[rtkwe]

There's the most power on the level of federal elections where congress has the power to dictate the "time, place, and manner" at any time (Article 1 Section 4). So for the whole of Congress they have pretty full and broad powers to make whatever they want happen. To get similar things at the state levels there's the ever useful strategy of just dangling a large pot of money for states. And ballot measures aren't completely binding they can be modified by the legislature of the individual states.

I do think money in politics is a big issue but with Citizens United it's hard to do anything about that since "spending money is speech" means there's very very little wiggle room in the 1st amendment for putting a stopper on the geyser of corporate money. [1]

[0] https://medium.com/@teamwarren/my-plan-to-strengthen-our-dem...

[1] Is a real messy problem. Personally I think corporations getting the full rights of citizens is a bit bonkers and I wish there was an easy way to draw a line between people collectively pooling their money for speech and a corporation doing the same thing. Maybe some test around profit making or something to tamp down on the feedback loop of companies spending money to make way more money in return from legislative changes.

[Steltek]

In the vein of "dangling money", elections are expensive to run and states would not want to double spend to follow their rules + Fed rules.

[rtkwe]

Yeah I imagine that's part of the calculus too that it would be easier to use the same rolls, machines and rules but getting them to reform the district drawing process would be somewhere our hypothetical Warren admin would probably have to incentivize with money.