To Fix Our Democracy We Need to Innovate
Americans look to innovation to solve problems in nearly every field—technology, health, energy. Democracy should be no different.
When Americans face challenges, our instinct is often to innovate. New technologies drive growth when industries falter. Science pushes us toward medical breakthroughs. In nearly every field, innovation is how we adapt.
But there’s one crucial area where we resist change: our democracy. We treat our political system as though it were a grandfather clock—something to polish and admire, but not to improve. That instinct is understandable. Democracy feels fragile, and tinkering with it can be risky. Yet clinging to outdated institutions is riskier still.
Our ambivalence has a cost. The United States is now an extreme outlier among democracies. We are the only major country that entrusts a wide range of election functions to openly partisan officials who are incentivized to favor their side. And unlike countries that use proportional representation or mixed systems, our rules entrench two dominant parties and shut out alternatives. In fact, America stands alone among peer democracies as the only country in which no new political party came to power during the twentieth or twenty-first centuries—we’ve instead been treated to nonstop reruns of the “D vs. R” matchup for 165 years.
This combination fuels polarization, dysfunction, and distrust.
The Case for Innovation
Unfortunately, both the left and the right misunderstand democracy in ways that stifle reform.
Conservatives often treat political institutions as sacred objects, untouchable even when they no longer work. Progressives tend to focus on bad actors rather than bad rules. In truth, institutions matter enormously: broken rules can make even well-intentioned leaders fail.
The hopeful news is that America has always been a land of democratic innovation. We pioneered the Bill of Rights and direct election of senators. We adopted the secret ballot from Australia and women’s suffrage from New Zealand. For more than two centuries, we’ve invented and adapted. There’s no reason we can’t do so again.
Innovations We Need Now
To put America back on the path of democratic innovation, we need reforms in two key areas: how we run elections and how we vote.
1. How We Run Elections (The Referees)
The governance of U.S. elections is run by officials who are either elected or appointed by a political party. No other advanced democracy lets such openly partisan officials oversee elections. It’s like allowing competing teams to pick the referees—and it unnecessarily opens the door to conflicts of interest that reduce voter trust in the electoral process and its outcomes.
Instead, we should empower independent commissions and nonpartisan officials to manage our elections. For example, an independent commission could be composed to reflect a range of political viewpoints, include members with relevant expertise and professional experience, and, most importantly, be insulated from party control. Such a commission could appoint a nonpartisan officer to serve in key election management roles—such as secretary of state or county clerk—ensuring a clear firewall between the players and the referees.
The problem of partisan election management touches other areas as well, from legislative redistricting to ballot measure management. Across a wide array of areas, developing innovative solutions to empower independent, nonpartisan bodies is key to improving our democracy.
2. How We Vote (The Players)
Beyond changing how we run elections, America desperately needs innovation in how we vote. Our winner-take-all system entrenches two parties, fuels polarization, reduces competitiveness, and limits the choices voters have at the ballot box. Fortunately, many innovative election rules exist that promise to fix these issues. Globally, most countries employ proportional representation, allowing citizens to be represented by multiple representatives who reflect the diversity of the population.
In the U.S., some states have experimented with ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan primaries as ways to give voters greater choice within our current single-winner system.
The need for innovation in how we vote is particularly obvious when it comes to the Electoral College, which stifles the growth of new parties and allows a candidate who loses the popular vote to still win the election. Ideally, we should be able to build a better presidential election mechanism through a Constitutional amendment, In the near term, reformers have developed innovative state-based solutions that could be achieved without an amendment. Perhaps the most salient is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, through which states pledge their electors to the national popular winner . If adopted widely enough, it could ensure that every vote counts equally—without waiting for a constitutional amendment.
Building the Future
None of these reforms is easy. Changing entrenched systems never is. But history shows we can do it. A century ago, the Progressive Era gave us primary elections, civil service reform, and women’s suffrage—ambitious changes that should inspire us now.
Democracy, like every other part of our society, must evolve. We can cling to brittle old rules—or we can innovate, as Americans have always done, to make our system more representative, resilient, and fair.
The future of our democracy depends on which choice we make.