In February of 2007, a range of civil rights groups united to advance a federal legislative agenda on voting rights and electoral reform. A key provision that the diverse array of groups endorsed was a call to Congress to help ensure that voting equipment would be flexible enough to conduct cumulative voting and ranked choice elections:

"Transparent and trustworthy technology guidelines. Congress should ban radio frequency wireless components in all voting systems.  Congress should address the problem many states experience in gaining access to the firmware or software on their own voting machines by ending the exclusive private control that many vendors have over the code on machines owned by local jurisdictions.  To the extent possible, Congress should encourage voting systems that are ready to run elections with election methods currently used in elections in the United States, including cumulative voting and ranked choice systems."

This critical step was endorsed by the following groups:

Anti-Defamation League
Asian American Justice Center
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Common Cause
Demos
FairVote
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCRUL)
MassVote
Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition
NAACP
National Congress of American Indians
National Council of Jewish Women
National Disability Rights Network (NDRN)
National Education Association
People for the American Way (PFAW)
Project Vote
Rock the Vote
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
The Arc of the United States
United Cerebral Palsy
U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG)
United States Student Association (USSA)
VerifiedVoting.org

The entire federal legislative agenda for 2007 can be downloaded [HERE].

 

October 19th 2009
A better election system
Lowell Sun

Election expert Doug Amy explains how choice voting can "inject new blood" into the elections of Lowell (MA), and give voters a greater incentive to participate.

October 16th 2009
Haven't Detroit voters spoken enough?
Livingston Daily

In Detroit, there have been three mayors in the past two years and the current one has come under scrutiny. Perhaps a system like instant runoff voting will help bring political stability to motor city.

August 21st 2009
Black candidate for Euclid school board to test new voting system
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Limited voting, a form of proportional voting, will be used in Euclid (OH), in the hopes of allowing better representation of minorities.

July 2nd 2009
Reforming Albany
New York Times

FairVote's Rob Richie responds in a letter to the editor making the case for proportional voting systems to bring substantive reform to New York's legislature.