Yet another crowded primary has chosen a winner with less than a fourth of voters supporting them, adding to the sad litany of American elections that were won even though the majority of voters picked someone else. This election provides even more evidence of the need to implement ranked choice voting (RCV).

This Fall, FairVote is holding a series of webinars to take a deep look at The Future of American Elections. The inaugural webinar, called “Making Every Vote Count,” was held on Friday, August 28.

Oklahoma’s primary runoffs are supposed to ensure that whoever the party nominates has support from the majority of members, but that goal is undermined by the fact that primary runoffs typically have far lower turnout than the initial primary.

Canada’s Conservative Party used a version of #RankedChoiceVoting that weights ballots based on Canada’s electoral districts (which it calls ‘ridings’) in its all-mail election to choose a new leader on Sunday. 

Nearly three-fourths of voters in two key Florida Republican congressional primaries did not vote for the winning candidate, raising questions about the fairness of a plurality election system that enables candidates to win without majority support.

The Republican Party of Virginia used ranked choice voting (RCV) to choose the party’s new chairperson over the weekend. 

Our recent #RankedChoiceVoting poll asking Democratic and independent voters to rank their preferences among seven possible running mates for Biden. The results were, in a nut shell, prescient.

In Tennessee’s August 6 First Congressional District GOP Primary, eventual winner Diana Harshbarger emerged victorious with 19.2 percent support—meaning, in essence, that more than four in every five Republican voters did not vote for her.

Most American elections use the same, supposedly-simple system: plurality voting, where whoever gets the most votes wins even if a majority of voters support one of the other candidates.

Almost exactly 100 years ago, the ratification of the 19th amendment granted women the unabridged right to vote in American elections.