Content Authored by Rob Richie
41 - 50 of 254 results
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The Role of Fair Voting Systems in the Shelby County Case
- Posted: February 21, 2013
- Author(s): Rob Richie, Drew Spencer
- Categories: Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Home, Voting Rights
On February 27, the U.S. Supreme Court will hold oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, reviewing the constitutionality of Section 5 "preclearance" provisions of the Voting Rights Act. A largely overlooked part of the case is the fact that Section 5 was the reason that Calera, a growing city in Alabama's Shelby County just south of Birmingham, adopted one of the fair voting systems we recommend to uphold voting rights.
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California and the Limits of Independent Redistricting Commissions with Winner-Take-All
- Posted: February 15, 2013
- Author(s): Devin McCarthy, Rob Richie
- Categories: Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Congressional Elections, Home, Redistricting
Independent redistricting continues to gain attention as the panacea for American congressional elections. But as the independent redistricting's performance in California shows, on its own it cannot resolve the most serious problems with our congressional elections. We need to combine independent redistricting with adoption of fair voting plans.
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Geography as a Failed Unit of Representation: Why Fifty States of Equal Population Is No Solution for Presidential Elections
- Posted: February 15, 2013
- Author(s): Andrea Levien, Devin McCarthy, Rob Richie
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections, Congressional Elections, Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Home
The idea of electing the president with a creative alternative map of the United States in which every state has equal population has drawn sympathetic support from Atlantic writer Jim Fallows. But uneven population of states has little to do with what's broken in presidential elections, just as equal population congressional districts leave us with broken U.S. House elections. We must free ourselves from geographic boundaries and go to the real meaning of one-person, one-vote with the National Popular Vote plan for president and fair voting for Congress.
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Presidential Elections State-by-State: Hardening Partisanship
- Posted: February 5, 2013
- Author(s): Andrea Levien, Rob Richie
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections
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When Barack Obama Was a Leader in Seeking Fair Voting Systems
- Posted: December 20, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie, Drew Spencer
- Categories: Ranked Choice Voting, Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Congressional Elections, Home, FairVote
President Barack Obama has a lot on his mind these days, but the state of our democracy remains critical. Fortunately, judging by Obama's record in the Illinois Senate --where he was the prime sponsor of legislation to advance cumulative voting and instant runoff voting - we haven't had a president as informed about good ideas for taking on electoral reform since James Madison and the founding generation.
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It's Not Just Gerrymandering: Fixing House Elections Demands End of Winner-Take-All Rules
- Posted: December 16, 2012
- Author(s): Devin McCarthy, Rob Richie
- Categories: Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Congressional Elections, Home, Redistricting
This year's elections put a spotlight on the troubled nature of how we elect the House of Representatives, the alleged "people's house." But some of our smartest election experts don't seem to understand the root of the problems with House elections.
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Electoral College Chaos: How Republicans Could Put a Lock on the Presidency
- Posted: December 13, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie
- Categories: National Popular Vote, Presidential Elections, Home
Our current Electoral College rules allow for partisan manipulation of outcomes. FairVote's director Rob Richie explains how if Republicans in 2011 had abused their monopoly control of state government in several key swing states and passed new laws for allocating electoral votes, the exact same votes cast in the exact same way in the 2012 election would have converted Barack Obama's advantage of nearly five million popular votes and 126 electoral votes into a resounding Electoral College defeat.
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"Incumbency Bumps": Measuring National Partisan Swings By Evaluating the Incumbent Advantage in U.S. House Races, 1996-2012
- Posted: December 4, 2012
- Author(s): Devin McCarthy, Rob Richie
- Categories: Congressional Elections, Home
FairVote introduces its updated "incumbency bump" data for the 2012 election. Incumbents once again received a substantial advantage over challengers this year, although that bump was the lowest it has been since FairVote first began analyzing incumbency in 1996.
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Pennsylvania Senate Leader Pileggi Wrong on Prescription for Electoral College Reform
- Posted: December 3, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie
- Categories: National Popular Vote, FairVote
Pennsylvania's senate majority leader Dominic Pileggi is backing a new plan to divide his state's electoral votes in the 2016 presidential race. While supported as a means to provide a fair reflection of state voters in the Electoral College, the plan has big downsides -- and falls far short of the National Popular Vote plan. Sen. Pileggi should back the National Popular Vote plan and apply his interest in proportional representation to elections for Congress and the state legislature.
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A Representative Congress: Enhancing African American Voting Rights in the South with Choice Voting
- Posted: November 27, 2012
- Author(s): Rob Richie, Drew Spencer
- Categories: Reforms, Fair Voting/Proportional Representation, Congressional Elections, Home, Redistricting, Voting Rights, FairVote
In southern states, racially polarized elections remain an active part of political life. Since 1965, the Voting Rights Act has guaranteed that African Americans in the South cannot be shut out of elections either through direct barriers to voting or through discriminatory districts that prevent the achievement of representation. However, relying on winner-take-all elections has inherent limitations. In the belt of southern states including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas, the use of districting to achieve a fairer level of representation for African Americans has hit a ceiling. To push through that ceiling and achieve truly fair representation, FairVote recommends abandoning the single-member district in favor of super districts elected by choice voting.