In a moment when many Americans feel trapped between rigid partisan choices, a reform movement in Kansas is working to widen the political lane. In the latest episode of This Old Democracy, Micah Sifry interviews Aaron Estabrook about United Kansas, a newly formed political party and reform movement dedicated to restoring fusion voting and expanding voter choice.

Estabrook is well suited to be one of the organizers of the United Kansas effort. He is a community builder, veteran, father and the executive director of the Manhattan (KS) Housing Authority.

The conversation comes at a pivotal moment: United Kansas is heading into oral arguments in its lawsuit challenging the state's anti-fusion laws, a case that could reshape how parties and voters express political preferences in Kansas.

Estabrook describes United Kansas as more than a conventional third party. It is a reform movement built around expressive voter choice and coalition politics.

"United Kansas is a political reform movement rooted in one simple idea. Kansans deserve more voice, not less."

The party's core goal is to restore fusion voting — allowing multiple parties to endorse the same candidate — so voters can signal both candidate support and broader political alignment.

"Fusion voting lets someone say I support this candidate and I'm doing it as a United Kansas voter signaling support for a broader reform movement while still influencing who wins."

Rather than fragmenting the electorate, the movement aims to enable coalition-building and give moderates and reform-minded voters a political home.

Kansas politics today is marked by one-party legislative dominance and a political center that many voters feel has disappeared. Estabrook points to growing dissatisfaction across the electorate and the rightward shift of the state GOP.

"We've seen… a MAGA revolution across the state where there's been a total change and no home for moderate Republicans any longer."

United Kansas seeks to occupy that middle space, offering a coalition home for pragmatic Republicans, change-minded Democrats, and unaffiliated voters.

Fusion voting is not new to Kansas — it was once central to its political development.

Estabrook explains that in the late 19th century, farmers, labor groups, and reform movements discovered they could win power by nominating shared candidates.

"[They] realized that if they all got together and nominated the same candidate, they would then have the numbers necessary to be victorious."

These coalitions won legislative seats, the governorship, and congressional offices.

Fusion was banned in 1901 after reform coalitions lost power, entrenching a two-party structure. United Kansas argues that restoring fusion would revive a historically normal democratic practice rather than introduce a novel experiment.

Estabrook's journey into party-building grew from civic frustration and a desire for better solutions.

"I was tired of the same solutions being offered, the two parties and not getting any different results."

When the opportunity arose to create a new centrist party, he jumped in — helping gather signatures and build the organization.

United Kansas officially qualified as a party in 2024 after submitting 35,000 signatures, far exceeding the required threshold.

Creating a new party has meant grassroots organizing and constant relationship-building.

"It's hard, it's grassroots, it's relational. You start with conversations and coffee shops and community events… and you explain the idea over and over."

Estabrook notes that resistance rarely comes from everyday voters.

"The resistance doesn't come from everyday voters. It comes from the entrenched systems that benefit the status quo."

United Kansas quickly collided with Kansas' anti-fusion statutes when a candidate received both its nomination and a major-party nomination. State officials required the candidate to choose one line, triggering litigation.

The movement argues that fusion bans violate political association rights and restrict voters' ability to express layered political identities.

"Political association is protected speech… parties should be able to endorse who they choose [and] voters should be able to express layered political identities."

The case is now before the Kansas Court of Appeals. Oral arguments are scheduled for February 24 in Topeka, with a ruling expected in the coming months. Watch the oral argument livestream at 10am CT on Tuesday.

Regardless of the outcome, the case is likely headed to the Kansas Supreme Court — meaning Kansas could soon become a key battleground in the national effort to restore fusion voting.

Opponents often argue that third parties split votes or create confusion. Estabrook counters that fusion does the opposite:

"Instead of splintering movements into spoiler candidates, it lets coalitions form around shared candidates."

As for confusion, he notes that states like New York have used fusion voting successfully for decades.

Despite national polarization, Estabrook finds encouragement in direct conversations with neighbors and community members.

