One question I am getting a fair bit these days from German friends and family is: how come Republican politicians keep supporting Trump? Why aren’t more individual representatives speaking out, say calling for an independent investigation of potential interference by Russia? By what mechanism are they being held in line with party leadership? In Germany there is a well understood mechanism of “party discipline” that arises from the party’s role in arranging the “list order,” which is the ord...

I have written a few blog posts arguing that we need to strengthen democracy. One of my key takeaways from the current US Presidential election is that the primary election system must be reformed. I am surprised by how many people don’t know this today but the nationwide adoption of a binding primary system for the presidential election happened only after the 1968 Democratic Convention. So it is a relatively new thing and an example that not all innovations are good. What would be a better ...

I was very happy to see President Obama win a second term last night. For starters it was gratifying that despite all sorts of last minute challenges this was not a close vote with hanging chads and damage to the integrity of the democratic process. It was also a compelling repudiation of candidates with backward positions on issues such as abortion and women’s rights more generally. But there are important issues on which I have have deeply disagreed with the approach taken by the Obama admi...

Europe had three elections on the weekend: presidential in France, parliamentary in Greece and regional in Germany. The results are strongly anti-incumbent across he board. In France, Sarkozy is out and Hollande is in. In Greece, the PASOK party went from 160 to 41 seats and no longer has a majority together with New Democracy the other incumbent. And in Germany in the regional elections in Schleswig Holstein, Angela Merkel’s CDU had the worst results since 1950. The results are also strongly...

Last year I mentioned Americans Elect twice as part of other posts. Since I am still typing mostly with my left hand, I am simply pointing everyone to Fred’s post about Americans Elect today. Americans Elect has the potential to be super important but only if more people know about it. I am particularly excited about the potential to have a campaign finance reform only candidate. In fact, Larry Lessig himself has been proposed as a candidate.