This article was written with my colleagues Andrea Levien and Devin McCarthy

Geography has become an increasingly rigid indicator of which political party will win a state or legislative district in the United States. Voters are far more likely to vote only for candidates from a single...

Law professor Rick Hasen thinks the only change radical enough to reform our government is a switch to a parliamentary system. But he doesn't consider fair voting.

By Rob Richie and Devin McCarthy

In his draft paper on Political Dysfunction and Constitutional Change, University...

This week, the Takoma Park city council passed a charter amendment by a 6-1 vote on first reading that, if approved when before the council again in the coming month, will be in the best tradition of cities and states leading the nation in advancing voting rights. It would establish...

I wrote this piece with my colleague Andrea Levien.

The New York Times recently published a long analysis by Adam Liptak about the advantages conferred on small states by their outsized representation in the U.S. Senate. It's an important article, but marred by its inclusion of...

Yesterday I helped my colleague Andrea Levien expose on the FairVote blog that True the Vote -- an organization that purports to be dedicated to reducing voter fraud and has been the subject of much controversy for its methods -- had cooked numbers on voter turnout...

Although this year's elections were highly competitive, Democrats nationally had a clear edge among voters. Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney by 126 electoral votes and more than four million popular votes, while Republicans won only eight of 33 U.S. Senate races.

But it was a different story in U.S. House...

I wrote this piece with my colleague Devin McCarthy.

"We just had an election, and the House of Representatives was elected, committed to keeping taxes low."
- Grover Norquist, CBS This Morning, November 12, 2012

In Brief: Using its unique methods for analyzing the underlying preferences...

In Brief:

• FairVote's Monopoly Politics 2012 report, published in July 2012, projected the outcomes of over 75 percent of congressional races using no post-2010 variables other than the partisanship of the district and whether it is an open seat. Today, congressional election analysts see only 5 percent of...

The following analysis is adapted from analyses in FairVote's Monopoly Politics 2012 report. You can read our southern analysis with graphs and charts here.

Facts in the Spotlight:

• Partisan Representation in the South
o Percentage of U.S. House seats held by each party in...

Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate has issued his latest report on voter turnout in the United States. There are those who disagree with Gans on some of the finer points of his methodology and on his analyses of proposed electoral reforms,...

On July 18, 2012, FairVote conducted an exit survey in the Ward 5 vacancy election for city council in Takoma Park, Maryland. City voters in 2005 had backed adoption of instant runoff voting (IRV) by a margin of 83 percent to 17 percent, and the City Council unanimously backed a...

We're in the homestretch of the presidential campaign and, once again, all the talk is about a handful of swing states. That's because Americans do not vote directly for president. When voters cast a ballot for their preferred candidates, they are choosing their state's electors. As members of...

I wrote this piece with my colleague Andie Levien. It addresses how our antiquated Electoral College rules allow a mere four-percent vote shift to make all the difference in how a state's voters experience the presidential election.

President Barack Obama owes a lot to the Democrats of South Carolina. After...

I wrote this with my colleague Drew Spencer.

Texas has had problems with redistricting - yet again. Last week's federal court ruling that Texas's 2011 plans for congressional districts and state legislative districts had both the purpose and effect of further reducing the representation of Texas's already underrepresented...

I wrote this piece with my colleague Devin McCarthy.

On August 29th, the Republican Party unveiled its 2012 Party Platform. Nestled inside the platform is a direct condemnation of the National Popular Vote plan (NPV) -- the state-based campaign to guarantee election of the candidate who wins the...

(As a sequel to our post about U.S. House elections, Sheahan Virgin and I took to the U.S. Senate.)

Despite having one of the Senate's more conservative voting records, Dick Lugar (R-IN) has not been a partisan ideologue. His recent landslide primary defeat to Tea Party-backed challenger Richard...

I wrote this piece with FairVote democracy fellow Sheahan Virgin. We wrote it before the U.S. Senate primary in Indiana in which 35-year Senate veteran Richard Lugar was ousted in part due to a history of cooperative policymaking with Democrats, particularly on foreign policy.

Pennsylvania's primary last month lacked the...

I wrote this piece with FairVote democracy fellow Sheahan Virgin.

Rick Santorum's decision to suspend his campaign effectively handed the Republican nomination to Mitt Romney. Although several states have yet to vote and Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul remain in the race, Romney is sure to win an easy victory...

My FairVote colleagues and I have released a new analysis of votes cast in the Republican nomination contest to date and how those votes have translated into delegate totals. FairVote compared the current New York Times tally of delegates to what it would be in two...

I direct FairVote, a nonpartisan research and advocacy organization known for its innovative analysis and state and local successes in advancing electoral reforms like instant runoff voting, the National Popular Vote plan, proportional representation and steps toward universal voter registration and a right to vote in the Constitution.

We are...