FairVote Blog
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More on Egypt's Electoral Law
by Jais Mehaji, Arab Spring Series // July 18, 2011 //Progress toward democracy is looking all the more complicated in Egypt, as questions about the parliamentary elections’ rules remain unanswered and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) electoral measures are replete with ambiguity.
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Bipartisan Over-Attention to Battleground States
by Katherine Sicienski // July 11, 2011 //FairVote has recently blogged about the disproportionate attention that battleground states have received from President Barack Obama since his inauguration. But political calculation is thoroughly bipartisan. Witness how the Republican National Committee (RNC) is engaging in similar inequitable practices.
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Lower Presidential Election Turnout in Safe Republican States
by Neal Suidan // July 8, 2011 //Thirteen states have voted for Republicans in every presidential election since 1980: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming. This track record makes them the most consistently safe Republican strongholds in modern presidential politics. In 1988, these states’ turnout barely trailed that of the rest of the country, by 2.56%. But in every election since, these 13 states have fallen further behind. In 2008, their turnout was 6.22% behind the rest of the nation.
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Egypt Caretaker Government Passes Electoral Draft Law Amid Parties' Vehement Objections
by Jais Mehaji, Arab Spring Series // July 8, 2011 //After Egyptians successfully overthrew Hosni Mubarak back in February, the military government which took over in the interim has pursued a difficult transition to democratic rule. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place in September, and political parties and citizens alike have been very vocal about how they will be conducted -with one key conflict being the democratic opposition seeking a fully proportional representation voting system and the caretaker government wanting to keep half of seats elected by winner-take-all elections.
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Curing Our Democracy Part II: The Redistricting Connection and the Pitfalls of the District-Based Electoral Vote System
by Joe Sroka // July 7, 2011 //Part II: The Redistricting Connection and the Pitfalls of the District-Based Electoral Vote System
This Part explores the interaction between redistricting and electoral vote allocation in Nebraska and Maine, demonstrating the negative consequences and offering solutions to these problems. See Part I for an introduction and discussion about the winner-take-all rule for allocating electoral votes.
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Curing Our Democracy Part I: Nebraska's Electoral Vote Debate and the Pitfalls of the Winner-Take-All Rule
by Joe Sroka // July 7, 2011 //Part I: Nebraska's Electoral Vote Debate and the Pitfalls of the Winner-Take-All Rule
If put on the spot, one may have difficulty articulating similarities between the states of Nebraska and Maine: the former, corn-yielding and reliably Republican; the latter, fish-producing and predominately Democratic. Yet Maine and Nebraska are the only states in the Union that presently split presidential electoral votes by congressional district rather than allocating all electoral votes to the statewide winner. In doing so, Nebraska and Maine are useful in diagnosing two conditions that plague our democracy: the current systems of partisan redistricting and presidential electoral vote allocation.
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Rossello v. United States and the Right to Vote for Puerto Rico
by Jo McKeegan // July 5, 2011 //Brought in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by former governor of Puerto Rico Pedro Rossello, Rossello v. United States addresses the lack of a right to cast a ballot and have such ballots counted in national elections for president and Congress by residents of Puerto Rico. Petitioner Rossello has been disenfranchised, along with all other residents of Puerto Rico, despite his American citizenship, based solely on his area of residence within the United States. The case raises larger issues about voting rights for Americans who live in American "colonies" that are not states. -
By Any Other Name - It's A Party
by Krist Novoselic // June 29, 2011 //It’s only a matter of time when the right combination of political message and social networking will capture the imagination of enough people to bring in a successful new party to American politics. And it will happen, in part, when this group admits that they are actually a political party!
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Obama's Field Team: Swing State Power
by Rob Richie // June 28, 2011 //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 which force candidates to focus on a dwindling number of swing states -- and point to the value of adoption of the National Popular Vote plan for president.
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Presidential Tracker: Following the Money...For Now
by Katherine Sicienski, Presidential Tracker // June 28, 2011 //On Thursday, June 23rd, President Obama visited both Fort Drum and New York City and held a total of five events. According to the Washington Post, the three events in New York City were all Democratic National Committee fundraisers. Since his election, the President has attended a total of 59 fundraisers, 12 of which have been in New York. In fact, 50 of the president's 59 fundraisers as president have been in the ten states that donated the most money to Presidential campaigns in 2008.