Voters in several states will see reform measures on this November’s ballot, including making voting more accessible, opening up primaries, expanding ranked-choice voting, and combinations of several reforms. At the same time, other states will feature measures to repeal these reforms. At the local level, there are many possibilities for improving the way we conduct elections, including reforms advocated by the League for over 100 years.
States considering the move to an open primary, as well as top-4 ranked-choice voting model, as is currently being used in Alaska, include Nevada, Montana, Idaho, and Colorado, though Alaska voters will consider whether to repeal RCV there. Arizona is also considering a move backwards by restricting primaries that feature more than just candidates tied to a party, which will inhibit the kinds of changes that RCV or open voting allow.
Minor changes being considered this fall include a measure in Iowa that would allow 17-year-olds to vote in a primary if they’ll be 18 by election day and allowance for absentee voting without an excuse in Connecticut. Florida voters will consider repealing their public finance through a matching dollars program, another step backwards from enhanced democracy. Reform efforts are underway in at least nine other states, with most considering final 4, final 5, and/or ranked-choice voting, and many being promoted by Unite America.
Local governments have also taken steps toward reforms that improve democracy, with RCV now in place in three counties and 45 cities. RCV has been overwhelmingly popular in states and cities using the system, including in Alaska, where 85% of voters responded to a survey indicating that RCV is simple and 62% approved of the new system.
One area that still needs work is moving cities to nonpartisan local elections, the system advocated by the National Civic League in our first Model City Charter over 120 years ago. While approximately 80% of cities already have nonpartisan elections, many larger cities, like New York City and Chicago, and most cities in particular states, like New York, use partisan elections, which in most cases simply means that the winner of either the Democratic or Republican primary nearly always wins in the general election.
The other major plank of our Model City Charter has been the use of council-manager systems, which are more effective and less corrupt than mayor-council systems, according to Kim Nelson, a professor at the University of North Carolina, whose survey data indicates that over 60% of cities greater than 100,000 residents currently use the council-manager system.
For more on the history of the National Civic League’s work on ranked-choice voting and other reforms, please visit this article from a recent edition of the National Civic Review.
