When the People Decide
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When the People Decide
When the People Decide, a podcast from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, explores the promise — and sometimes peril — that ballot initiatives have brought to American democracy by telling the stories of people who have organized initiative campaigns across the country. America’s...
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Top of Mind: Is government transparency essential in a democracy?
We're excited to bring you an episode fro Top of Mind with Julie Rose, a podcast from BYU Radio about becoming better citizens and kinder neighbors.
Local News Matters: Public policy as a tool to support local news
If you enjoyed our episode on civic media, you'll want to check out this episode the podcast Local News Matters, which explores issues in local news a...
Taking a civic leap of faith
The final episode of the season takes a step back from individual democracy reforms to look at what it will take to create a healthy civic culture whe...
From news deserts to civic media
Some 2,500 newspapers have closed in the U.S since 2005, leaving entire communities without a source for local news, as well as with limited means to...
Winning the democracy lottery
When public officials embark on efforts to incorporate more civic input in city decisions, they are often hamstrung by inefficient means that favor th...
Libraries as civic spaces
Librarians have spoken for years about “library faith,” the belief that public libraries are central to democracy because they contribute to an inform...
Putting money and power in the people's hands
The United Nations calls participatory budgeting a best practice for a democratic government and the New York Times calls it “revolutionary civics in...
Peeling back the curtain on local government
When Linda Harris began working at city hall in her hometown of Decatur, Georgia, she noticed that the relationship between local government leaders a...
Season 2 coming soon!
In the second season of this podcast all about how people engage with U.S. democracy, Jenna Spinelle zeroes in on hyperlocal efforts to increase parti...
Equal rights, not special rights: A follow up
In this bonus episode, we hear from Roger Asterino, a former Cincinnati city employee whose story was at the heart of the anti-LGBTQ ballot initiative...
Introducing: Democracy Decoded
Why does American Democracy look the way it does today and how can we make it more responsive to the people it was formed to serve? Democracy Decoded,...
Ballot initiatives in 2022 and beyond
The first season of When the People Decide has officially ended, but we have a few bonus episodes for you that we’ll be sharing over the next few week...
For the many or the few?
Throughout the series, we’ve seen what can happen when major decisions are put to the will of the people. Initiatives are far from perfect, but will w...
The war on the initiative
Many state leaders are fighting to restrict access to this tool of democracy—or get rid of ballot initiatives altogether. While challenges to voting r...
The invisible third party of reform
The polarization that exists in U.S. politics has some voters questioning the integrity of our two-party system—whose interests are the politicians re...
A matter of life and death
For decades in Nebraska, people would gather in the parking lot of state prisons to tailgate executions of prisoners on death row. A new crop of state...
Bastard Nation finds its voice
In the early 1900s, birth records of children given up for adoption were sealed and confidential, an effort to shield mothers and children from the s...
Equal rights, not special rights
Christian conservatives in Ohio used the ballot initiative in the 1990s to restrict protections for LGBTQ folks in the workplace. The community fought...
America, fast forward
From property taxes in the 1970s to immigration in the 1990s and the gig economy more recently, ballot initiative trends often begin in California. T...
What happens when the people decide?
A campaign in Michigan to end partisan gerrymandering in 2018 is part of a legacy of ballot initiatives dating back to the 1800s. After becoming disil...
Introducing: When the People Decide
In this reported series, Jenna Spinelle tells the stories of activists, legislators, academics, and average citizens who changed their cities, states,...