In our podcast episode, we tell the stories of how the government was corrupt during the progressive era, and how it got reformed. Many citizens committed voter fraud such as shaving their beard and voting again, voting using the name of a dog or infant, and many more. Citizens did this because powerful political machines would bribe them. For example, John D Rockefeller could potentially tell citizens that he will give them tax relief if they voted for him multiple times. In order to fix this, many government reforms were carried out. For example, the progressives wanted to change how US senators were elected. In order to do this, they influenced congress to carry out the Seventeenth Amendment, which stated that voters could elect their state senators. Three other reform movements were carried out, such as initiative, referendum, and recall. During initiative, voters could introduce new ideas to legislature, and show the rest of the public what their reform idea was. Referendum would then allow power by the people- if a certain number of citizens voted for an idea, they could force legislature to carry out or veto that idea. Finally, recall allowed for voters to remove a certain elected official from office, if the public got enough votes to do so. These ideas followed a path of democracy. There were also mayors that helped reform the corrupt government as well. In conclusion, the government needed to be reformed during the progressive era because of how unfair it was. Progressives took this opportunity to make many reforms to the election process.