“Are American elections working well?”

…

“All of this said, things could work much better.”

The first of these two sentences appears in Chapter 1 of Changing How America Votes, edited by Todd Donovan (published, 2017). The second caps off the end of Chapter 15. In the ellipses are 13 innovative ideas about how to assess our democracy and make elections in the United States better. FairVote’s reform vision is well-represented in the collection.

FairVote executive director Rob Richie and I contributed a chapter arguing for the proposed Fair Representation Act for Congress. In that chapter - most of which can be read in the book’s online preview - we rigorously make the case that the winner-take-all system we use to elect the United States House of Representatives is utterly broken, and that the Fair Representation Act represents a new system that can end winner-take-all politics and give voters a stronger voice. The Fair Representation Act would establish ranked choice voting in all states, used as an American form of proportional representation.

Our chapter comes at the end of the second of the book’s three parts, titled “Electoral Rules and Systems: Changing How We Vote.” Every chapter in that part touches on reforms and innovations that FairVote proudly supports:

The other two parts of the book also feature fascinating and important content, from Ron Hayduk’s chapter on the overlooked history (and future) of voting rights for non-citizen residents to Barry C. Burden and Jordan Hsu’s analysis of how high signature thresholds and other ballot access laws needlessly limit voter choice.

As the book’s preface explains, the 2016 election put reasons to change how we vote center stage. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both explicitly called for changes to primary election laws. After the election, both supporters of Trump and Hillary Clinton pointed to shortcomings in election rules, and outgoing president Barack Obama made improving voting and elections the final point of his farewell address. Changing How America Votes can help to frame that debate, by providing scholarly analysis of our current system along with viable proposals for how to make things better.