Welcome to the latest edition of The Expand Democracy 3, written this week by Rob, with the support of Eveline. Typically released every two weeks, we highlight promising pro-democracy ideas and local, national, and global news. And don’t miss our complementary Democracy Lab podcast with a string of strong guests.
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#1. Deep Dive: Cumulative Voting as a “Voter Representation” Reform
Bernice Gordon-Young gets a hug from her mother after winning her Peoria city council election with cumulative voting in 2023. Source: Peoria Journal-Star
I’ve been a leading advocate of proportional representation (PR) since getting involved in a campaign to adopt PR in Thurston County (WA) in 1990 - an effort that led me to cofound FairVote (then “Citizens for Proportional Representation”) in 1992 and become its director for the next 31 years. Over the years, I’ve generally advocated for fully proportional systems - such as the party-based system used in most nations that have PR and the proportional form of ranked choice voting (RCV, also known as the single transferable vote).
But cumulative voting is another alternative to winner-take-all elections that has far more American uses today and is the one such alternative with a history in state legislative elections. With growing debate occurring about whether the United States is ready for a full-blown multi-party system tied to party-based forms of PR, cumulative voting and other systems based on voting for candidates deserve more attention. Even if not “fully” proportional, cumulative voting would mean voters have more competitive choices and a greater likelihood of electing preferred candidates and be much more likely to create space for independents and new factions within the major parties.
My wife Cynthia Richie Terrell of RepresentWomen and I are using the term “voter representation systems” to describe such candidate-based alternatives to winner-take-all elections, as measures of their fairness are tied to voters more than parties. Through that lens, cumulative voting deserves attention because of how widely it is used and its important history in Illinois for state legislative elections.
What is cumulative voting?
As its name suggests, voters have an opportunity to “cumulate” their votes on one candidate in a multimember district electing more than one candidate. If electing three people, say, as is the case for me in my legislative elections in Maryland, voters wouldn’t be limited to casting one vote for up to three candidates. Instead, if they really liked one candidate, they could give that candidate all three of their votes. They could give two votes to one candidate and one vote to another.
Peoria (IL) offers a tabulation twist in its five-seat city council elections. The “equal and even” rule in Peoria for more than three decades means that you vote for one, two, three, four, or five candidates. If you vote for five candidates, they each get one vote. If you vote for one, that candidate gets five. If you vote for a number of candidates in between, your votes are evenly allocated to those candidates – for example, voting for two candidates would mean they each get 2.5 votes. The Peoria ballot is eminently easy to administer, is simple for voters, and facilitates candidates running as a team.
Cumulative voting in practice
No organization closely tracks cumulative voting elections today, but the total number of uses of it is around 100, including school board elections in Amarillo (TX), city council elections in Port Chester (NY), and county commission elections in Chilton County (AL). These modern uses of cumulative voting all stem from voting rights cases, and studies show it has been an effective remedy for minority vote dilution without single-member districts. It is also used widely in elections for corporate boards and homeowner associations.
The most intriguing use of cumulative voting from history is for elections of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1870 to 1980 in three-seat districts, where voters had cumulative voting rights in both the primaries (resulting in more diverse nominees) and general elections, with voters having the option to cast either a “Peoria”-style ballot or traditional cumulative voting ballot. Adopted in the wake of the Civil War to avoid geographically polarized outcomes of confederate-leaning candidates in the southern part of Illinois and union allies in the north, cumulative voting was seen as working well to bridge divides from the start. Both parties nearly always were elected in all 60 legislative districts, and elected representatives had more freedom to legislate according to their conscience than in the winner-take-all state senate.
In 1980, a populist effort to shrink the legislature by a third and go to single-member districts won on the ballot in what was nicknamed the “Cutback amendment.” Cumulative voting was eliminated with that vote, and most Illinois leaders came to deeply regret it. In 2015, I wrote a paper on cumulative voting in Illinois, bringing together findings from a commission recommending the restoration of cumulative voting and anecdotal interviews with state leaders about the negative impact of losing the system. The paper is worth a skim, and I’ll highlight the qualities highlighted by a commission co-chaired by former federal judge and Democratic Congressman Abner Mikva and former Republican governor Jim Edgar that called for its return.
• Offers greater choice for voters in primary and general elections.
• Provides prospective candidates easier access to the electoral system.
• Provides greater representation for the minority political party in districts dominated by the other party.
• Provides individual legislators greater independence from legislative leaders.
• Generates richer deliberations and statewide consensus among all legislators since both parties would be represented in all parts of the state.
