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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-

The Equal Vote Coalition announced Monday that a historic new bill has been introduced in the Oregon State House that would establish STAR (Score, Then Automatic Runoff) Voting as the default voting method in Oregon. Oregon would be the first state to adopt the voting method’s use. STAR Voting is different from alternative voting methods that have gained traction across the country, like ranked choice voting and approval voting. Voters can think of it as scoring candidates the way they would r

If you’re a young voter like us, you’re probably tired of politics as they are now. Tired of every aspect of your life being a political issue. Tired of the restrictive grip of the two major parties making you jump through hoops to vote in critical primary elections or barring you from them entirely. It’s no secret that the major parties have been taking advantage of the way we engage with politics to guilt and scare us into their camp. But what you may not know is that 40% of Americans refuse t