President Donald Trump shakes hands with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during a meeting in the Oval Office on May 13, 2019, in Washington, D.C.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
One of Donald Trump’s favorite politicians is the Hungarian authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán. Would a country led again by Trump embrace similar antidemocratic politics?
Unchecked, politicians are likely to try to grab as much electoral power as they can.
Fabrice LEROUGE/ONOKY via Getty Images
Electoral redistricting is a high-stakes political game, so Democrats and Republicans have a hard time playing fair. When they’re made to work together, a more representative result is possible.
AI is likely to be used to help us run elections in the near future but there are risks as well as reward.
Michigan’s redistricting commission consists of ordinary citizens with no special qualifications. A court has disapproved their initial effort.
AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
An upcoming Supreme Court case that turns on race and party could affect how state legislatures shape voting maps and how Americans vote for decades to come.
Nelson and Winnie Mandela, a day after he was released from prison in
1990.
Gideon Mendel/Corbis via Getty Images
A loud chorus of Democrats – and some Republicans, too – has for years claimed gerrymandering is costing their party seats in Congress. Is it true?
A group of voters lining up outside the polling station, a small Sugar Shack store, on May 3, 1966, in Peachtree, Ala., after the Voting Rights Act was passed the previous year.
MPI/Getty Images
Conservatives and the GOP have mounted a decadeslong legal fight to turn the clock back on the political gains of the civil rights movement.
GOP primary voters in 2022 often chose the Trumpiest candidate, even if they had substantial electoral vulnerabilities, as does Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, shown here with Donald Trump.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Voters trust their gut when they decide who an electable candidate is or isn’t. That may be a bad idea.
An Indiana Senate committee hearing on a GOP proposal to ban nearly all abortions in the state, at the Statehouse in Indianapolis, July 26, 2022.
AP Photo/Michael Conroy
Why do government policies sometimes fail to reflect the public will? The answer begins with the design of the US government system, forged in the 18th century.
All adult citizens who have not been convicted of a crime have the right to vote in federal and state elections.
Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
A doctrine embraced by some conservatives could be adopted by the US Supreme Court. And if the court does, Americans’ political power will be dramatically limited.
Mississippi state legislators review an option for redrawing the state’s voting districts at the state Capitol in Jackson on March 29, 2022.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
A ruling by the US Supreme Court to allow unlawful maps to be used in the midterm elections will affect who gets elected to the House of Representatives and may determine control of Congress.
Which branch has the power to rewrite congressional maps?
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Justices declined GOP requests to block court-approved congressional maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. But justices punted a bigger question over the role of courts until after the midterm elections.
Not every vote is counted equal.
Joshua Lott/AFP via Getty Images
Alabama will be allowed to keep a congressional map that critics say disadvantages Black voters. That does not bode well for 2022 midterms, argues a law scholar.
State Sen. Joseph Thomas, D-Yazoo City, holds a copy of the proposed congressional redistricting map during debate over redistricting at the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Jan. 12, 2022.
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
The results of the latest round of redistricting have advanced the anti-democratic trend where elected leaders choose their voters, undermining representative government.
Representatives say the Pledge of Allegiance at the State Capitol in Austin. Texas is one of many states that redrew their political maps in 2021.
Tamir Kalifa via Getty Images
Cracking down on gerrymandering isn’t enough to make elections more competitive.
Students of School Section #13 with teacher, Verlyn Ladd, who taught at the school from 1939 to 1958. Class of 1951, Buxton, Raleigh Township, Ontario.
(Buxton National Historic Site & Museum)
An 1850 act permitted the creation of separate schools for Protestants, Catholics and for any five Black families. Some white people used the act to force Black students into separate institutions.
Drawing congressional district boundaries can be complicated.
AP Photo/Gerry Broome
Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Associate Research Professor, Political Science, Co-host of Democracy Works Podcast, Penn State