Restoring American democracy will take the determination and attention of every American who wants to return to self-governance and end our spiral into tyranny. Here are a few things that could help, plus dozens of ideas to explore:

Reverse Citizens United. Democracy by the people, for the people, started to bleed out the day John Roberts proclaimed that corporations are people. Unlimited spending in politics means that politicians are literally bought and paid for, and no good-intentioned citizen is able to serve without being able to finance a multi-million-dollar election campaign. Limits must be placed on PACS and corporate money in elections for truly representative government to exist.

Secure Voting Rights For All Citizens. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, The Freedom to Vote Act would have guaranteed early voting and vote by mail, established automatic registration, banned gerrymandering, brought disclosure to dark money in elections, and strengthened public campaign financing and safeguards against election subversion. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would have restored the strength of the Voting Rights Act after it was gutted by the Supreme Court. This legislation could have stopped America’s slide into autocracy, and it’s the first place to start in order to restore American democracy. Automatic Voter Registration, common in many world democracies, is something America desperately needs. Because of America’s history of racism, the minority far-right continues to win elections by making voting restrictive and difficult.

Expand the Court. Why do we have nine Supreme Court justices? The number has fluctuated historically and is currently nine because there were once only nine federal circuit courts. Today, there are 13. The Judiciary Act proposed by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), would have expanded the court to 13. “Thirteen justices would mean one justice per circuit court of appeals, consistent with how the number of justices was originally determined,” said Rep. Hank Johnson, (D-Ga.), ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Co-Founder of the Court Reform Now Task Force. “It is time that we start thinking about the Supreme Court like we think about the other co-equal branches of government and consider whether its current composition allows it to effectively do what we need it to do — efficiently and expertly administer justice and uphold the rule of law, rather than the unethical Court we have today that appears to be beholden to dark money influence, and, at times, pernicious corruption. Congress must pass reforms that add seats to the Supreme Court so we can restore balance, judicial independence, meaningful checks and balances and protect the rights of all Americans.”

Enforce the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause. Donald Trump was unqualified to run for president in 2024 after instigating the insurrection against Congress on January 6. Unfortunately, the corrupted Supreme Court choked. Now, more legislation is needed to clarify how and when the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause is enforced. A criminal should never again be allowed to become president of the United States.

Teach Citizenship and Civics. Americans don’t seem to understand why democracy — government by the people, for the people, where citizens’ fundamental rights are protected — prevents tyranny. The far-right (and now the mainstream GOP) has been pushing a “government is the enemy” narrative for 50+ years in an effort to push back on civil rights progress since the 1960s. America (at least in theory) was a beacon for freedom of thought and expression — the polar opposite of fear and oppression. The right’s anti-democracy agenda has left America with oligarchs and fascism, where the privilege of the few (not the rights of ALL) are protected.

Make College Affordable

Fix Section 230. Before social media, publishing came with responsibilities. Social media sites that consistently use algorithms to boost hate and disinformation need to answer for these abuses.

Bolster the 4th Estate. Fact-based journalism is an important check on corruption and over-reaching power in a democracy. For self-governance to work, citizens must be informed by facts; facts are knowable.

Implement Ranked-Choice Voting? Proponents say ranked-choice voting encourages less divisive campaigns (voters are still courted for their second and third choices, etc.) and supports more centrist or at least less extremist election outcomes. This may be one issue where both Democrats and Republicans are in fear of a mechanism that abolishes the power of our dominant two-party system. But would it ultimately preserve democracy?

End Gerrymandering

Affirm ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment

Fix the Electoral College .. or end it.

Add Members to the U.S. House of Representatives. We’ve had 435 House members for decades, even as the American population swelled.

Pass the PRESS Act

Protect Children, not Guns

Add States. The District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have no respresentation in Congress. Both could help tip the balance of the legislative branch if they became states.

Strengthen anti-SLAPP legislation and shield laws.

Fix the Electoral Count Act! Congress passed a bipartisan bill to update the 1887 Electoral Count Act, making it harder to overturn any state’s democratically elected slate of electors. But does it go far enough when nearly a third of the House of Representatives —139 Republican House members — pushed the Big Lie and objected to certifying Joe Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021?

Writers and experts weigh in on how to bolster American democracy

What ails American democracy, and what to do about it. Harvard Kennedy School faculty share insights into the fragility of American democratic norms and institutions following the attack on the United States Capitol by followers of President Trump.

How to Fix American Democracy. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the nonprofit law and policy institute The Brennan Center for Justice discussed the need for a compre­hens­ive set of demo­cracy reforms laid out in the For the People Act (H.R. 1 in the House of Repres­ent­at­ives and S. 1 in the Senate), coupled with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advance­ment Act.

The effort to restrict access to voting, fueled by lies about voter fraud, has been going on for a decade, and it escal­ated in 2013 after the Supreme Court gutted the protec­tions of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. Self-inter­ested state legis­lat­ors have increased hurdles to voting and created gerry­mandered elect­oral districts; some have gone so far as to undo the work of their citizens who voted to expand the fran­chise.

Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Eight simple steps to fix American democracy. Mehdi Hasan looks at these common sense steps America should adopt to take us from the brink of authoritarianism to a more stable democracy: Abolish the Electorial College, pass a new Voting Rights Act, ban gerrymandering, end the filibuster, ban “dark money” in politics, establish term limits for the Supreme Court, and grant statehood to Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.

Our democracy is broken. Here’s how to fix it. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington outlines needed reforms, from new ethics laws for all three branches of government to limiting “dark money” in politics.

Fix this democracy — now. In 2017, The Washington Post asked dozens of writers and artists from all political persuasions to “propose one idea that could help fix the long-term problems bedeviling American democracy. Here’s their roundup, with suggestions that range from requiring all citizens to vote to mandating military or civilian service.

Ten Ways to Strengthen American Democracy. In 2014, Former Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and former Agriculture Secretary and Rep. Dan Glickman (D-Kansas) who co-chaired the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Political Reform, outlined ten ways to “improve the federal government’s ability to function regardless of the deep ideological divides that exist both among lawmakers and the American public” including bipartisan redistricting commissions, filibuster reforms, two-year federal budget cycles and “a year of service” in programs such as AmeriCorps for Americans ages 18 to 28.

NPR: Democracy is declining in the U.S. but it’s not all bad news, a report finds. The United States has been labeled a “backsliding democracy” in a report from the European think tank International IDEA. IDEA measured the global state of democracy in 2020 and 2021 using 28 “indicators” of democracy based on five “core pillars” — representative government, fundamental rights, checks on government, impartial administration and participatory engagement.