"Offering a solution that is something new… gives people hope."

That sense of hope — grounded in relationships, coalition-building, and democratic renewal — sits at the heart of United Kansas and the broader fusion voting movement.

Recommended reading:

United Kansas website: www.unitedkansas.com

On the latest episode of This Old Democracy, Micah Sifry sits down with Andy Craig — a libertarian election-policy expert whose career arc runs from the Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson's 2016 campaign to writing election-reform language that made it into the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022.

It's a wide-ranging and unusually candid conversation about how America's democratic breakdown looks from outside the red-blue binary — and why structural reform, not just partisan victory, is essential if liberal democracy is going to survive the Trump era.

Craig, now an election-policy fellow at the Rainey Center and a contributing editor at The Unpopulist, describes January 6 as a turning point, not only politically but intellectually — a moment when democracy reform stopped being theoretical and became urgent:

"This wasn't just some guy with policies I disagree with. This was a threat to the Republic."

From that starting point, the conversation zeroes in on how America's winner-take-all electoral system fuels polarization and minority rule. Craig argues that the problem isn't simply Trump or MAGA, but the incentives baked into the system itself:

"Our electoral system has resulted in a kind of minority-rule dynamic — and that incentivizes more authoritarian measures."

One of the episode's most valuable contributions is Craig's explanation of how the two-party system systematically disenfranchises large portions of the electorate — not only third-party voters, but millions of people trapped in "safe" districts with no meaningful representation:

"If you're in a safe Republican district or a safe Democratic district, you might be 30 or 40 percent of the vote — and you get no seat at the table."

Craig is not completely pessimistic. He sees some hope for the long-term recovery of American democracy.

"[T]here is a backlash to Trump. He won't be around forever. There will be a moment, I think, and we use the term reconstruction for it. And I think that's an appropriate analogy and framework. I mean, we're going to have to do a lot of rebuilding and retooling our institutions to make sure this doesn't happen again. And it's not going to be just returning to the status quo."

The discussion moves beyond diagnosis to reforms that are often mentioned abstractly but rarely unpacked with this level of clarity: proportional representation, fusion voting, and the uniquely American role of state-run party primaries. Craig makes the case that these aren't fringe ideas, but practical tools — many achievable without constitutional amendments — for rebuilding a more representative and less brittle democracy.

Equally striking is Craig's account of the libertarian movement's own fracture in the age of MAGA. There is a core disagreement, says Craig, between libertarians who gravitate toward "burn it all down" politics and others — including Craig and his colleagues at The Unpopulist — who came to see defending liberal democracy itself as the necessary foundation for any serious debate about policy.

As Micah notes during the episode, this conversation maps a political space many Americans rarely hear articulated: socially liberal, institution-respecting, deeply alarmed by authoritarianism — and unsatisfied with a two-party system that repeatedly hands sweeping power to narrow factions.

For anyone thinking seriously about how to get beyond our current democratic crisis — not just survive the next election — this episode is valuable listening.

RECOMMENDED READING

The Unpopulist: https://www.theunpopulist.net/

On the latest episode of This Old Democracy, Micah Sifry sits down with Jeff Timmer—a veteran Republican strategist turned outspoken defender of democratic norms—for a conversation that is equal parts diagnosis, warning, and blueprint for reform.

Timmer spent three decades inside the Republican Party, serving as executive director of the Michigan GOP and advising major campaigns, before becoming a senior figure at the Lincoln Project and co-founder of Republicans and Independents for Biden. What makes this episode especially compelling is that Timmer is not just naming the problem of democratic backsliding—he's proposing a concrete structural response.

"I just want to save democracy."

Timmer embraces the label "Never Trumper," but he's clear that his break with today's GOP runs deeper than one individual. Trump, he argues, didn't invent the rot; he accelerated it. What was once a secular, chamber-of-commerce party drifted into a theologically driven and increasingly authoritarian force long before 2016. "The cancer has metastasized. There is no saving it," he said.

