Entries from 2011
- 128 of 128 results
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Ranked Choice Absentee Ballots: Preventing the Disenfranchisement of Military and Overseas Voters
- Posted: July 21, 2011
- Author(s): Cynthia Okechukwu
- Categories: Instant Runoff Voting, Reforms
American citizens living abroad, including men and women in uniform, often face difficulties in voting in elections at home. Military and overseas voters continue to point to short ballot turnaround times as an obstacle to voting in federal, state, and local elections. Ranked choice absentee ballots provide a legal and practical solution to this problem.
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Gerrymandering in Michigan and the Super District Remedy
- Posted: July 20, 2011
- Author(s): Rob Richie, Jais Mehaji, Super Districts
- Categories: Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Redistricting
Controversies over redistricting in Michigan provide the latest evidence of the failure of winner-take-all, single member district rules. Winner-take-all elections inevitably represent many voters poorly and tempt partisans to gerrymander outcomes. The 1967 law mandating that states use them should be repealed so that states like Michigan can explore “super district” form of proportional voting to increase voter choice and fair outcomes.
FairVote's example of how super districts would work in Michigan show that every district easily can be made to be competitive and guarantee fair representation.
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Lebanon Discusses Adopting Proportional Representation
- Posted: July 19, 2011
- Author(s): Arab Spring Series, Jais Mehaji
- Categories: Europe, Middle East and Africa
Though not undergoing the same kind of upheaval as in Tunisia, Egypt, or Syria, Lebanon has been experiencing some change from the Arab Spring movement. As true in all countries moving toward real elections, adoption of proportional representation voting systems is seen as a key goal.
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More on Egypt's Electoral Law
- Posted: July 18, 2011
- Author(s): Arab Spring Series, Jais Mehaji
- Categories: Middle East and Africa, Elections Worldwide
Progress toward democracy is looking all the more complicated in Egypt, as questions about the parliamentary elections’ rules remain unanswered and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) electoral measures are replete with ambiguity.
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Bipartisan Over-Attention to Battleground States
- Posted: July 11, 2011
- Author(s): Katherine Sicienski
- Categories: Presidential Tracker, National Popular Vote
FairVote has recently blogged about the disproportionate attention that battleground states have received from President Barack Obama since his inauguration. But political calculation is thoroughly bipartisan. Witness how the Republican National Committee (RNC) is engaging in similar inequitable practices.
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Lower Presidential Election Turnout in Safe Republican States
- Posted: July 8, 2011
- Author(s): Neal Suidan
- Categories: Home, National Popular Vote, Reforms, FairVote
Thirteen states have voted for Republicans in every presidential election since 1980: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. This track record makes them the most consistently safe Republican strongholds in modern presidential politics. In 1988, these states’ turnout barely trailed that of the rest of the country, by 2.56%. But in every election since, these 13 states have fallen further behind. In 2008, their turnout was 6.22% behind the rest of the nation.
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Egypt Caretaker Government Passes Electoral Draft Law Amid Parties' Vehement Objections
- Posted: July 8, 2011
- Author(s): Arab Spring Series, Jais Mehaji
- Categories: Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Middle East and Africa, Elections Worldwide
After Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak back in February, the military government which took over in the interim has pursued a difficult transition to democratic rule. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in September, and political parties and citizens alike have been very vocal about how they will be conducted -with one key conflict being the democratic opposition seeking a fully proportional representation voting system and the caretaker government wanting to keep half of seats elected by winner-take-all elections.
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Curing Our Democracy Part II: The Redistricting Connection and the Pitfalls of the District-Based Electoral Vote System
- Posted: July 7, 2011
- Author(s): Joe Sroka
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Reforms, Redistricting
Part II: The Redistricting Connection and the Pitfalls of the District-Based Electoral Vote System
This Part explores the interaction between redistricting and electoral vote allocation in Nebraska and Maine, demonstrating the negative consequences and offering solutions to these problems. See Part I for an introduction and discussion about the winner-take-all rule for allocating electoral votes.
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Curing Our Democracy Part I: Nebraska’s Electoral Vote Debate and the Pitfalls of the Winner-Take-All Rule
- Posted: July 7, 2011
- Author(s): Joe Sroka
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Reforms, Redistricting
Part I: Nebraska's Electoral Vote Debate and the Pitfalls of the Winner-Take-All Rule
If put on the spot, one may have difficulty articulating similarities between the states of Nebraska and Maine: the former, corn-yielding and reliably Republican; the latter, fish-producing and predominately Democratic. Yet Maine and Nebraska are the only states in the Union that presently split presidential electoral votes by congressional district rather than allocating all electoral votes to the statewide winner. In doing so, Nebraska and Maine are useful in diagnosing two conditions that plague our democracy: the current systems of partisan redistricting and presidential electoral vote allocation.
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Rossello v. United States and the Right to Vote for Puerto Rico
- Posted: July 5, 2011
- Author(s): Jo McKeegan
- Categories: Home, Right to Vote Amendment, Universal Voter Registration, FairVote
Brought in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by former governor of Puerto Rico Pedro Rossello, Rossello v. United States addresses the lack of a right to cast a ballot and have such ballots counted in national elections for president and Congress by residents of Puerto Rico. Petitioner Rossello has been disenfranchised, along with all other residents of Puerto Rico, despite his American citizenship, based solely on his area of residence within the United States. The case raises larger issues about voting rights for Americans who live in American "colonies" that are not states.