Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

New Florida push for ranked-choice voting faces obstacles

New Florida push for ranked-choice voting faces obstacles

San Francisco is one of more than a dozen cities where ranked-choice voting is already used. Here voters cast ballots in the mayoral race in San Francisco.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Add Jacksonville, the fourth biggest city in Florida, to the list of communities where activists are attempting to implement ranked-choice voting to encourage more participation and less rancor in politics.

And within days, a new statewide organization promoting the increasingly popular alternative to the traditional vote-for-one candidate system is expected to be announced.

But both efforts are likely to face legal obstacles that could hobble the latest democracy reform drive in the nation's most populous politically purple state.


Perry Waag, who has been active in centrist and independent political reform groups, is one of the leaders of Ranked-Choice Voting Jacksonville.

He said the group is taking a two-prong approach: Encouraging members of the Jacksonville City Council to pass an ordinance implementing ranked-choice voting, while at the same time gathering signatures to get the issue on the city's 2020 ballot — all in the hope of having the new system in place for the 2023 municipal elections.

Waag is taking a pragmatic approach, acknowledging that neither effort may pay off immediately. He finds progress every time he discusses ranked-choice voting with someone. "The mightiest waterfall starts with a single drop," he said.

Waag noted that this year's municipal elections in Jacksonville attracted only 24 percent of the registered voters for the March first round and only 14 percent for the second round runoff in May.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The first step in the petition process is to gather about 3,000 signatures, which will then qualify the proposal to be reviewed by the city's general counsel. If it passes muster there, supporters will have to gather a total of about 30,000 signatures by next May in order to qualify for the November 2020 ballot.

Waag said the statewide group, Rank My Vote Florida, is just getting off the ground and will include activists from Sarasota, where voters approved ranked-choice voting in 2007 but still have not used the system.

The obstacle for Sarasota — and likely to be a hurdle for efforts in Jacksonville and statewide — is the Florida Department of State, which oversees elections statewide.

Secretary of State Laurel Lee, a Republican, believes that Florida law and the state's constitution prohibit ranked-choice voting. The constitution says that "general elections shall be determined by a plurality of votes cast," which she interprets as meaning the individual who receives the most votes wins.

Under the ranked-choice voting system, people place the candidates in an order of preference and, if no one has a majority of top-choice ballots, the candidates with few No. 1 ballots are eliminated and their votes redistributed based on their No. 2 rankings until someone has a majority.

Opponents say this sort of automated runoff system is confusing at best and subject to fraud at worst. Advocates counter that RCV, as its dubbed, better reflects the true level of support for various candidates, discourages negative campaigning and encourages cooperation.

In places like Jacksonville, it also would save money because runoff elections would no longer be needed. That would have saved Jacksonville more than a $1 million in this year's municipal elections, Waag said.

He concedes that it may take some time and effort to convince voters to change. "We are so engrained with the way things are," he said.

But Waag believes that with ranked-choice voting "you'll get more solution-oriented people, more issue-oriented people" elected to office.

Nationwide, more than a dozen communities — including San Francisco and Minneapolis — are using ranked-choice voting while Maine is the only state to have passed it.

Just this week, the Massachusetts attorney general found that a petition to bring ranked-choice voting to the state passed legal muster. Advocates must still gather signatures to place it on the 2020 ballot.

A similar effort for a ballot initiative for ranked-choice voting in Alaska was shot down by Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer, a Republican, but advocates may take the issue to court.

And in Maine, proponents of ranked-choice voting are watching to see whether Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signs legislation passed in the waning hours of a special legislative session to use ranked-choice voting in the March 2020 presidential primary. The bill takes effect at midnight Friday unless she vetoes it.

Read More

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries
person in blue denim jeans and white sneakers standing on gray concrete floor
Photo by Phil Scroggs on Unsplash

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries

With the stroke of a pen, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham enfranchised almost 350,000 independent voters recently by signing a bill for open primaries. Just a few years ago, bills to open the primaries were languishing in the state legislature, as they have historically across the country. But as more and more voters leave both parties and declare their independence, the political system is buckling. And as independents begin to organize and speak out, it’s going to continue to buckle in their direction.

In 2004, there were 120,000 independent voters in New Mexico. A little over 10 years later, when the first open primary bill was introduced, that number had more than doubled. That bill never even got a hearing. But today the number of independents in New Mexico and across the country is too big to ignore. Independents are the largest group of voters in ten states and the second-largest in most others. That’s putting tremendous pressure on a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand Placing Ballot in Box With American Flag
Getty Images, monkeybusinessimages

We Can Fix This: Our Politics Really Can Work – These Stories Show How

As American politics polarizes ever further, voters across the political spectrum agree that our current system is not delivering for the American people. Eighty-five percent of Americans feel most elected officials don’t care what people like them think. Eighty-eight percent of them say our political system is broken.

Whether it’s the quality and safety of their kids’ schools, housing affordability and rising homelessness, scarce and pricey healthcare, or any number of other issues that touch Americans’ everyday lives, the lived experience of polarization comes from such problems—and elected officials’ failure to address them.

Keep ReadingShow less