Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Push for ranked-choice elections dies in Vermont's biggest city

Burlington, Vermont; ranked-choice voting

The mayor of Burlington, Vt., objected to the cost of adding a ranked-choice voting referendum to the general election ballot.

Wikimedia Commons

The drive to bring ranked-choice voting back to Burlington — Vermont's most populous city and one of the most liberal in the country — appears to have been quashed.

Mayor Miro Weinberger issued his first veto after eight years in office late last week, blocking a citywide vote in November on whether so-called RCV should be used in future municipal elections. An override vote was scheduled for Monday, but neither side predicted the city council would have the supermajority needed to reverse the veto.

Because RCV has proven most popular in New England and among progressives, the setting for the setback was unusual. Ranked elections have become one of the more popular ideas in the democracy reform world, because they're seen as one of the best ways to reduce combative partisanship by improving the chances for outsider and consensus-minded politicians.


The mayor rejected a measure passed last month by the council, on a 6-5 vote, with all his fellow Democrats opposed. (The council majority is made up of Progressives and independents.) Weinberger said he objected to the $45,000 cost of adding a referendum to the general election ballot and said he worried that debating the "polarizing and divisive issue" of RCV "will consume community attention and resources at a moment in which those finite resources are urgently needed elsewhere."

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Under RCV, voters rank candidates in order of preference and, if none of them muster a majority of No. 1 votes and win outright, the person with the fewest top-choice votes is eliminated and those votes are assigned based on their second choices.
That "instant runoff" process continues until one candidate has a majority.

Burlington was one of the first places to use the method in the country. But voters repealed the system in 2010 after a particularly contentious election in which the mayor at the time seemed to have been defeated but ended up re-elected when the instant runoff was over.

Adopting a referendum to go back to RCV would need to be followed by approval by the Legislature and governor — which means it would have almost certainly been delayed beyond next year's mayoral contest, in March. Weinberger has not yet said whether he'll seek reelection.

Council member Jack Hanson decried Weinberger's veto as "inherently undemocratic," adding: "It also is very dangerous rhetoric of, 'Democracy is too expensive, and we don't want to hear from more people on an issue that affects our city.' "

Read More

Jar full of american coins.

Jar full of american coins.

Getty Images, MariuszBlach

Congress Bill Spotlight: Suspending Pennies and Nickels for 10 Years

The Fulcrum introduces Congress Bill Spotlight, a weekly report by Jesse Rifkin, focusing on the noteworthy legislation of the thousands introduced in Congress. Rifkin has written about Congress for years, and now he's dissecting the most interesting bills you need to know about but that often don't get the right news coverage.

Trump recently discontinued production of the one-cent coin. What about the five-cent coin too?

Keep ReadingShow less
​The U.S. Constitution.
The U.S. Constitution.
Getty Images, Bill Oxford

Democracy on the Edge: Take Action Now To Maintain the Constitution

Democracy is in danger. Voter suppression efforts are once again on the rise, most recently embodied in the reintroduction of the “SAVE Act.” Initially passed by the House in 2024 and revived again in April 2025, the bill proposes new identification standards for voting.

It calls to eliminate the use of driver’s licenses and state IDs and require birth certificates instead. While billed as an election integrity measure, this legislation is a thinly veiled attempt to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, particularly the elderly, minorities, and low-income Americans who may lack access to original documentation.

Keep ReadingShow less
Guatemalan workers farming tomatoes using tools provided by the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project.

Guatemalan workers farming tomatoes using tools provided by the UVG Climate Smart Agriculture Project.

Rolando Cifuentes Velásquez.

Seeds of Abandonment: How USAID Cuts Left Thousands of Farmers in Guatemala Struggling

Maria Lopez was thriving.

Her tomato farm in rural Guatemala was flourishing since a worker from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG) came in to show her climate-smart agricultural practices in her drought-stricken community.

Keep ReadingShow less
Defining the Democracy Movement: Aditi Juneja
- YouTube

Defining the Democracy Movement: Aditi Juneja

The Fulcrum presents The Path Forward: Defining the Democracy Reform Movement. Scott Warren's interview series engages diverse thought leaders to elevate the conversation about building a thriving and healthy democratic republic that fulfills its potential as a national social and political game-changer. This initiative is the start of focused collaborations and dialogue led by The Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum teams to help the movement find a path forward.

Aditi Juneja is the Executive Director of Democracy 2076, an organization dedicated to reimagining democracy for the next generation. Democracy 2076 is intentionally taking a long-range view of democracy, bringing together diverse stakeholders to explore what democracy should look like within a 50-year time horizon.

Keep ReadingShow less