On Monday, April 11, 2022, FairVote hosted the FairVote Awards in New York City. At this event, we took the opportunity to celebrate our movement and show our appreciation for a few people that have been working to make progress on crucial reforms.

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, we’re excited to let you hear directly from a few RCV champions. Following our earlier post, “History-Making Women and the RCV Elections That Put Them in Power,” we reached out to some of the women we discussed to get their first-hand opinion on ranked choice voting (RCV) and women’s representation.

Malta used proportional ranked choice voting (known internationally as the single transferable vote) to elect its parliament on Saturday, March 26, 2022.

As ranked choice voting (RCV) grows in popularity across the country, FairVote has studied how it can improve voter turnout by combining two-round elections into a single higher-turnout instant runoff contest.

Truck driver Edward Durr made headlines in November by defeating the Democratic leader of the New Jersey state senate after only spending $1,813 on his campaign. His only purchases? Flyers and donuts. This was an example of a broader trend in American elections generally and the New Jersey state elections specifically: partisanship is becoming one of the only factors that matters.

From March 8 to 10, RepresentWomen hosted its inaugural Solutions Summit. The three day virtual gathering featured experts and leaders who are all working in election administration, voting rights, and democracy reform, including ranked choice voting (RCV).

Across the country, ranked choice voting (RCV) is reducing the chances of vote splitting and encouraging women and people of color to run for office, regardless of whether other women or people of color are in the race. With RCV, nobody has to “wait their turn” (a common reason women cite about delaying or even making their decision to run.) During Women’s History Month we’re highlighting the achievements of women who have won RCV elections across America. We’re excited to celebrate a few of the many women who have been elected with RCV to serve their communities and hopefully inspire even more women to run.

Today (On, March 8, 2022), people across the world are celebrating International Women’s Day, commemorating the accomplishments of women past, present, and future. Here at FairVote, we are taking this opportunity to additionally emphasize how proportional representation around the world has benefited and allowed women to reach their natural potential, without being told to ‘wait their turn’.

The Voting Rights Act is intrinsically linked to the events surrounding Bloody Sunday, what preceded them, and what we as a nation should have learned from them. As time passes and as the efforts to repair the Act do not, we risk losing the lessons of Selma and the statutory activation of the 15th Amendment.