Articles by Fair Vote

Our electoral system is broken. Just look at the U.S. House of Representatives. Only a tiny fraction of seats are competitive, and the results leave out far too many voters. Case in point: almost two years out, we can project the results in over 80 percent of seats for the 2020 elections. Monopoly Politics 2020, the latest iteration in our biennial report, lays bare the deficiencies of the winner-take-all system used to elect the House of Representatives. The project began in 1997 with the insi...

The 2018 midterms saw the highest turnout in a non-presidential national election since universal suffrage. This historic high stands in stark contrast to the 2014 midterms which saw the lowest turnout since 1946. This begs the question: is this a one-off spike in interest, or a sign of the future trajectory for U.S. elections? A number of factors probably contributed to the high turnout in 2018, but the most important is the remarkable levels of interest in politics Americans are currently dis...

Our country stands divided, now more than ever. But whether red or blue, young or old, rural or urban, voters share a common interest in expanding their choices at the ballot box while protecting majority outcomes. These ideals fueled the flames for a ranked choice voting revolution (RCV) in Maine, which just made history by becoming the first state to elect a U.S. Senator and two House members using RCV. Maine now joins the ranks of a dozen other cities that turned to ranked choice voting to ...

We need to talk about Florida. The Sunshine State is holding three statewide recounts: for governor, U.S. senator, and state agricultural commissioner. (This does not count the three other recounts in state legislative races). To put this number in perspective, between 2000 and 2015, there were only 27 statewide recounts in all American elections, meaning Florida’s 2018 elections account for about 10 percent of all statewide recounts held in the 21st Century. Between the heavily polarized poli...

Questions abound as the 2018 midterms draw closer.Will the much-discussed “blue wave” give Democrats a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives? Or perhaps a pink wave that will boost the historic underrepresentation of women.Will excitement surrounding close contests translate strong turnout? Will misguided attacks on voting rights prevail?Much will remain undecided until after the polls close on November 6. What we can say with certainty now is that outcomes will continue the success stor...

LANSING, MICH. - Michigan’s congressional districts rank among the most gerrymandered in the country. In fact, a new project providing historical data on gerrymandering identifies Michigan’s congressional districts as “more skewed than 95 percent of the enacted plans ... analyzed nationwide.” The state is divided nearly evenly between voters who prefer Democrats and those who prefer Republicans, yet eight of its 14 districts are solidly Republican - and only two are outside FairVote’s highest c...

The 2018 primary season will go down in history.A record number of women secured party nominations, including the headline-making upsets by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. Retiring incumbents drew large numbers of diverse candidates competing for the open seat. Voter turnout peaked in several states and districts with competitive primaries.Topping the highlight reel was Maine, which became the first state in the country to use ranked choice voting in its June primary, with plans to...

We let computers to determine our Facebook feeds and drive our cars. Why not let technology replace the political and personal interests of people when it comes to drawing district lines?In a recent column for Bridge Magazine, Eric Lupher, president of the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, considers whether a computer algorithm could indeed solve the problem of human influences on mapmaking.Michigan, which boasts some of the most egregiously gerrymandered districts in the country, is one of...

Talk of the 2018 elections remains largely focused on whether Democrats will win enough seats to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives. But there’s a bigger battle looming on the horizon: the decennial redistricting - both state and federal - that follows the 2020 census.As FairVote Senior Fellow David Daley told Vox in a recent article, “the next decade is essentially on the ballot. And if Democrats don’t win key elections this fall that allow them to have seats at the table in 20...