Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Despite setbacks, ranked choice voting will continue to grow

Person voting in Denver

A proposal to institute ranked choice voting in Colorado was rejected by voters.

RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Mantell is director of communications for FairVote.

More than 3 million people across the nation voted for better elections through ranked choice voting on Election Day, as of current returns. Ranked choice voting is poised to win majority support in all five cities where it was on the ballot, most notably with an overwhelming win in Washington, D.C. – 73 percent to 27 percent.


For state ballot measures, the status quo won the day – with a ballot measure to implement RCV losing in Oregon, and ballot measures to implement open primaries and RCV falling in Colorado, Idaho and Nevada. A ballot measure to keep RCV in Alaska is neck-and-neck and may take several days to call, with absentee ballots continuing to arrive for 15 days.

“Ranked choice voting took a step forward on Election Day 2024, as voters in our nation’s capital and several cities said yes to better elections,” said my colleague, FairVote President and CEO Meredith Sumpter. “We celebrate the countless hours that local and state advocates have spent turning their frustration with today’s politics into real progress. Alaska and Maine also used ranked choice voting to elect the president and other key officials, and 10 cities across the nation held smooth and successful RCV elections.”

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Changing the status quo is never easy. Entrenched interests — including several state parties and an increasingly well-organized national opposition — pushed back hard on this year’s statewide ballot measures. But make no mistake: The future remains bright for ranked choice voting.

Ranked choice voting was used in only 10 cities and zero states in 2016, and has now grown to over 50 cities, counties and states that are home to nearly 17 million people.

We also see clear signs that voters like ranked choice voting once they get to use it — the Oregon ballot measure is performing best in counties in the state that already use ranked choice voting, and the Alaska ballot measure is outperforming the other statewide measures. We’ll continue to see ranked choice voting deliver in cities and the states where it’s used, and we also have to make a stronger case on how RCV benefits voters and elected officials alike.

The data is on our side, and the reform will continue to grow because it works — empowering voters, rewarding candidates who can deliver for the majority of their constituents, and making our democracy work better for the American people.

Read More

Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump
text
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

Why America’s Elections Will Never Be the Same After Trump

Donald Trump wasted no time when he returned to the White House. Within hours, he signed over 200 executive orders, rapidly dismantling years of policy and consolidating control with the stroke of a pen. But the frenzy of reversals was only the surface. Beneath it lies a deeper, more troubling transformation: presidential elections have become all-or-nothing battles, where the victor rewrites the rules of government and the loser’s agenda is annihilated.

And it’s not just the orders. Trump’s second term has unleashed sweeping deportations, the purging of federal agencies, and a direct assault on the professional civil service. With the revival of Schedule F, regulatory rollbacks, and the targeting of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, the federal bureaucracy is being rigged to serve partisan ideology. Backing him is a GOP-led Congress, too cowardly—or too complicit—to assert its constitutional authority.

Keep ReadingShow less
One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

A roll of "voted" stickers.

Pexels, Element5 Digital

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

The analysis and parsing of learned lessons from the 2024 elections will continue for a long time. What did the campaigns do right and wrong? What policies will emerge from the new arrangements of power? What do the parties need to do for the future?

An equally important question is what lessons are there for our democratic structures and processes. One positive lesson is that voting itself was almost universally smooth and effective; we should applaud the election officials who made that happen. But, many elements of the 2024 elections are deeply challenging, from the increasingly outsized role of billionaires in the process to the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation.

Keep ReadingShow less
MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

A check mark and hands.

Photo by Allison Saeng on Unsplash. Unsplash+ License obtained by the author.

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

Originally published by Independent Voter News.

Today, I am proud to share an exciting milestone in my journey as an advocate for democracy and electoral reform.

Keep ReadingShow less
Half-Baked Alaska

A photo of multiple checked boxes.

Getty Images / Thanakorn Lappattaranan

Half-Baked Alaska

This past year’s elections saw a number of state ballot initiatives of great national interest, which proposed the adoption of two “unusual” election systems for state and federal offices. Pairing open nonpartisan primaries with a general election using ranked choice voting, these reforms were rejected by the citizens of Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. The citizens of Alaska, however, who were the first to adopt this dual system in 2020, narrowly confirmed their choice after an attempt to repeal it in November.

Ranked choice voting, used in Alaska’s general elections, allows voters to rank their candidate choices on their ballot and then has multiple rounds of voting until one candidate emerges with a majority of the final vote and is declared the winner. This more representative result is guaranteed because in each round the weakest candidate is dropped, and the votes of that candidate’s supporters automatically transfer to their next highest choice. Alaska thereby became the second state after Maine to use ranked choice voting for its state and federal elections, and both have had great success in their use.

Keep ReadingShow less