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New York City voters could soon adopt a fairer, more empowering, and more representative voting method in November, while other states look to join Maine in making history with ranked choice voting in 2020. In this episode of "Toppling the Duopoly"  FairVote President and CEO Rob Richie and I discuss the explosive popularity of ranked choice voting, what it means for voters in areas it is currently being used, and all the places it will either soon be implemented or passed. This includes the B

AUGUSTA, MAINE - Ranked choice voting for the 2020 presidential primary and to determine Electoral College votes is on its way to the desk of Maine Governor Janet Mills. The State Senate passed the ranked choice voting bill, LD 1083, in a 20-12 vote Monday during a special legislative session. Ranked choice voting for the presidential election had already been approved by a majority of state lawmakers in both chambers in June. However, the bill was sent back to the State Senate after a last min

There is one important truth about the state of US politics, and that is an increasing number of Americans understand that the system is rigged to put the interests of two private political parties and special interests first. The political establishment knows it. The media knows it. But, they don’t want the people to know it. They don’t want people to know that there are literally hundreds of organizations across the country working to unrig our political duopoly. They don’t want you to kno

Detroit, MI – Increasing uproar over the Democratic Party’s arbitrary debate exclusions reveals questions about the party’s democratic values. Out of 25 major candidates vying to be the Democratic nominee for president, only 20 will be provided an unparalleled platform to reach potential voters. The party’s exclusion of five notable candidates from the second round of debates on July 30 and 31 — former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel; Miramar, FL Mayor Wayne Messam; U.S. Congressman and Marine veteran

For the last several years, I’ve been spending time in rural Wisconsin in a small farmhouse set on 130 heavily-wooded acres on County Road T, Polk County. This is the northwestern Wisconsin of hardscrabble dairy farming, bitter winters and luminous springs. I’ve come here because my companion — a Minnesota-born outdoorsman of Swedish extraction who lived much of his adult life in Alaska and wears a thin fleece jacket in the cold while I layer up in Canadian Goose — inherited this property from

There are hundreds, literally hundreds of organizations and individual campaigns working right now to fix the myriad of problems that face our political and electoral processes -- from the local to the national levels. The organizations tackle voter rights, primary election reform, ballot access, gerrymandering reform, campaign finance reform, alternative voting methods, electing candidates outside the two major parties, and more. The following are 10 of the biggest organizations working to ref

As a business owner and lifelong resident of Michigan, I am proud to have stood with so many of my fellow citizens soliciting signatures for days and weeks on end to get the “Nonpartisan Redistricting” and “Promote the Vote” initiatives on the ballot and successfully passed in the 2018 midterm election. They were a big win for Michigan democracy and important steps on a journey to a more representative government. Yet, there remains a large obstruction in our path to achieving a healthy, functi

The 2020 presidential field is already taking shape. Nine Democrats have announced their campaigns since December, many of whose announcements went under the radar because the lack of media coverage: * Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend, Indiana * Julian Castro, former Mayor of San Antonio, Texas, and former HUD Secretary * John Delaney, former Maryland congressman and businessman * Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii congresswoman * Kirsten Gillibrand, US Senator (NY) * Kamala Harris, US Senator (Cal

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

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. - The biggest story in the 2018 election cycle was not what color of wave we saw. It was not President Donald Trump using the Ecuadorian immigrant caravan as a campaign issue. It was not the Democrats’ focus on the president’s behavior while holding the Oval Office. The biggest story in 2018 was the voter revolt against the political status quo. Political and election reform had its most groundbreaking year in half a century, and most media outlets didn’t pay attention. From