About Making Every Vote Count
Making Every Vote Count is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. We work to reform the country’s presidential election system to assure two things. First, that the candidate for the country’s highest office who earns the most votes nationwide becomes president. This is the governing principle in every other American election, and polls consistently show that Americans across all demographic categories favor this reform. Second, that the votes of all citizens in the presidential election count and matter equally. This means ensuring that individual votes get counted toward state popular votes; ensuring that state popular votes are respected when tabulating the national winner; and encouraging reform such that individual votes influence the election outcome in as direct a manner as possible.
We seek to invigorate a national movement behind these important election reform issues through direct and grassroots legislative advocacy, legal argument, and public discourse. We support and coordinate with organizations that share our commitment to the fundamental value that the person who wins the most votes nationwide, and the belief that all votes count and matter equally.
Directors & Advisors:
Elizabeth A. cavanagh
Chair & CEO
Elizabeth Cavanagh is the Director of the Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) Program at American University Washington College of Law. She also serves on the boards of the Historical Society of the DC Circuit and the Legal Resource Center on Violence Against Women. Prior to joining the SJD Program in 2017, Elizabeth taught courses on legal rhetoric and appellate advocacy. She spent several years as an appellate and trial court litigator with Jenner & Block in Washington, DC.
Elizabeth served as a law clerk to Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a graduate of Yale Law School, where she was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal, and Dartmouth College.
Blair Levin
Director
Blair Levin serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Metropolitan Policy Project of the Brookings Institute. He also serves as the Executive Director of Gig.U: The Next Generation Network Innovation Project, an initiative of three dozen leading research university communities seeking to accelerate the deployment of next generation networks. He also serves as a consultant to the investment community and to numerous small communications enterprises.
From 2009-2010, Mr. Levin oversaw the development of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. He is the co-author of “The Politics of Abundance” (2012) and, with Denise Linn, of “The Next Generation Connectivity Handbook: a Guide for Community Leaders Seeking Affordable, Abundant Bandwidth” (2014) as well as numerous articles on telecommunications policy. From 1993-1997 Levin served as Chief of Staff to FCC Chairman Reed Hundt. Previously, Mr. Levin practiced law in North Carolina, where he represented new communications ventures, as well as local governments. He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School.
Jonathan bell
Director
Jonathan R. Bell is a founding partner of Stern Tannenbaum & Bell LLP, where he represents clients in estate planning, administration and related dispute resolution matters, including litigation. An alumnus of Yale College and Harvard Law School, Mr. Bell is listed in Who’s Who in America and The Best Lawyers in America, and is a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. He has been consistently selected as a New York Super Lawyer®, including every year since the founding of Stern Tannenbaum & Bell in 2007 through 2016.
Nick Allard
Director
Dean “Nick” Allard joined Jacksonville University as the Founding Dean of the College of Law. He previously served as Dean of Brooklyn Law School (2012 - 2018), where he also concurrently served as President (2014-2018) and Professor of Law (2012-2020). Nick is a distinguished attorney, having held leadership positions in some of the most highly regarded firms in the world. Most recently, Dean Allard has been Senior Counsel based in the Washington, D.C. office of Dentons US LLP, the largest law firm in the world.
He has received recognition as a leading lawyer and awards as a “Visionary” for his work in public policy and counseling clients in the fields of privacy, telecommunications, advanced broadband networked communications, technology, health, energy, environmental law, compliance, and higher education. Nick has been a member of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Government Affairs, chaired its Communications Committee, and currently chairs its Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress. Dean Allard holds prominent volunteer leadership positions at Princeton University, Oxford University, the Rhodes Scholarship Trust, Cambridge University, and Catholic University of America, and is a long-time Trustee of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Nick is a Bodley Fellow of Oxford’s Merton College and is President of the Merton College Charitable Corporation.
He received his JD from Yale Law School and holds a BA from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He is a Rhodes Scholar and earned an MA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford University. Dean Allard’s legal education continued during clerkships with U.S. Chief District Judge Robert F. Peckham (N.D. CA) and U.S. Appellate Judge Patricia M. Wald (D.C. Cir.). He served as counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and Chief of Staff to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY).
Maggie Brennan
Director
Maggie Brennan is Employment Counsel at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Maggie provides legal counsel and support to HPE’s Global Human Resources organization. Prior to joining HPE in 2021, Maggie was an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, DC. While at Covington, Maggie served as pro bono counsel for MEVC and she has worked closely with the organization since its founding in 2017.
Maggie is a graduate of Stanford Law School and the George Washington University. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Rachelle Chong
Director
Rachelle Chong is a California regulatory lawyer and strategist who assists innovative clients before the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. She was the first Asian American Commissioner of both the FCC and the CPUC, appointed by President Clinton and Governor Schwarzenegger. She has been a law partner at Graham & James and Coudert Brothers, General Counsel for two start-up companies, VP of Government Affairs for the nation's largest cable company, and senior policy counsel for the California Technology Agency (the State CIO’s office). She founded her solo law and lobbying practice in 2013 in San Francisco. Rachelle is a deep regulatory expert on telecommunications, broadband, energy, transportation network companies, public vessel common carriers, and autonomous vehicle regulation. She regularly speaks at national conferences to inspire companies and communities to bridge the Digital Divide, to adopt advanced technologies for grid modernization and disaster recovery, and to explain the intersection of communications and energy transformation during an era of climate change escalation.
Rachelle is a seasoned corporate board and advisory board member. She is the former Chairwoman of the SHLB Coalition (a non-profit organization representing schools, libraries and rural health care entities before the FCC and Congress), and currently serves as an Advisory Council member of Anterix, Fortinet, Prologis and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Past corporate boards on which she has served include Anterix (ATEX), Corsair, Lightbridge (LTBR) and Authorize.net (ANET and now CYBS). In addition, she has served on a number of nonprofit boards including the California Foundation for the Environment and the Economy (CFEE), the California Asian Chamber of Commerce, Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Bay Area, the California Emerging Technology Fund, and the California Telehealth Network. Rachelle holds a law degree (J.D. 1984) from U.C. Hastings College of the Law, and dual B.S. degrees (1981) from UC Berkeley (Political Science/Journalism). Born and raised in the Central Valley of California, she maintains offices in both San Francisco and in Sonoma County.
Jon Blake
Senior Advisor
Jon Blake headed the Communications and Media practice for Covington & Burling for many years, and served on the firm’s Management Committee, including as Chair, at key points in the firm’s development. In his practice, one of his most noteworthy cases was defending the Washington Post’s television station licenses against efforts by the Nixon Administration to punish the Post for its pivotal role during the Watergate scandal. More generally, Mr. Blake has devoted much of his practice to advising clients and whole industries on strategies for coping with or taking advantage of change. Thus, he was instrumental from the earliest days in developing the policy, legal and technical framework for new services and new technologies like digital television and the mobile phone industry. From their emergence nearly 20 years ago, he and the firm have played a leading role in net neutrality issues.
The firm’s communications practice has also been deeply involved in such controversial issues as the relationship between local broadcasters and the major national networks, and between local broadcasters and pay services such as cable and satellite systems.
These major projects have required deep and creative engagement in alliance-building, inter-industry collaboration, shaping government policy, legislation, litigation, agency rulemaking, and messaging to the public.