Looking toward 2026 and 2028, Timmer warns that the United States may not experience genuinely free and fair elections—not through ballot-box fraud, but through intimidation and suppression.

"We are not going to have free and fair elections in this country in 2026 or 2028."

At the heart of the episode is Timmer's argument for fusion voting—an old but powerful reform that allows multiple parties to nominate the same candidate and aggregate their votes. TImmer explains, "Fusion voting is a way people can cast a protest vote without throwing their vote away."

So what are Timmer and other like-minded patriots brewing up in Michigan? Timmer is helping build Michigan's Common Sense Party, a centrist party with a single plank: protect the Constitution, the rule of law, and democracy.

Michigan may be the testing ground, but the implications arenational. Litigation to overturn fusion voting bans is underway or imminent in several states.

Despite the gravity of his warnings, Timmer remains cautiously optimistic. "There are far more of us than there are of them—and we need to act like it."

The challenge now is ensuring that when the public is ready to assert democratic values, our electoral system is capable of reflecting that will.

RECOMMENDED LINKS:

Jeff Timmer's podcast: "A Republic If You Can Keep it"

https://a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it.blubrry.net/

This one should get people who care about philanthropy buzzing. In the latest episode of "This Old Democracy," host Micah Sifry and political scientist Daniel Stid have a provocative discussion about what philanthropy is getting right, and has gotten wrong, in the democracy space.

Stid is the former director of the Hewlett Foundation's U.S. Democracy Program and now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He offers a candid and critical assessment of the state of American democracy and the often-unintended consequences of philanthropic engagement in the political sphere.

Stid's view is that too much well-intentioned philanthropy has contributed to the hyper-polarization of American politics in the Trump era by funding advocacy for and against the administration. He argues that philanthropic funds have been (mis)used on both the right and the left: viz. Project 2025's governing agenda on one side, and the broad work to shape the electoral environment on the other.

Stid's most provocative argument is that the bulk of foundation spending—on highly visible issues like climate, criminal justice, or immigration—often funds advocates who "see no need to compromise and are pushing views that are really far outside the mainstream." This leads to a "tragedy of the commons," where actors doing what is "rational for them" (advancing their policy agenda) ultimately undermine the political system (the "commons") in which they operate.

Stid encourages philanthropies to develop a deeper, "more holistic conception of democracy," highlighting the Our Common Purpose report from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund). In the OCP report, you'll find some innovative thinking on strengthening both civil society institutions and individual citizens in their communities, as well as an argument on why our nation needs both.

Advocates left and right will disagree with some of what Stid says. But for those who hold a simultaneous membership in Team Democracy, Stid gives you something to think about.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Daniel Stid's must-read Substack: The Art of Association

In the "This Old Democracy" episode featuring political scientist Daniel Schlozman, host Micah Sifry dives into the structural weaknesses plaguing American politics, a central theme in The Hollow Parties, which Schlozman co-authored with Sam Rosenfeld. The core argument they make is that modern political parties are "hollow shells"—top-heavy, poorly rooted, and disconnected from the everyday lives of citizens, leading to a profound crisis of democracy.

The conversation starts out with Schlozman and Sifry exploring the concept of movement anchors for political parties, and how that historically has worked for both major parties, albeit with different movement partners. For a long time, the Republican Party maintained a powerful alliance with the Christian Right and the Democratic Party had a robust anchor in organized labor. But Schlozman asserts that both movement anchors are much weaker now.

Amid this vacuum, Schlozman says that, "what Trump has done more effectively than Democrats is to take advantage of exactly the disorganization of civil society and figure out how to appeal to people who are not embedded in the same kinds of thick organizations, whereas Democrats have not done that."

Sifry underlines Schlozman's conclusion saying, Trump " has intuited how to be what I think Henry Timms referred to in his book on new power versus old power as the platform strongman."

