In this month’s St. Petersburg municipal elections, Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the liberal Yabloko party, faced a shocking challenge: two other candidates changed their names to Boris Vishevsky in order to confuse voters and split the vote to prevent the original Vishnevsky’s victory.

Canada’s electoral system of single-member parliamentary districts that are won with a simple plurality of votes has repeatedly failed Canadian voters, denying them fair representation at the federal level.

Many factors likely influence how a voter uses their rankings in a ranked choice voting (RCV) election. As of 2021, the median portion of voters who choose to use multiple rankings on their ballot is 68%. In this post we briefly discuss two factors that affect rank usage: voters’ perceptions of candidate strength and a candidate or party messaging encouraging or discouraging use of rankings.

We are on the precipice of one of the worst redistricting bloodbaths in American history. Today the U.S. Census Bureau released data to let states draw Congressional and legislative maps that will shape politics for the next decade. States across the country - right, left, and center - are getting ready to gerrymander.

This year, FairVote’s Rob Richie, Ben Oestericher, Deb Otis, and Jeremy Seitz-Brown wrote a 10-page article for Politics and Governance about how the use of ranked choice voting (RCV) ballots in presidential primaries both preserves the right of voters to elect their party’s nominee while encouraging candidates to build a majority coalition within their party and reflect its values in order to secure the nomination.

In June, Maine Governor Janet Mills signed LD 1363, a bill that addressed a number of election issues, among which are valuable clarifications on how ranked choice voting (RCV) will work in presidential primaries and how its results will be reported in the 2024 general election for president.

Single-winner districts lead to millions of Americans being underrepresented -- including blue-state Republicans, red-state Democrats, independents, women, and communities of color -- because they are locked into gerrymandered winner-take-all congressional districts that are consistently won by candidates of the plurality group. The Fair Representation Act (FRA) would create proportional multi member districts, solving this problem and improving representation across the political spectrum.

On July 14, Washington DC Councilmember Christina Henderson introduced the Voter Ownership, Integrity, Choice, and Equity (VOICE) Amendment Act of 2021 alongside colleagues Charles Allen, Brianne K. Nadeau, Brooke Pinto, Mary M. Cheh, Elissa Silverman, and Janeese Lewis George. If passed, the VOICE Amendment Act would implement ranked choice voting (RCV) by 2024. Last Wednesday, DC leaders assembled with Rank the Vote DC to share why they believe the VOICE Amendment Act is crucial for the future of DC voting.

The Voter Choice Act, expected to be reintroduced in Congress later this year, would achieve a powerful goal: help states and cities who want to transition to ranked choice voting (RCV). The bill would empower localities with technical assistance from the federal government during the transition process.

In the recent study High Costs and Low Turnout for U.S. Runoff Elections, think tank Third Way concluded that runoffs are an inferior electoral system to ranked choice voting (RCV).