Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Ranked-choice voting poised to return to Vermont's largest city

Burlington, Vt.

Voters in Burlington will give RCV a second shot.

James Buck/Getty Images

Tuesday was a big day for fans of alternative voting systems.

Two-thirds of voters in Burlington cast ballots in favor of restoring ranked-choice voting in Vermont's largest city. If Vermont's Democratic-majority General Assembly and GOP Gov. Phil Scott also sign off on the ballot initiative, ranked-choice voting will be used for city council elections starting next March.

And a rival method, approval voting, made its debut in St. Louis after winning its own approval last year.


With this latest win in Burlington, momentum for ranked-choice voting continues to build across the country. More than 20 cities or counties use RCV, and Alaska just joined Maine as the first states to implement the system. More than two dozen states have active campaigns advocating for RCV, but its biggest debut will be in the New York mayoral primary in June.

Burlington was an early adopter of ranked-choice voting in 2005, when voters chose to implement it for city council and mayoral elections. However, five years and two mayoral elections later, voters decided to revert back to traditional plurality voting after a controversial mayor was elected through RCV.

After a decade without ranked elections, the city council attempted to put an initiative to use RCV for all citywide elections on the ballot last November, but the effort was vetoed by Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger. Council members then amended the initiative so RCV would only be used for council elections. The mayor approved this narrower use and the initiative was placed on the March 2 ballot.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The pro-RCV campaign Better Ballot Burlington was led by City Councilor Zoraya Hightower, a member of the Progressive Party, and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a Democrat.

Under this alternative voting system, voters rank candidates in order of preference. In the case that no candidate receives majority support, the election goes into an instant runoff in which the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and that person's support is redistributed to voters' second choices. This continues until one candidate crosses the 50 percent threshold.

Proponents say ranked-choice voting deters negative campaigning and supports more consensus-driven politics, while also boosting the election prospects of women and people of color. Opponents argue the system is confusing and doesn't necessarily lead to better representation.

While ranked-choice voting is probably the most widely known and used alternative voting method, it's not the only option. St. Louis used approval voting for the first time in its mayoral election Tuesday, becoming the second city to employ the system (after Fargo, N.D.).

This voting system allowed the city's voters to "approve" of as many of the four mayoral candidates as they liked. The two candidates who received the most votes, Tishaura Jones and Cara Spencer, will now advance to the April general election — guaranteeing the city will have its second female mayor.

Read More

The Psychology of Politics

An illustration of people and their unique minds.

Getty Images, Carol Yepes

The Psychology of Politics

Have you ever wondered why so many otherwise reasonable people are completely bananas about politics? We all know plenty of normal and decent folks who spout wacky political views. But it’s not just our neighbors who’ve gone mad. All over the country, Americans pick and choose the facts they want to believe, champion policies they don’t understand, hold contradictory views at the same time, admire immoral politicians, loathe decent ones, and so on.

What’s going on here? And why does it seem to be getting worse?

Keep ReadingShow less
Addressing Economic Inequity Among Domestic Violence Survivors

A person holding a stack of dollar bills that are flying away.

Getty Images, PM Images

Addressing Economic Inequity Among Domestic Violence Survivors

The 2024 film, “Anora,” about a young woman victimized by sex trafficking, recently won five Oscars at the Academy Awards. Perhaps, it is a signal of more awareness and less stigma surrounding the pervasiveness of domestic violence at all levels of society.

The ongoing lawsuits between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni claiming sexual harassment and violence threat allegations around their film, “It Ends With Us,” about a relationship scarred with domestic violence, demonstrates the thin line between real life and on-screen adaptations.

Keep ReadingShow less
Layoffs at the EPA May Impact Federal Funding for Communities

Environmental Protection Agency EPA | Where James works | mccready ...

Layoffs at the EPA May Impact Federal Funding for Communities

WASHINGTON—The federal government laid off more than 60,000 workers in the first two months of 2025, while another 75,000 employees accepted a buyout and voluntarily resigned.

Among those laid off was James Clark, an Environmental Protection Agency employee who lost his job while on his honeymoon. “It’s just very sad to see someone like Elon Musk take a chainsaw on live TV and say what we do doesn’t matter,” said Clark.

Keep ReadingShow less
Congress Avoids a Shutdown But at What Cost?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on March 14, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Tasos Katopodis

Congress Avoids a Shutdown But at What Cost?

On March 14, the GOP-led Senate passed a stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government running until September 30. The bill’s passage was made possible by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s last-minute reversal—shifting from opposing the measure and advocating for a shorter extension to allowing the bill to advance. His decision was purely tactical: he feared Democrats would be blamed for a shutdown.

Schumer’s move provided the necessary votes to overcome procedural hurdles, effectively thwarting a Democratic filibuster. While Republican support for Trump’s budget was unsurprising, the Democratic leadership’s decision to go along was a stunning concession. It handed the Trump administration a significant victory while further eroding Congress’s budgetary authority, shifting more spending power to the executive branch.

Keep ReadingShow less