The conversation ultimately steers toward solutions, directly addressing the push for systemic change. While Schlozman expresses skepticism that a multi-party system (like the kind advocated by Lee Drutman) is a silver bullet—citing the transnational nature of anti-establishment populism and hollow parties all over the world—he is more optimistic about institutional reform at the state and local levels. He sees these "laboratories of democracy" as fertile ground for experimenting with alternatives, which could include reforms like proportional representation or fusion voting, that might foster more responsive and civically-rooted parties.

The episode leaves listeners with a double-sided coin: Schlozman, who is first and foremost a political historian, argues that understanding history confirms that political actors can enact grand change for the better, but also that things can change for the worse. Ultimately, finding hope, he says, requires looking beyond the national "deep structural gloom" and embracing the hard, useful work of reforming our system from the ground up.

Give it a listen to hear some smart thinking and some healthy skepticism from one of America's most important scholars of contemporary and comparative politics.

The latest episode of "This Old Democracy" with host Micah Sifry and political scientist Didi Kuo, author of "The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't," dives deep into a critical question: what's really going on with American democracy? Kuo doesn't pull punches, arguing that despite their outward appearance of strength, our major political parties have neglected essential functions.

One of Kuo's central premises is that vital political parties are essential to a functioning democracy, even though Americans are wary of parties. She makes two arguments why. First, "[p]arties are the only institution that really exists to translate all of the kind of disparate public power housed in the people and bring that into governing agendas and into institutions of leadership and power." And second, "if you just eliminated parties, you get rid of one of the main heuristics that voters use to navigate elections, and you put the burden entirely on them to get to know specific candidates in every specific election."

The problem now, Kuo explains, is that parties have largely abandoned their traditional roles. Once, they were vital hubs for policy coordination, community building, and nurturing future leaders. Now, their focus has narrowed dramatically to campaigning and winning elections. This shift has created a top-down system where parties dictate messages rather than truly listen to the electorate.

The consequence? A growing cynicism among the public, reflected in the increasing number of voters who identify as independent. They are not just political wonks rejecting labels; they are people who feel the parties no longer serve their interests.

The conversation doesn't just diagnose the problem; it explores potential pathways forward. Kuo suggests several key reforms.

• First, she advocates for campaign finance reform that would centralize authority within the parties, thereby reducing the outsized influence of big donors and increasing party engagement with grassroots members.

• Second, there's a strong call to revitalize state and local party organizations. Imagine if the energy seen during election season could be harnessed year-round, bringing communities together to solve local problems and connect them back to the broader party structure.

• Third, Kuo highlights the importance of robust civic education, not just the basics of the Constitution, but a deeper understanding of what government actually does and how it positively impacts people's lives.

While acknowledging that immediate, sweeping changes are a tall order, Kuo offers a hopeful perspective. She points to examples from other democracies, like Brazil, Poland, and France, where citizens from across the political spectrum have united to defend democratic institutions against illiberal threats. Kuo notes that it took voters making "strategic decisions" to build the coalitions necessary to combat the idea of a "common threat."

Kuo and Sifry didn't discuss it in this episode, but one can be confident that each would say "amen" to structural, party-centric reforms. In America, that means fusion voting and/or proportional representation. Each allows and encourages the formation of a multi-party democracy in which political parties are incentivized to form coalitions, engage in principled bargaining, and compromise. Pluralism requires more than just two parties. Full stop.

For Kuo, the immediate task is to build on existing popular energy for civic defense. Looking further ahead, the challenge lies in constructing a stronger, more resilient foundation for democracy, one that embraces bureaucratic effectiveness and policies that genuinely serve a 21st-century society. The core message is clear: securing democracy is the prerequisite for debating any other issue.

LINKS

Read Didi Kuo's new book, THE GREAT RETREAT: HOW POLITICAL PARTIES SHOULD BEHAVE AND WHY THEY DON'T

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-great-retreat-9780197664193?cc=us&lang=en&

If you haven't read the report of the ABA Task Force on American Democracy, you should. It's nearly 100 pages, with 34 recommendations. If that's too much, read the press release. (See links below.)

