While Asian American and Pacific Islanders (API) may be the smallest community in many jurisdictions, it is still the fastest growing and most diverse demographic in the country. API voters and their preferred candidates are particularly underrepresented by our current winner-take-all rules.
Read moreOn May 6th, voters in more than 50 Texas jurisdictions went to the polls to elect local representatives with cumulative voting rights. Cumulative voting, a form of fair representation voting, has been successful in empowering racial and ethnic minority voters in Texas, but this year’s election demonstrated its limitations as well.
Read moreVoter turnout in many city elections is hitting all-time lows. There is no single reason for such declines, evidence strongly suggests ranked choice voting (RCV) does not lead to lower turnout despite some claims to the contrary. Indeed, adoption of RCV has allowed cities to avoid primary and runoff elections that almost always had far lower turnout than the general election.
Read moreIn the 2016 U.S. House election, Jim Bridenstine (OK-1) won reelection in a race with just 62,655 votes cast (or 8.1% of the district’s 2010 census population). Meanwhile, Ryan Zinke (MT) won his 2016 re-election bid with more than 507,000 votes cast, and earned more than five times as many votes as Bridenstein on his way to a victory that was (relatively) close. How can this be?
Read moreWhat can we learn from our near miss with the absurd world of election irregularities? For one thing, while these situations worry some academics who study election systems, we have little evidence that they happen in practice.
Read moreThis weekend, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) will gather for its winter meeting
Read moreIn the first election for state chair using a single, ranked choice voting ballot, the Iowa Democratic Party elected Derek Eadon from a crowded field of seven candidates. Ranked choice voting allowed the committee to efficiently elect Eadon with a majority of the vote and choose a candidate who seems to have earned consensus support from different factions within the party.
Read moreOne commonly cited benefit of the Electoral College is that, even when the national popular vote for president is close, it creates a decisive victory for one candidate or the other. However, these "decisive" victories are often more tenuous than they seem. There are plenty of elections in which slight vote shifts in key states would have changed the winner of the Electoral College vote.
Read moreThere will be a new experiment in divided government. The Connecticut State Senate is now perfectly tied 18-18 for the first time since 1893. It is too early now to know what sort of concessions Democrats may offer. However, FairVote’s guide to Collaborative Policy Making could serve as a road map for inclusive policy making in the state Senate. Connecticut currently uses none of the agenda setting and consensus building practices that lead to a more civil and functional divided government.
Read moreFour Bay Area cities, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro, elect their mayors and a total of 52 offices with ranked choice voting (RCV). Each city has now elected all of those offices at least twice since San Francisco started using RCV in 2004 and the remaining cities in 2010.
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