Ranked Choice Tennessee envisions a future where more Tennesseans can participate in elections using ranked choice voting (RCV). Our activities fall into two main categories: civic education and advocacy. We work with election administrators, policy makers and the public to share best practices and help facilitate successful RCV elections.
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Pennsylvania voters cast their ballots during Tuesday's local election.
While some states are still dealing with the aftermath of the 2020 election, others are focused on high-stakes local contests this year.
Here are five stories to help you catch up on the latest election news.
Arizona secretary of state may not let Maricopa County reuse voting machines after audit (Arizona Republic)
Experts say Pa.'s 2021 primary was typical, but GOP lawmakers are seizing on issues (Spotlight PA)
Appeal offers hope for Texas woman facing five years for voting illegally (The Guardian)
Florida elections law hit with another lawsuit saying it's unconstitutional (Orlando Sentinel)
Ranked-choice voting faces high-stakes test in New York City mayoral race (CBS News)
It's been a busy week for democracy reformers, with the For the People Act appearing to die in the Senate, Republicans threatening to break ranks, and Rep. Liz Cheney losing her leadership post despite her conservative credentials.
But there was so much more. Here's a sampling of stories you may have missed.
Redistricting review - a summary of this week's map-making news (Ballotpedia)
How Jim Crow-Era Laws Suppressed the African American Vote for Generations (History)
What we know about the high, broad turnout in the 2020 election (The Washington Post)
Nomination of Kristen Clarke, controversial Biden civil-rights pick, hangs in balance (Fox News)
And for a little fun: Ranked Voting in NYC (The New Yorker)
More than 100 Republicans, including former federal and state officials, are prepared to launch a new political party if the GOP fails to make a series of unspecified changes, according to a report in The New York Times.
Whether such a new party comes to fruition, it's worth examining the changes needed to ensure the viability of a new force in American politics. After all, others have tried to end the two-party duopoly but rarely do they play more than the role of spoiler.
The 2019 Hidden Common Ground report produced by Public Agenda, USA Today and Ipsos found that 65 percent of Americans agree it should be easier for third-party and independent candidates to run for office, giving voters more than two choices. And in last year's report, 80 percent of respondents agreed that "Traditional parties and politicians don't care about people like me."
Voters had more options than ever before in 2018. According to Unite America, which supports nonpartisan reforms and candidates willing to work across the aisle, a record 431 independents ran for state legislative seats, governor or Congress in 2018, collectively earning more votes than independent candidates in previous cycles. However, only 14 of them won their races.
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"The largest barrier facing new competition in America is not structural, it's psychological: a belief that an alternative can be viable and a new identity to align around," said Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America (which has provided financial support for The Fulcrum). "Yes, we need ranked-choice voting to eliminate the spoiler effect. Yes, we need fair ballot access and debate rules. However, those things are necessary but not sufficient. What any third party really needs is a brand and a constituency that is powerful enough to transcend the tribalism on both the left and the right in order to win elections."
For disaffected Republicans, the appearance of big names in a new party might be enough to galvanize meaningful support. Miles Taylor, who served in the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump and authored an op-ed and book highly critical of that administration, is one of the organizers of the potential new party, according to the Times. Reuters has identified a number of other participants, including former members of Congress and two former governors (Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Christine Toddy Whitman of New Jersey).
But that may not be enough to give a new party the standing to win elections.
One structural change would be to allow more candidates into debates. Writing last fall about the presidential debate system, Christina Tobin of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation and Eli Beckerman of Open the Debates argued that the system is designed to prevent candidates outside the Democratic and Republican parties from competing.
"At a time when voters are thirsting for more choices, it is absurd to keep Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen and Green nominee Howie Hawkins off the stage," they wrote. "Objectively speaking, there are four tickets on the ballots in enough states to win the election, and yet the debate commission has decided to appoint itself as gatekeeper standing between voters and their choices — and assuring just two of those tickets have a shot."
Unite America's post-election report on the candidates it supported in 2018 identified 10 other structural reforms that would allow third-party and independent candidates to compete with the major parties' nominees:
The Virginia Republican Party is livestreaming the counting of ballots from its nominating convention.
The Virginia Republican Party held the nominating contest for the state's off-year elections over the weekend. While the nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general may not be known for a few days, advocates for election changes can point to a handful of victories.
Unlike presidential primaries in Virginia, which are open to all voters, the nominating process for statewide office is closed to select party loyalists. This year, approximately 50,000 were expected to cast a ballot at the Republican convention — if it could even be called a "convention." Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the party did not hold a central gathering; instead, participants were directed to cast their votes, from their cars, at one of about 40 locations scattered around the state.
And when they voted, they ranked each of the candidates, with ballot-counters now working through the process of eliminating also-rans and redistributing votes.
In a ranked election, voters list their choices in order of preference. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes, the person with the fewest is eliminated and those ballots are redistributed based on the voters second choice. This process repeats until a candidate gets a majority of the top votes.
However, the Virginia GOP has added a twist to the process by weighting each vote based on individual counties' past support for Republican candidates, meaning not all voters are equal.
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FairVote, one of the advocates for ranked-choice voting, is happy with the initial reports from Virginia.
"We're pleased with what we're seeing so far on just the RCV component of it," said the group's president, Rob Richie.
Now that all the votes have been cast, volunteers have begun the painstaking process of counting them all by hand. Because it's an instant runoff election, they will be going through ballots multiple times, meaning it will take days to complete the count. The counting is being broadcast via livestream.
David Levine of the Alliance for Securing Democracy laid out some of the issues facing the party's vote-counters.
Now that the voting for Virginia Republican Convention has finished, the nomination process will proceed to arguab… https://t.co/MDLWYfFz0Q— David Levine (@David Levine)1620521072.0
Political observers in Virginia believe the party is hoping RCV will help a moderate win the gubernatorial nod. The Republicans have not won a statewide election since 2009 in Virginia, which has been moving from reliably red to regularly blue over the past 12 years.
State Sen. Amanda Chase, a loyal follower of former President Donald Trump, would likely have won a plurality in a standard election but might get sidelined when voters have the chance to rank multiple candidates.
But John March, a spokesman for the state party, noted that RCV simplifies a process used in the past.
"Traditional conventions always go multi round until someone gets to 50%," March wrote in an email. "Since COVID did not allow us to have a traditional convention, we resorted to using ranked choice so that we would not have to do an all day convention seven times just to get a nominee."
March also said it's too early to say whether any of these changes will be used again in the future.
