This week on The Female Body Politic, I had the honor of speaking with RepresentWomen Executive Director Cynthia Richie Terrell. Throughout our wide-ranging conversation about all things women in politics, the idea of a panacea came up, that is, a cure for all that pains us in our ailing democracy.
Does such a magical elixir exist?
Before a nostrum can even be conceived, we have to diagnose the patient: the United States of America. Were we to perform an MRI of voting laws, a CAT scan of our electoral system, and a blood panel of campaign finance laws, we would surely conclude that the current administration is not the illness itself, but the symptom.
Instead, the illness is most certainly an acute deficiency in Vitamin D(emocracy).
If we took an overall anatomical view of the ailing patient, examining the lines of her Congressional districts - the veins of democracy - we see a tangled mess of partisan politics. Over the years, state legislatures have slowly but surely carved up these districts on ideological rather than democratic grounds. The result is that the political parties are now able to pick their voters rather than voters being able to pick their leaders.
Fracture upon fracture upon fracture has been the result, and we have, inevitability, arrived where we are today when the foundation of American democracy’s health is in critical condition.
But back to that panacea.
Jeannette Rankin, America’s first Congresswoman, formulated it best when she said, “The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.”
(It is worth noting that she said this about the political strife brewing in Germany in the 1920s.)
This week, we get as close to an episode of House as possible on The Female Body Politic. Cynthia breaks down her diagnostic conclusions about the health of American democracy and gets deep into potent interventions and therapies that would get our country back on its feet - just maybe better than ever.
Here’s a hint: It has a lot to do with electing more women.
As the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen and an outspoken advocate for institutional reforms to advance women’s representation and leadership in the United States, Cynthia Richie Terrell has been working on this case for years. She and her husband, Rob Richie, helped to found FairVote - a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms that give voters greater choice, a stronger voice, and a more representative democracy. She has worked on projects related to women’s representation, democracy, and voting system reform in the United States and has worked to help parliamentarians around the globe meet UN goals for women’s representation and leadership.
She’s also worked boots on the ground as a political campaign manager and field director for candidates for the U.S. presidency, House and Senate, and governor, as well as for state and city-wide initiative efforts, including a state equal rights amendment. In 2024, Terrell was named one of Washington, DC’s top policy experts and received a Generational Impact Award for her work on voting system reform.
Her expert advice is bar none and certainly critical in surviving this democratic health crisis.
If you’d like to help Americans get started on this potent therapy of a Vitamin D(emocracy) infusion, be sure to sign up for RepresentWomen’s upcoming Democracy Solution Summit, three days of women experts discussing actionable ways to strengthen our representative government on local, state, and national level. See you there!
