These 17 People Want to Change How You Vote

Welcome to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s weekly newsletter highlighting stories and conversations from The Commons, our project exploring how philanthropy and nonprofits are working to close divides, repair the social fabric, and strengthen communities.

From senior editor Drew Lindsay: What if America’s elections — an expression of freedom and democracy — are actually bad for the country? What if the way we vote contributes to polarization and political dysfunction? 

That’s the argument of 17 nonprofit leaders we spotlight this week, among them organizers and funders, lawyers and researchers, writers and thinkers. Funders and advocacy groups have long backed efforts to protect voting rights, educate and register voters, and limit money's influence in campaigns. But these individuals are spearheading growing efforts to upend the fundamentals of our voting systems. Flying the banner of “election reform,” they argue that our current system is fueling division through gerrymandered districts, legislative gridlock, and contests in which the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Some of their proposed alternative approaches — ranked-choice voting and open primaries chief among them — are on the ballot in more than a dozen states and cities in November. But this small movement is playing the long game, hoping to make change in 2024 but also in 2026, 2028, and beyond.  

Take a look at our list of people to watch. And coming soon: nonprofit leaders who are trying to rebuild trust in elections.

PS: Pictured above are (clockwise from top) Nick Troiano , Unite America ; George Cheung , More Equitable Democracy ; Lee Drutman , New America ; Danielle Allen , Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation ; Meredith Sumpter , FairVote .

My colleague Ben Gose has done a terrific deep dive into rural philanthropy, examining several new funder collaboratives running interesting experiments. Big national grant makers, meanwhile, remain on the sidelines. Most interesting to me was Ben’s diagnosis of why philanthropy can’t see beyond rural stereotypes:   

Rural America is often covered in the national press as a monolith, and those overly broad strokes tend to pique — temporarily — national philanthropic interest. When Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016 brought frustrated white rural voters to the forefront, national foundations briefly became “rural curious,” says Tony Pipa , a senior fellow at the The Brookings Institution and host of the Reimagine Rural podcast. But philanthropic momentum quickly faded.

Defying stereotypes, rural America is remarkably diverse. It ranges from small towns in Vermont separated by a few miles, to ranching families in the West that might be 30 miles from their nearest neighbor, to unincorporated communities along the southern border where immigrants receive few services.”

I encourage you to read the piece. Ben, by the way, lives in Wyoming, where, in his off time, he’s one heck of a high school track coach.

Young People = Antipolarization Heroes? And Love Between a Trumper and a Liberal

If elections today are polarizing, there’s hope for the future, says Layla Zaidane , head of the Future Caucus (formerly Millennial Action Project) and our next guest on The Commons in Conversation interview series. Millennials and Gen Zers coming to political power are more willing to collaborate and more likely to reach across political divides, Layla says. 

Join us on LinkedIn on September 18 at 12:30 p.m. ET for a free event and hear Layla talk about some of the unlikely victories young leaders have already engineered and what’s still to come. Register.  

Plus: Hollywood screenwriter Erik Bork comes to The Commons in Conversation on October 2, at 12:30 p.m. ET. Erik will talk about the bridging themes and philanthropy behind his soon-to-be-released The Elephant in the Room, a red-blue romantic comedy. Register.

Of the Moment

News and other noteworthy items:

• The Polarization Research Lab — a joint project of Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford — is out with a tracker that points to elected officials who most inflame partisan tensions and those who focus on governing. 

• Kevin Loker , a senior director at the American Press Institute, explores how to reimagine opinion coverage in local news outlets to serve civic discourse and strengthen democracy. “Opinion sections are natural spots for convening; in fact, it’s what the section is for,” Loker writes in a new report. “Their structure, at its best, uplifts what different people care about and why.”