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Voters in New York City won't know who won Tuesday's hotly contested Democratic mayoral primary just yet. Voters went to the polls to rank for the first time their preferences in a large field of viable candidates. And, thanks to the implementation of ranked choice voting (RCV), getting only a plurality of support was not enough for any candidate to advance to November. Ahead of the primary election, a WNBC/Telemundo 47/POLITICO/Marist poll found that Brooklyn borough President Eric Adams led t

In a bipartisan vote, the Maine Legislature passed a bill Wednesday that implements a semi-open primary system, which will allow voters registered independent (32% of the registered electorate) to choose between a Republican or a Democratic primary ballot in future elections. “I am thrilled that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle joined me in supporting semi-open primaries,” said bill sponsor Senator Chloe Maxmin (D-Lincoln). “Enacting this common sense reform will align our democratic sy

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Fulcrum and has been republished with permission from the publisher. ‍ While much of the country's election reform legislation has been rife with partisanship, Vermont is bucking that trend. Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed into law on Monday a measure that will automatically send Vermont's 495,000 registered voters a mail-in ballot ahead of statewide general elections. The General Assembly approved the legislation on a bipartisan basis

Want to better understand how gerrymandering works while also competing for prizes? There is a competition going on until June 15 that calls on the American public to put their mapmaking skills to the test. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project launched the Great American Map Off on May 15. The group challenges any member of the public to draw congressional districts for 7 crucial states -- Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin -- as the redistricting proces

It is only May and already 2021 has been a monumental year for ranked choice voting. Not only is RCV being used for the first time in New York City, but 23 Utah cities have passed ordinances to use it in upcoming elections. FairVote, the nation’s preeminent advocate for ranked choice voting, reports that the addition of 23 Utah cities more than doubles the number of upcoming mayoral races that will use RCV, and includes Salt Lake City and its population of 200,000 residents. The cities voted s

We all know the system is broken. It’s rigged. It does not work. How do we know? Because our leaders are not producing solutions to the issues we care about. No one is listening, just talking past each other. But what if the system is working the way it was designed to work? What if politicians are operating very rationally and logically based on incentives of the political system in place? That is what many of the smartest observers of our dysfunctional mess of a political system think. So we

Editor's Note: This update originally appeared in The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ Now that the Census Bureau has finally announced which states have gained or lost congressional seats, attention turns to the legislative bodies and commissions that will be drawing new maps for the next round of elections. We already know the delayed data release is having an impact on states' abilities to meet their own deadlines for drawing new maps. It's onl

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Fulcrum, and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ Nearly every state legislature is considering bills to either roll back pandemic-era voting easements or make permanent the rules that allowed a record-breaking number of Americans to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day. But with election officials already looking ahead to the 2022 midterms, the Center for Election Innovation and Research is concerned wit

Editor's Note: This piece by Larry Diamond, Kevin Johnson, and Miles Rapoport originally published on The Hill, and has been republished with permission from the authors. ‍ Two secretaries of state were honored recently by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s Democratic secretary of state, and Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana’s Republican secretary of state, received the organization’s prestigious Patriot Award on behalf of all U.S election officials, in recog

Editor's Note: The following piece was originally published as a "Letter to the Editor" for the Portland Press Herald and has been republiched on IVN by request and with permission from the author. ‍ Maine voters still live in a darkened room called the closed primary. In a 2014 New York Times op-ed, Sen. Chuck Schumer urged America to adopt a top-two open-primary system. Sen. Joe Baldacci is sponsoring a top-two open-primary bill in Maine, L.D. 1121. It's truly democracy in action! In an op-