And if you prefer to consume information about election reform via podcasts, this latest episode of "This Old Democracy" is for you.

Micah Sifry interviews one of the members of the ABA Task Force, Tom Rogers. Rogers is deeply invested in democratic reforms in part because of his professional expertise in the media business. As a top Hill staffer, Rogers helped write critical communications industry legislation that sought to expand diversity of viewpoints in our media landscape.

Rogers explained that the creation of the ABA Task Force was "a very brave and courageous move," given the prominence of the legal community in public affairs. The ABA appointed two highly regarded co-chairs: Jeh Johnson, a former Homeland Security Secretary under President Obama, and Judge J. Michael Luttig, a former Court of Appeals judge, with strong conservative credentials.

After two years of hearings, discussions, working papers, revisions and votes, a final report was recently released. The legal community –lawyers, scholars, jurists, law students – should take heed. The report is a roadmap of urgent and practical reforms designed to strengthen democratic practice and institutions. Its end goal is restoring the American people's trust and pride in both elections and politics itself.

Rogers zeroed in on two recommendations that he believes are critical to strengthening (or saving) the American experiment.

One of these should be very familiar to This Old Democracy listeners: fusion voting. Rogers believes that political polarization has poisoned the highest levels of our democracy. He sees fusion voting as a mechanism to "help consensus building, centrist driven candidates, which ⁓ we need more of, not less of."

The ABA Task Force's recommendation is particularly important for two reasons.

The first is that the ABA is the nation's most well-known legal organization. Their support for a relatively obscure reform is unexpected and all the more valuable for being so. It is surely the first time the ABA has ever publicly asserted the need to move away from the two-party system. This is no small thing, and in a sense is a reflection of the depth of the crisis we are in. One can hope that the ABA's call resonates in the relevant chambers.

The second is that it's more than a call to do something in the sweet by-and-by. Fusion is the only one of the thirty-four Task Force recommendations that can be enacted reasonably quickly, and some members were very much aware of this. At this writing, courts in three states (New Jersey, Kansas, and Wisconsin) are considering whether the ban on fusion voting and parties is constitutional.

The ABA Task Force's report is a rare moment of courageous consensus on the most important issue of our day: the battle for democracy itself. Read it if you can, and listen to Rogers explain some of its most salient features.

LINKS

Final report of the ABA Task Force on American Democracy

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/office_president/democracy-task-force/2025-report-american-democracy.pdf

ABA press release

https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2025/09/aba-releases-final-report-democracy-task-force/

Three good reasons to check out the latest episode of "This Old Democracy" with guest Brad Lander.

• Get an insider's take on this moment in NYC politics

• Hear from a major party candidate and elected official about how fusion voting and other election reforms have affected their career

• Feel some hopeful chills coming from a group of young, hearing-impaired campaign volunteers and an appreciation of competing versions of Jollof rice among African emigres in the Bronx (yes, really).

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander is the unusual guest, and Micah Sifry is our usual host.

Lander is a particularly interesting voice on democracy reform because he is one of the few candidates who (1) has run for office in a fusion system, (2) has run for office in an RCV system – in two Democratic primaries, (3) has participated in public campaign financing and (4) is a genuinely deep thinker about the meaning of democracy and how to strengthen it. And the conversation with him did not disappoint.

Lander is clear on the multiple benefits of fusion voting, which he calls "something more parliamentary … but in the context of American politics." He sees fusion as a mechanism to encourage building coalitions, which are essential to a healthy democracy: "[I]t does something powerful in terms of making it possible for people to identify strongly ⁓ with a group of like-minded people, but still participate in bigger politics."

Two unexpected highlights gave us – hardened political cynics – the feels. Lander tells the story of a young Sudanese immigrant living in the Bronx. The immigrant explains the importance of jollof rice in his culture: "Every country is supposed to say that their Jollof rice is the best. But he said, you know, since I've been here in New York, I'm living in the Bronx. I had some Jollof rice from people from Senegal, and I think theirs might be better than ours." Brad recognizes the beauty of the city's melting pot in this comment: "Nasser, ⁓ you're becoming a New Yorker!"

