Elections are vital to all democracies: The authority of the government comes solely from the consent of the governed. But millions of Americans don’t trust the electoral process and have highly negative views of politics.. Many have little or no confidence that all votes will be fairly and accurately counted.
What should be done to improve our elections? We discuss reforms that both conservative reds and liberals blues can endorse. Some may surprise you, including ending gerrymandering and the unanimous recommendation on requiring ID to vote.
The Braver Angels Trustworthy Elections Initiative held 26 workshops with nearly 200 evenly-balanced Red and Blue participants. Together, they found 727 unanimous points of agreement.
Our guests are Larry Mayes and Walt McKee— the Blue and Red Co-Chairs of the Trustworthy Elections Leadership Team. They discuss their recommendations and what they learned together during the past four years.
Read moreBraver Angels is addressing a huge threat that could disrupt the future of our democratic republic: The rigid, often bitter, divisions between reds and blues. While nearly four in ten voters identify as "independent", more than nine in ten Americans fall into one of two broad categories. They identify as either conservative or liberal leaning and tend to vote for either Republicans or Democrats.
"If this country breaks apart, if violence increases to the point where we are killing each other, it will be because of those two groups and the extreme leaders of those two groups," says Braver Angels co-founder and President David Blankenhorn. "That's the division we are looking at. That's the bridge we want to build. That's what's threatening the country."
This episode is part two of our "How Do We Fix It?" podcast interview with David. We discuss Braver Angels bridge building by young people. Our conversation also explores America's political divisions and the Braver Angels approach to reforming and rebuilding American political discourse one conversation, one debate, one workshop at a time. In part one— our previous episode— we began by discussing the movement's origin story.
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