This archive covers advances in democratic participation, voting rights, election integrity, and civic engagement around the world. Stories here highlight real progress — new policies, court victories, and community-driven efforts that expand access to the ballot and strengthen representative government.
“The shift from paperless [electronic] machines to having individual paper ballots is a sea change,” said the policy director of the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security. “It’s great, it’s huge, it was necessary.”
Hong Kong’s voters have delivered an unprecedented landslide for pro-democracy candidates in local elections, in a powerful show of solidarity with the city’s protest movement and rebuke to the government over its handling of the crisis.
“My experience with ranked-choice voting is that it gives voters a greater voice and it encourages civility among campaigns and candidates at a time when such civility is sorely needed,” said Gov. Mills.
Felix Tshisekedi has been sworn in as the president of the DRC, in the vast central African country’s first transfer of power through an election in 59 years of independence.
The ruling, by a three-judge panel from the Federal District Court in Cincinnati, ordered new maps to be drawn by June 14 to be used for the 2020 election, when Democrats will fight to preserve their House majority.
The Navajo Nation voted not to pursue the plan to operate the coal-powered Navajo Generating Station itself, but rather to create a new local economy based on renewable energy.
Voters in Toledo, Ohio voted overwhelmingly to approve the so-called Lake Erie Bill Of Rights, a declaration that the lake has the legal right to be protected from harm from human activity.
The measures, planned by Democrats who reclaimed control of all levers of state government for the first time in modern memory, would allow voters to cast their ballots early or by mail for the first time in state history.
There are more women than ever before, and a new generation of Muslims, Latinos, Native Americans and African-Americans in the House creating what academics call a reflective democracy, more aligned with the population of the United States.
Amendment 4 automatically reinstates voting rights for people with felony convictions upon completion of their sentences, including prison, parole and probation.
