Every Vote Matters
How We Can Change the Rules:
Make Every Vote Count
All voters, regardless of political affiliation, can have a meaningful impact on selecting and electing candidates and holding them accountable for results.
Shift to a National Popular Vote for President
In the winner-take-all system within every state, if you vote for the ultimate loser, your vote is thrown away. Eleven swing states representing only 30 percent of the eligible voters currently determine the outcome of presidential elections. Changing the system does not require a Constitutional Amendment. In fact, it is already happening. States representing 64% of the needed votes have already enacted the national popular vote legislation.
Ranked Choice Voting
Ranked Choice Voting Survives Midterm tests. Will it work in more states?
Go Deeper: What is “Ranked Choice Voting?
Open Primary Elections to Independent Voters
Independent voters are entirely excluded from voting in primary elections in roughly one-third of the country and restricted in some form in another third. In 13 states, those who don’t align with a party are not allowed to participate in primaries. And the national data shows that 75 percent of elected officials are wining office without having to communicate outside of their own party.
OpenPrimaries.Org succeeded in opening the primaries in Colorado in 2016. They are fielding grass-roots operations in 11 states with closed primaries and the 10 states with some type of primary restrictions for state, congressional and presidential elections.
Catalyze Independent Voters
Independvoting.org serves as a strategy, communication and organizing center to connect and empower the 40 percent of Americans who identify themselves as independents. This large and growing group is a natural constituency for all the identified structural reforms designed to break the two-party monopoly on our political system. The organization provides activist training in the form of organizing kits, online trainings and linkage of local affiliates into a national network.
Independents are gaining political weight as the ranks of millennial voters increase and self-organize.
Download our white paper and receive updates on the progress of structural reform in American politics.