Morgan Chance is a new Outreach Fellow at FairVote! Morgan would like to be an Administrator of Elections on the county level.

As a first year student at Rutgers University, I enrolled in Byrne Seminar, a one credit pass/fail course designed to allow first year students to explore a topic area of their interest.

Hello everyone! My name is Ruben Lebron and I like to say that I come from both the heartland in Kansas - where I lived the past five years and which significantly shaped me - and also from my beloved island of Puerto Rico where I grew up. I am an Economist and Political Scientist and I am pursuing a Master’s degree in Strategic Governance and Political Communication at The George Washington University.

Growing up as the son of journalists, I was raised on a healthy diet of political arguments at the kitchen table. My passion for public policy came with a side of mashed potatoes. Despite my many attempts to change the topic to the playoff hopes of the Boston Red Sox, I could not successfully escape the “more important” issues facing our nation.

Hello There! I’m Myeisha. My interest in politics began during my sophomore year of college when I was a Casework Intern for Senator Richard Blumenthal. This is where my passion for public service and advocacy emerged. I truly felt as though I was making a difference by communicating with government agencies on behalf of constituents.

When I was 14, I had my first experience with ranked choice voting (RCV). I was a freshman in high school in San Francisco, and we used it to elect my student body representatives. Given the city of San Francisco had been using RCV for every city election for nearly nine years, I was excited to be using it for our school elections. I saw it as a fair system that ensured the winners would have to appeal to larger portions of the student body in order to get elected. At the time, I was sure it would only be a few years before RCV was adopted in cities and states all over the US.

FairVote and Representation2020 hosted four Swarthmore students for a week-long externship where they get to be part of our team and learn how FairVote works. Here, Anna Garner, Anna Scheibmeir, Ava Shafiei and Morgin Goldberg reflect on their experiences and explain what drew them to our organization.

Usually when I tell people that I chose to go to law school knowing that I didn’t want to be a practicing attorney – the type that goes to court every day and litigates criminal cases, or the kind that writes contracts between multinational companies or small businesses – I get a confused face and a “wait, what?” Yes, that’s right, I respond, I want to work in policy. And I’ve been fortunate enough not only to have that opportunity this year, but to work on policy that sits at the very core of all our other fundamental rights.

Something as monumentally important for American democracy as its electoral process requires serious, data-driven solutions, and FairVote has shown that they have the answers. I’m excited to join FairVote’s team and work on finding the solutions that will expand access to the ballot box for all Americans.

Growing up in New York City, I was always an idealist when it came to politics -- a trait which grew deeper after attending an Obama presidential campaign rally in 2008 with my parents, and marching with Occupy Wall Street in 2011. Then I made the decision to major in political science and canvassed for several campaigns. The reality of American politics both academically and from on-the-ground outreach transformed me into something more of a political cynic or (more optimistically) realist. Working at FairVote offers me the ideal outlet for my idealist and realist impulse: to call out the current electoral system and political climate as broken, and champion real, proven reform.