By Eveline Dowling
Across the US, some of the most consequential democratic work is happening far from Washington. Cities and states are quietly experimenting with new approaches to election administration, representation, civic education, legislative rules, and public participation. This is often in response to practical governance challenges rather than ideological debates. Yet these efforts are frequently fragmented, lightly documented, and disconnected from similar work happening elsewhere.
This fragmentation matters. Democratic trust and legitimacy are built or eroded through day-to-day institutional practice. When communities lack opportunities to learn from one another about what is working, promising reforms remain isolated, and the burden of innovation falls unevenly on local officials and civic leaders.
Founded by Rob Richie, the long-time head of FairVote, Expand Democracy was created to help address this challenge.
Expand Democracy is a nonprofit initiative focused on identifying, connecting, and accelerating evidence-informed ideas that strengthen democratic practice. The premise is straightforward: democracy is not static. It is an institutional system that evolves through use. Improving democratic performance therefore depends on sustained learning across communities, sectors, and disciplines. Particularly at the local level, where democratic systems are most directly experienced by residents.
Rather than advancing a single reform, Expand Democracy functions as an intermediary and enabler. It surfaces local innovations, convenes practitioners and researchers to provide advice, and helps translate lessons from pilot programs into knowledge that other communities can adapt. In addition, it plans to create a pooled fund to incubate and support particularly promising ideas.
One area where this approach is especially visible is election administration, a core piece of democratic infrastructure that is often overlooked until something goes wrong. Local election officials routinely balance access, integrity, cost, and voter confidence, making design decisions that directly shape civic trust. Across the country, jurisdictions have experimented with changes to ballot design, election calendars, voter education, and voting methods each with implications for participation, representation, and legitimacy.
Expand Democracy engages election administration not as an abstract policy debate, but as an applied governance question. Through its Election Administration Advisory Group, composed of experienced current and former statewide election officials, the organization examines how administrative choices affect outcomes such as voter participation, ballot completion, election costs, and public confidence. The emphasis is on understanding how reforms work, under what conditions they succeed, and what trade-offs local governments must navigate.
This work reflects a broader understanding of election administration as civic infrastructure: largely invisible when functioning well, but foundational to democratic trust when it falters.
A central space for this kind of learning is the Democracy Exchange Network (DEN), a recurring convening that brings together election officials, nonprofit leaders, scholars, technologists, and former policymakers. These invitation-only discussions are intentionally cross-partisan and cross-sectoral, as we not only increase awareness across sectors but also build a stronger community of people committed to healthy democracy.
The aim of these exchanges is not consensus, but clarity. Participants interrogate real-world reforms, assess available evidence, and surface implementation challenges that are often missing from public discourse.
Expand Democracy’s work aligns closely with broader efforts to strengthen the nation’s civic infrastructure, including the Healthy Democracy Ecosystem Map developed by the National Civic League. That Map highlights both the richness of the democracy field and a shared challenge, namely the need for greater coordination, learning, and visibility across thousands of organizations and initiatives.
Every state offers stories of democratic innovation and resilience that we are eager to tell. We have a weekly podcast, The Democracy Lab, that lifts up innovations and innovators, along with an active Substack that has profiled nearly 100 pro-democracy ideas in our Expand Democracy Three newsletter and offers guest posts on new ideas and analysis.
Through such tools, Expand Democracy aims to elevate local practices and promote exchange, helping communities connect their work within a larger ecosystem. This makes it easier to share knowledge across state lines, avoid reinventing the wheel, and scale reforms that improve civic health. If interested in tapping into our networks and resources, please reach out via [email protected].