Lander shares a second anecdote, about his favorite video from the video-centric Zohran Mamdani mayoral campaign. "[I]f you watch one Zohran video, watch the one called 'Deafies for Zohran, where a group of young deaf volunteers developed an approach to going out and campaigning in the deaf community in New York. It'll make you hopeful about the future of this city and about this old democracy."

Here's the "Deafies for Zohran" video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPOd914jqWj/

If you are moved by an inclusive vision for politics that honors the value of civil and civic engagement, spend 35 minutes listening to Brad and Micah. You'll be richer for it.

Jennifer Dresden and Deborah Apau from Protect Democracy have an important new report just out on how fusion voting and proportional representation complement each other in the work of strengthening American democracy.

So it's exciting that Dresden joined Micah Sifry on the latest episode of "This Old Democracy" to whet your appetite for reading the full paper – Fusion as a Pathway to Proportional Representation: Lessons from Global Experience and American Electoral Heritage (link below).

Dresden explains one of the paper's core arguments, that fusion voting could help foster the kinds of parties that can open up the party system and channel demands for further reform. "What fusion would do is create the space and the ability for more minor parties to grow, to flourish, to build skills and organization and relationships with communities in ways that they could then be the vehicle that would push for reform," like proportional representation.

The scholarly breadth of the Dresden/Apau paper encompasses case studies of how other countries transitioned from dysfunctional governance to healthier, proportionate multi-party democracies. On the podcast, Dresden highlights the lessons we can learn from New Zealand's transition from a failing winner-take-all system to a fairer, more responsive proportionate election system. The story of a major party winning a majority of the popular vote, but a minority of legislative seats should sound familiar to American audiences.

As discouraging as the daily news can be, Dresden finds optimism from the American journey. Sifry suggested that the enactment of reforms in just a couple of places (for example, in the states where efforts to revive fusion voting are currently being litigated) could catalyze interest in more reform. Dresden agrees: "[T]here is a lot more diversity in the way that Americans have done democracy, right, and are doing democracy now in terms of how we run our elections, than I think we all appreciate. We have a much more diverse heritage than we realize, and I think that we should sort of open up the scope of our understanding about what is possible… We can learn a lot of lessons from overseas, but we don't actually have to look that far to sort of feed that imagination."

Read the Dresden/Apau report – "Fusion as a Pathway to Proportional Representation: Lessons from Global Experience and American Electoral Heritage" – here:

https://protectdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Fusion-PR-pathway.pdf

In this episode of This Old Democracy, host Micah Sifry talks with the co-chairs of United Wisconsin, a fledgling political party that is seeking to bridge the political divides in the Badger State. The bipartisan pair – Dale Schultz, a former Republican Majority Leader in the State Senate, and David Mahoney, the former Democratic sheriff of Dane County explain what motivated them to form United Wisconsin, the reaction to their initiative and why fusion voting can bring people together for common purpose. The conversation highlights the historical context of fusion voting, the legal challenges they face, and the grassroots efforts to build a new political party that empowers citizens' voices. The episode concludes with reflections on hope and engagement in the democratic process.

TAKEAWAYS:

• United Wisconsin aims to revitalize democracy and provide more competition.

• Many citizens feel their voices are not being heard in the current political system.

• Bipartisan collaboration can lead to more effective solutions for common issues.

• Fusion voting allows candidates to appear on multiple party lines, increasing voter choice.

• The organization is focused on grassroots education and engagement.

• Legal challenges are being pursued to restore fusion voting in Wisconsin.

• Political parties currently hold a monopoly on power, stifling diverse voices.

• Engagement with the community is crucial for building a new political party.

• Hope lies in empowering citizens to participate in the democratic process.

• Listening to diverse perspectives can lead to mutual understanding and collaboration.

Learn more about United Wisconsin at www.unitedwisconsin.org