The Fair Voting Solution for U.S. House Elections

How do we fix our extremely partisan landscape?

Fair Voting 2012, illustrated below and analyzed here, provides fair voting plans of proportional representation for all states. 

  • Click on 'Partisan Split', 'Competition', and 'Voting Rights' to see district partisanship and its impact
  • Click on states and switch between 'State Plans' and 'FairVote Plans' (upper right) for information on states' current plans and the fair voting solution

Read more about our reports below as well as at Monopoly Politics 2012 and Fair Voting 2012.

About Our FairVotingUs.Com Map

FairVotingUS.Com is a unique resource that provides comprehensive, easily accessible information on the partisan landscape for the 2012 elections to the U.S. House of Representatives in all 435 congressional districts. Our report contrasts this landscape with how elections would look after adoption of fair voting: constitutionally-protected, American forms of proportional representation grounded in our own electoral traditions. 

Accompanied by detailed analyses and explanations of our methodology, this information also is presented on separate report pages: 

 

  • Monopoly Politics 2012, with 2012 district partisanship and election projections for all 435 districts
  • Fair Voting 2012, with fair voting plans of proportional representation for all states 

 

Our map allows you to view every state's redistricting map and its implications for partisan outcomes, competition and voting rights. You can compare it with our fair voting plans that better reflect each state's partisan balance, create more competition, and enhance opportunities for all voters, including racial minorities, to elect candidates. (If your browser does not allow you to view this map, please see Monopoly Politics 2012 and Fair Voting 2012).

Map features include:

  • Partisan split: This tab measures the underlying partisan landscape of districts as determined by how the district voted for president in 2008 relative to how the nation voted for presdient that year. While nearly always matching which party controls the seat, see our detailed reports for how and why the party controls every district.
  • Competition: Competitiveness is measured by district partisanship. "Strong" defines districts where one party has an edge greater than "58%" or lower than 42%. "Lean" means one party has between 54% and 58% backing. "Balanced" defines districts where neither party has an advantage greater than 54%, or lower than 46%.
  • Voting rights: We measure whether voters in a given racial minority group have the direct power to elect congressional candidates in current districts. We measure the same factor with proposed fair voting plans.
  • Fair voting plans: Fair voting plans rely on "super-districts" that elect between three and five representatives with a candidate-based form of proportional voting. (Note: Our options for fair voting plans were limited due to building super-districts from a state's districts, but they provide a means to show the impact of adopting fair voting.

Fair Voting Report

  • No More Gerrymanders: Missouri

    June 19, 2013

    Lawmakers in Missouri have recently passed a congressional redistricting plan that distorts the state’s political representation in favor of Republicans and institutionalizes a decade of uncompetitive, meaningless elections.

     

    To address the structural impediments of winner-take-all, FairVote has created an alternative— what we call fair voting — for Missouri’s congressional elections. Every voter in a fair voting system would experience a meaningful election and the great majority of voters would help elect a representative.

Read More

Fair Voting Blogs

  • Getting a Real “Colbert Bump” for Women’s Representation Takes Fair Voting Systems and Better Party Rules

    March 29, 2013

    After voters in South Carolina rejected four women running as Democratic Party nominees in the 2012 congressional elections, the state in a special election this May again has a chance elect its first female House members since 1990. The likely continuation of an all-male delegation provides lessons for what it will take to achieve gender parity in Congress: a combination of gender-conscious party rules and fair voting methods.

  • No More Gerrymanders: Missouri's Partisan Plan versus the Fair Voting Alternative

    March 15, 2012

    Lawmakers in Missouri have recently passed a congressional redistricting plan that gives Republican candidates a strong advantage in 6 of 8 seats and protects nearly all incumbents. There's a better way--fair voting systems in multi-seat "super-districts." Read the latest in our fair voting plan series.

  • No More Gerrymanders: Congressional Representation in the Seven At-Large States

    January 3, 2012

    Though spared the controversies of congressional redistricting, winner-take-all rules still plague the seven at-large states (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming). Nowhere are the shortcomings of our voting system more acute than in at-large winner-take-all races, where one individual is - rather astonishingly - responsible for representing the political and demographic diversity of an entire state. Read our latest critique of winner-take-all elections and our analysis of congressional elections in these at-large states.

Read More