This 4th of July, as we celebrate America’s independence by grilling out and watching fireworks with friends, we should take a minute to reflect on what it really means to be an American. Being an American is about freedom, liberty and having a system of government by and for the people. In our representative democracy, [...]

Leaders from both major parties were in shock at the news this week that Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. A partisan lightning rod for many years, Sen. Kennedy has developed a remarkable reputation for working across party lines to address the nation’s problems from his generally liberal perspective.
Election wonk that I [...]

FairVote for a decade has issued a bi-annual report called Monopoly Politics in which we make projections in most U.S. House elections without any regards for what has happened since the prior election.
We’ve been careful to use the world “projections” rather than “predictions” because there’s one element we don’t try to predict: what the national [...]

ICongress has authority over congressional elections, but typically delegates that authority to states for many decisions. Louisiana is a good example.
Decades ago, Louisiana adopted a majority runoff system for congressional and state elections (leaving presidential elections with plurality rules allowing “spoilers”). There would be a first round with all candidates running in one race. If [...]