SJSU’s Inaugural Public Voices Fellows
A group of 22 faculty members have made SJSU history as the inaugural cohort of the Public Voices Fellows program. Public Voices is an exciting new professional development opportunity launched by the Office of the Provost, the Center for Faculty Development, and the OpEd Project, which aims to amplify expert voices that have been underrepresented in efforts to address today’s most pressing issues. Fellows learned what makes an idea contagious in the public sphere, how to frame ideas in ways that will have public impact, and strategies for influencing discourse on a broad scale.
Marion Campisi
The Fulcrum
The systems by which we elect the president and House of Representatives are predicated in most people s minds by the idea of one person, one vote. That simple idea is filtered though many political structures, however, and leaves different voters with different amounts of power. Proposals in Congress would give statehood, and full voices in the House and Senate, to both Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. This would result in a shift in the amount of power held by the existing 50 states, members of our federal legislature and individual citizens.
In order to understand how changes like this dilute or concentrate our individual political power, it is critical to understand the mathematical concepts underlying our political systems.