The commission’s recommendation led then-state senator Barack Obama in 2002 to introduce a bill allowing voters to restore cumulative voting. But powerful Democrats with a stranglehold on the House blocked it.
Because cumulative voting can “split votes”, it is not reliably proportional or, “fair.” What made it work in Illinois was parties limiting their nominations to two in their three-seat house districts, and cumulative voting is less effective as a voting rights remedy when racial minority voters either split their vote among two candidates or have the voting power to elect more than one candidate. That’s why most students of “voter representation” systems prefer proportional RCV. However, where PRCV can’t be done for administrative or legal reasons, cumulative voting should get serious consideration.
#2. Spotlight: Ranked Choice Ballots in Presidential Primaries
Presidential primary fields keep growing, as in 2020. Source: New York Times
Every four years, Americans experience a massive lesson in the power of electoral rules: the presidential nomination process. The schedule of contests means early primary states may get literally 100 times more attention from candidates than states voting later. A timely early win can create unstoppable momentum when it’s soon before “Super Tuesday.” as February primary winners like Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2016 have shown. Republicans allowing a mix of primaries where delegates are allocated proportionally and by winner-take-all often leads candidates to chase “all or nothing” outcomes in the winner-take-all states. Yet such rules can be changed relatively easily by states and the parties themselves.
I’ll zero in on a change that I believe is an inevitable norm: a ranked choice voting ballot (as opposed to “ranked choice voting” in itself) to handle increasingly crowded fields by allowing a voter’s second or lower choice to count if their first choice isn’t viable - as persuasively called for by Congressman Jamie Raskin just last week in The Guardian. Both parties have those who resist change, to be sure, but here’s why it makes so much sense for both Democrats and Republicans.
For both parties, using an RCV ballot has “centripetal” impacts on rewarding candidates able to build consensus support across their party, as both parties traditionally shaped at in-person conventions and as Democrats carried over to caucuses where voters “realign” to viable second choices after indicating their initial preference.
Both parties have primary calendars where a string of contests happen soon after early primaries result in many candidates dropping out. Nearly all states also now have generous early voting rules – ones that increase turnout by expanding voting access, but that undercut voting rights when combined with candidate withdrawals – leading to some three million Democrats in 2020 voting for candidates who had withdrawn by the time those votes were counted.
Democrats have a strict requirement for proportional representation across all states, with statewide delegates allocated to any candidate earning at least 15%. That makes winner-take-all forms of RCV a non-starter with Democrats. But 15% is a high number, and millions of votes are “ineffective” because they are below the threshold. Embracing a caucus-like ”realignment” rule with ranked ballots would allow those voters to get a chance to have their vote count. That is, you would count all first choices, then, in the realignment round, move all ballots cast for nonviable candidates below the 15% threshold to their next-ranked viable choice. In 2020, about 90% of such voters in the four states providing data about how voters used their ranked ballots had their ballots count toward viable candidates. Translated across all states, that would be a huge win for voting rights and likely result in more votes making a difference than any other reform.
Republicans drive toward faster selection of nominees by allowing states to hold winner-take–all contests after their early contests are decided based on proportional representation. But when those winner-take-all contests have more than two candidates, you get winners with far less than half the vote - a dynamic that was clearly unrepresentative of voter opinion in 2016, as FairVote demonstrated conclusively. Republicans wanting a more reliably representative outcome would benefit from RCV.
How RCV might become the norm in presidential primaries
Widespread use of ranked choice voting for these reasons will depend above all on faster, cheaper and better election administration of RCV. Most cities have met that goal with transparency, audits, election-night tallies, and voters embracing RCV ballots. Moving those practices statewide can take more investment, but that journey is well underway. Once RCV is as quick and easy to use as non-RCV elections, it will become a relatively non-controversial choice for states and parties.
As to viability, a lot of Republicans are pouting about RCV because Democrats won hotly contested congressional elections with RCV in Alaska in 2022 and Maine in 2018. But blanket opposition is irrational, and Republicans’ experience with RCV in nomination contests has been uniformly positive, as in the Republican Party of Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial nomination. Over time, I expect Republicans will embrace the practical strength of RCV, including in presidential primaries.
For Democrats, this is a key cycle for their commitment to voting rights. FairVote’s polling shows a remarkably broad and high level of support for RCV among Democratic voters, including a margin of greater than 10 to one for its voters under 50. Democrats also have a great lesson from 2020 showing that RCV ballots work, which is why many of their state party leaders want to use RCV ballots in 2028. With numerous state parties that run their own contests wanting to do vote-by-mail with RCV, national Democrats would do well to get out of their way and simply spell out clearly the acceptable rules for using RCV ballots to make more votes count.
