Steven John Hill (born 6 June 1958) is an American writer, columnist and political reformer. He has authored several books on American politics and political reform, as well as a book on the European political economy (Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age). Hill led the campaign to pass instant runoff voting in San Francisco in 2002, which was the first victory for electoral system reform in the United States since the 1950s, and was a leader in other campaigns for instant runoff voting and public financing of campaigns. He is a cofounder of FairVote and former director of the political reform program at the New America Foundation.
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Life
Hill was born in New London, Connecticut and lived there until the age of four when his family relocated up the Thames River to Uncasville, a borough of Montville. He lived there until he went to college, attending Yale University, the University of Connecticut, and Western Washington University/Fairhaven College. In the early 1990s, he cofounded Citizens for Proportional Representation (CPR) along with Rob Richie and Matthew Cossolotto. CPR soon changed its name to the Center for Voting and Democracy, and Hill and Richie became its first two employees in the mid-1990s. The Center underwent another name change in the early 2000s, and now is known as FairVote.
Work
Hill has been widely known in the United States for advancing the political reforms of proportional representation, instant runoff voting, public financing of campaigns, universal voter registration, national direct election of the president and reform of the U.S. Senate. He made the argument for these reforms and others in his books 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy (2006), Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics (2003) and Reflecting All of Us/Whose Vote Counts (2001, co-authored with Rob Richie). He also advanced these political reforms by penning numerous op-eds and articles in leading American publications such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Financial Times, The Guardian, International Herald Tribune and many others.