With the completion of the South Carolina primary on Saturday and Newt Gingrich's win, it is clear that interest levels in the state and its residents have dwindled. Prior to primary day, the preferences of South Carolina voters were of intense interest to the nation -- and of course to...

The national media is in a frenzy about the Republican contest in tonight's Iowa caucuses. Unfortunately, most journalists seem to be getting the story wrong -- and a key reason is not understanding or even thinking about the rules and their implications.

First, we shouldn't obsess over who...

Today I reviewed all 121 entries posted on the FairVote.org blog this year. It's a good reminder about how busy we've been and how insightful FairVote staff, colleagues and interns so often are. It's also exciting to realize that what's been published represents only the tip of the...

My colleague Elise Helgesen and I wrote an earlier version of this post for State of Elections, an excellent resource from William and Mary's Election Law Society. FairVote regularly posts new super-district maps in our Fair Voting Plan series.

The battle over legislative redistricting in states...

This month many Americans had a chance to vote in state and local elections. FairVote was particularly focused on the first-ever use of ranked choice voting (RCV, or "instant runoff voting") in Maine's biggest city of Portland, along with RCV elections in St. Paul (MN), San Francisco (CA), Cambridge (MA),...

It's a year to the 2012 presidential nomination. Once again, our political leaders are rolling the dice with the American people. Rather than pursue statutory solutions to potential electoral landmines, they've left intact a set of electoral rules that aren't designed for elections where voters have more than two choices...

President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign is already well underway. His early hires are the latest evidence of the negative effects of current state rules governing the Electoral College.

As background, Obama is unlikely to face a challenge for the Democratic nomination, meaning that as a candidate he can start...

Video of the day: Vermont governor signs the National Popular Vote legislation, with commentary from a range of backers of the proposal.

Full minute: Republican political guru Karl Rove has a new Wall Street Journal commentary analyzing the 2012 presidential election and the role of the...

Democracy link of the day: Redistricting as it should be in Indiana (and the United States).

News summary: British referendum on alternative vote expected to uphold status quo... Florida legislature passes controversial voting measure... Gubernatorial veto of Missouri redistricting plan overturned and Utah Democrats back consideration of super...

Video of the day: Fair voting according to cats, as clever video compares the alternative vote (instant runoff voting) and first past the post (plurality voting).

Voting thumbnails of the day: California Top Two race on Tuesday reverses first-round outcome -- a more democratic result that won't...

There is a lot of valuable news and analysis that flows into my inbox in the course of a day. I'm starting a new feature where regularly I will share a few thoughts and links that caught my eye -- with the expectation that this on average will take about...

On May 5th, British voters will participate in their second-ever national referendum, deciding whether to replace plurality voting for House of Commons elections with the alternative vote (AV). The referendum outcome remains up in the air, but we already know two losers: prime minister David Cameron, who has...

There aren't many opportunities to act like Matt Damon or Julia Roberts. But this month, they and their fellow Hollywood stars have been voting for the Best Picture Oscar with instant runoff voting (IRV) -- and you can too at FairVote's OscarVotes123.com and below. So far, The King's...

The right to vote is at the heart of representative democracy. Upholding that right requires that every eligible voter should have easy access to voting, every vote should be tallied accurately and no ineligible vote should be cast. Both limiting access to voting and allowing fraudulent votes undercut determination of...

A version of this blog first appeared at FairVote's www.oscarvotes123.com, where you can see a series of posts about the Oscar voting for nominations and for Best Picture.

Now that nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards have been announced, pundits and prognosticators are busy predicting Oscar winners. No...

I wrote the following commentary with FairVote associate Matt Morris.

A lot of Americans aren't comfortable with a handful of nameless electors picking the president every four years. But at least electors are governed by popular votes. Imagine if in 2012 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives were to...

December 21st update. The final numbers are in and there have been slight changes, none of which change my key point about many pundits doing simplistic bean-counting and missing elements of the broader story. The changes were: 1) "red states" earned one more seat for a total gain of seven,...

I wrote the following with Chris Marchsteiner, who worked with FairVote as an intern this fall

No elected office in the world matters more than the presidency of the United States. Given that reality, it's remarkable that our method of electing it can have such flaws. Take the nomination system.

I wrote the following piece with my colleague Jo McKeegan, a FairVote Democracy Fellow.

Upholding fair voter access and protecting voting rights should not be a partisan issue. In our decentralized system however, some states do a better job at protecting these rights than others.

Take for instance the...

At the risk of winning the General John Sedgwick award (General Sedgwick, the highest ranking Union general to die in the Civil War, told his troops at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in 1864, seconds before being felled by a Confederate bullet, "They couldn't hit an elephant...