I’ve drawn on my coauthored 2021 academic article Lessons from the Use of Ranked Choice Voting in American Presidential Primaries in Politics and Governance for Cogitatio Press that you might want to read in full. Here’s the abstract:
Grounded in experience in 2020, both major political parties have reasons to expand use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in their 2024 presidential primaries. RCV may offer a ‘win-win’ solution benefiting both the parties and their voters. RCV would build on both the pre-1968 American tradition of parties determining a coalitional presidential nominee through multiple ballots at party conventions and the modern practice of allowing voters to effectively choose their nominees in primaries. Increasingly used by parties around the world in picking their leaders, RCV may allow voters to crowd-source a coalitional nominee.
Most published research about RCV focuses on state and local elections. In contrast, this article analyzes the impact on voters, candidates, and parties from five state Democratic parties using RCV in party-run presidential nomination contests in 2020. First, it uses polls and results to examine how more widespread use of RCV might have affected the trajectory of contests for the 2016 Republican nomination. Second, it contrasts how more than three million voters in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries backed withdrawn candidates with the low rate of such wasted votes for withdrawn candidates in the states with RCV ballots. Finally, it concludes with an examination of how RCV might best interact with the parties’ current rules and potential changes to those rules.
#3. Timely Links
“Opportunities thrive where communities are strong”: Despite one in three Americans saying they lack agency in their lives, a recent report from Gallup details how the How Opportunity Takes Root study suggests that the type of community people reside in may also contribute to how much control they believe they have over their lives, independent of their individual circumstances.
The IRS Slush Fund Is a Test. Too Many Republicans Are Failing It: RepresentUs CEO Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno writes for The Renovator, starting: “President Donald Trump’s IRS slush fund presents Republicans in Congress with a stark choice. Those who stand up to the administration’s escalating corruption risk the president’s revenge, as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) recently learned. But legislative complicity in corruption risks its own reckoning.”
The nation’s founding document has a blind spot. Trump is making it visible: Adam Liptak in the New York Times suggests that upholding constitutional intent may require changes. It includes: “As the nation commemorates its 250th anniversary, some constitutional scholars say the second Trump presidency is calling into question whether the nation’s founding charter and sacred text truly provides the balance the founders wanted. President Trump has used the power of the federal government to bully universities, law firms and news outlets; undermined the independence of the Justice Department by instructing it to prosecute his political enemies; defied Congress by impounding money it had instructed him to spend; flouted countless court orders; and cut off funding to states led by Democrats.”
“Victory for D.C. voters: Ranked choice voting, semi-open primaries upheld in the District”: The Campaign Legal Center shares how they “successfully defended a citizen-led ballot initiative introducing ranked choice voting and semi-open primaries in the District. In April 2025, Campaign Legal Center intervened in a lawsuit on behalf of Initiative 83’s proposer Lisa D. T. Rice and Grow Democracy DC to defend the initiative against meritless legal challenges. If successful, those legal challenges would have undermined the will of D.C. voters, who approved Initiative 83 overwhelmingly.”
Overseas voters face new barriers after Trump administration cuts key program: Derek Muller in Election Law Blog elevates a San Francisco Chronicle story that includes: “The Department of Defense in August announced, without explanation, it was cutting the fax service as the administration axed federal programs it said constituted wasteful spending. The voters who used the program are now facing their first election cycle without it. It isn’t just a California problem. Six other states — including Texas and Florida — still dictate fax machines as the alternative, by law, to the Postal Service to return overseas ballots to election offices. Meanwhile, 31 other states have what they call secure electronic ballot transmission available only to those overseas that can be accessed by a smartphone or computer. Yet California leaders — including the secretary of state — are hesitant to adopt similar policies, citing cybersecurity risks at a time election security is already under intense scrutiny.”
OutVote offers a model for mobilizing voters based on interests: Founded in 2023, OutVote focuses on mobilizing young LBGTQ+ voters - an example of ways to draw potential disaffected voters to the polls. This slide deck tells its story.
Who participates in participatory budgeting?: Téa Shouldice writes for the Harvard Independent. It begins: “The results are in: when it comes to civic engagement, Cambridge, Massachusetts, residents go above and beyond. The city of Cambridge held its 12th cycle of Participatory Budgeting, in which residents voted on which of 20 project proposals should receive funding from the municipal government, from Mar. 5 to Mar. 15. Out of the 121,186 city residents, 10,172 went to the ballot box to vote on these initiatives.”