Nearly three million voters went to the polls Thursday in Northern Ireland’s Assembly elections and Scotland’s local elections. Both contests demonstrated the promise of the single transferable vote, known in the United States as proportional ranked choice voting (PRCV).

Thank you to everyone who joined us last week’s Twitter Space: “Our Redistricting Nightmare, and How to Avoid It in 2030!” It featured Washington Post reporter Colby Itkowitz; Common Cause National Redistricting Director Kathay Feng; Cato Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson; and was moderated by FairVote’s Social Media Associate Matthew Oberstaedt with excellent questions written by FairVote Senior Fellow David Daley.

Between partisan gerrymandering and geographical sorting, more and more congressional districts are safely red or blue. This means that in a red district, whoever wins the Republican primary will win the general election with ease. The same can be said for the winner of the Democratic primary in a blue district.

Whenever a candidate takes office without support from a majority of voters, we are left wondering if things might have turned out differently if the race were narrowed to a contest between the two frontrunners. Unfortunately, from 1946 to 2021, 128 of the 1,092 gubernatorial elections nationwide - or 11.7 % - were won by candidates who won less than 50 percent of the vote.

It’s worth saying upfront:, nowhere does our Constitution outline specific processes for holding elections. The ‘Elections Clause’ leaves the decision to the states, while also giving Congress the power to intervene. A longer account reveals that single-member district plurality elections were not even how the founders necessarily envisioned elections. 

San Bernardino experiences similar racial disparities in voter turnout as several of its neighbors in California. This research demonstrates how the practice of contingent runoff elections exacerbates those trends and how ranked choice voting (RCV) can help close the gap and empower more voters. 

The French presidential election is headed to a rematch runoff on April 24, with polls showing a thin margin between centrist President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. A Le Pen win could mark a major turn – the first far-right president – for one of Europe’s largest democracies.

On Monday, April 11, we held our inaugural FairVote Awards ceremony in New York City. The event brought together hundreds of Americans passionate about improving democracy for voters. Here are Getty Images from the night.

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.