Changing How America Votes, edited by Todd Donovan, includes 13 innovative ideas about how to assess our democracy and make elections in the United States better. FairVote’s reform vision is well-represented in the collection, including a chapter making the case for the Fair Representation Act for Congress.

On HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver tackled an issue that many consider the most pressing threat to our democracy: gerrymandering. The most important part of the segment came, however, when Oliver acknowledged that the root of the problem is not the folks who draw the lines, but our winner-take-all system of elections.

In their recent report, the Campaign Legal Center documents the effect that gerrymandering can have on election results.

Last week, Real Clear Politics extrapolated demographic trends to project which states are likely to gain or lose U.S. House seats in the reapportionment that will occur after the 2020 Census. Their forecast has nine states losing one U.S. House seat and six states gaining seats. These are only projections, but given that we are now six years into the decade, many of the demographic shifts of the decade are already well advanced and difficult to reverse.

Two days before Thanksgiving 2016, a three-judge panel struck down partisan gerrymandering as unconstitutional in a challenge to Wisconsin’s state legislative redistricting plan. If the Court sides with the plaintiffs and strikes down partisan gerrymandering, it will be important – but it will not be as world-changing as some are claiming.

A hallmark of American democracy is that we vote for candidates and not parties. As voters, we pride ourselves on supporting the best candidates, irrespective of their political party affiliations. This “crossover voting” or “ticket splitting” - voting for nominees of different political parties for different offices - is dying.

The 2016 U.S. House election was a better election for incumbents than 2014, and one in which the nation was split down the middle. The incumbency bump added eight points to the average incumbent’s margin of victory and only 12 seats (3%) of seats changed hands.

In what many might have been assumed to be an unpredictable election, FairVote was able to project the outcomes of over 80% of U.S. House seats with 100% accuracy two years ahead of Election Day 2016.

Results are coming in from Wisconsin, and they demonstrate how much Wisconsin stands as an example of the unfair partisan skew in congressional and legislative elections. This may help make the case for a lawsuit working its way through federal court, arguing that Wisconsin's gerrymandered districts violate the U.S. Constitution.

Results in North Carolina show the extent of the state’s unfair partisan gerrymandering in congressional and legislative elections. Such e distortions and battles have serious consequences both for the quality of North Carolinians representation and electoral integrity.