Season 1, Episode 6

The invisible third party of reform

By design, ballot initiatives require coalitions that cross party lines to secure the votes needed to win. Some campaign organizers view this rule as an opportunity to create new political coalitions and break through polarization.

The polarization that exists in U.S. politics has some voters questioning the integrity of our two-party system—whose interests are the politicians really representing? Ballot initiative organizers claim that they are building new coalitions that transcend party lines, and unite voters on their values, not their partisan affiliations. In doing so, they echo progressive reformers of the past, who created big changes and prompted observers to call their work part of an “invisible third party of reform.” 

Ballot initiatives that are largely popular with everyday citizens, like Medicaid expansion and voting rights restoration, but that are seen by politicians as too progressive for bipartisan support, are finally reaching voters at the ballot box.  In this episode, we examine how the current era of political reformers ushers in alternatives to stalled legislation by going beyond party lines and bringing the issues straight to voters, and asking the question, what do ballot initiatives say about the kind of political system we want in the U.S.?

In This Episode

Jon Grinspan

Jon Grinspan, curator of political and military history at the National Museum of American history. He studies the deep history of American democracy, with a focus on the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is the author of The Age of Acrimony How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915.

Luke Mayville

Luke Mayville, cofounder of Reclaim Idaho and leader of the state’s Proposition 2 ballot initiative to expand Medicare in 2018. He is the author of John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy and an instructor in the Boise State University Honors college.

Desmond Meade

Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition and leader of the state’s Amendment 4 ballot initiative to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions. Meade is the author of Let My People Vote: The Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens, a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, and recipient of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s Brown Democracy Medal.