Start / Democracy Works / Andrew yang and charlie dent on the future of americas political parties

Andrew Yang and Charlie Dent on the future of America's political parties

75 min • 29 november 2021

This week, we broadcast a recording from a virtual event with Andrew Yang and Charlie Dent on political parties and democracy reform. We discuss open primaries, ranked-choice voting, universal voting, and more.

Dent was the McCourtney Institute for Democracy’s fall 2021 visiting fellow. He spent seven terms in Congress representing Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and served in the Pennsylvania state legislature before that. He’s currently executive director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program, a CNN political analyst, and a 501c3 adviser for the Renew America Movement, which supports candidates who are committed to democracy and the rule of law.

Yang ran for president in 2020 and mayor of New York City earlier this year. Most recently, he founded the Forward Party, a movement that brings together people interested in solving America’s problems, debating ideas in good faith, and advocating for policies like open primaries and ranked-choice voting. Before that, he started Humanity Forward to advance policies aimed at ending poverty. His latest book is Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy.

Both Dent and Yang spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix what’s broken in American politics but have different ideas about how to do that and where go from here, which made for a very interesting discussion.