-earned victory lap.“We proved that democracy can still work,” he said.But those words were clearly chosen carefully. Just because democracy can work does not mean democracy is working. In fact, a closer look at the bipartisan infrastructure framework – and the effort required to pass it – confirms just how much trouble American democracy is in.In a functioning political process, a major infrastructure bill like this one would never have passed during Joe Biden’s presidency – because it would have passed far earlier. As far back as 1998, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave America’s infrastructure a D, a grade which has barely improved in the years since. In 2007, a deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis brought the issue of infrastructure funding to the foreground, and in 2008, both parties’ presidential candidates spoke about the importance of fixing our crumbling roads, bridges and highways. Even the Trump administration, with its endless parade of infrastructure weeks, acknowledged the importance of the issue even as they failed to address it.For well more than a decade, in other words, elected leaders of both parties have agreed the state of America’s infrastructure is a serious problem. Yet it wasn’t until this week that they finally did something about it. This hardly suggests our political process is functioning as it should.This years-long delay was even more remarkable when you consider that infrastructure investment has long enjoyed massive, bipartisan support among voters. According to Gallup, practically every poll in the last five years that asked about infrastructure found overwhelming support among Americans. In theory, supporting new infrastructure projects should have been popular no matter who was president. In practice, Republicans were more interested in spending money on tax cuts for the wealthy when they had full control of government, and in denying Democratic presidents victories when they did not.For more than 10 years, Republican elected officials concluded that the benefit of doing something the American people wanted was outweighed by the benefits of obstruction and rewarding their donors. Politically speaking, this may well have been the correct conclusion. But that suggests there’s something wrong with our political process itself.Particularly since the only thing that finally did get Republicans to the table on the infrastructure bill was the near-certainty that massive infrastructure investment was happening with or without them. For the first time since 2010, Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House. Early in President Biden’s term, they committed to using reconciliation, which is immune to the Senate filibuster, to pass an infrastructure package.Republican lawmakers didn’t negotiate because they wanted to improve America’s infrastructure. They negotiated because obstruction was no longer an option. By helping to pass a bipartisan bill, they could at least get credit for popular items and perhaps convince Democratic centrists to pare down a future reconciliation package. Bipartisan legislation, in other words, was only made possible by the alternative possibility of extreme partisanship. That doesn’t change the importance of the bill – but it does suggest the process that led to its passage was hardly an inspiring display of country over party.So, yes, Washington proved that democracy can still work. But at the moment, American democracy works like this: if a large majority American people agree; and one party wins full control of Washington; and that party is able to find a procedural loophole that would let it take action without the Senate filibuster; and the president and his allies in Congress execute their legislative strategy near flawlessly; and we wait about 15 years; then politicians of both parties will come together and act. Such a political process is many things, but “functional” is not among them.And our democracy is poised to become much less functional very soon. If voting rights are further eroded, rampant partisan gerrymandering is allowed to go unchecked, and far-right judges continue to legislate from the bench without any real threat of court reform to moderate them, the gap between what the American people want and what Washington does will only widen.The same week the Senate passed the bipartisan infrastructure framework, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report declaring that we have reached “code red for humanity”. If governments don’t act soon on climate, the planet could become essentially uninhabitable, not in some hypothetical future, but within the lifetimes of Americans born today.Biden is right: this week, we proved democracy can work. But we were also reminded that we can no longer afford a democracy that works like this.
      David Litt is an American political speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author of Thanks Obama, and Democracy In One Book Or Less. He edits How Democracy Lives, a newsletter on democracy reform
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