Electoral reform in the United States
However, these elections are not affected by gerrymandering (with the possible exception of presidential races in Maine and Nebraska, whose electoral votes are partially allocated by Congressional district).
[1] Proposals for electoral reform have included overturning the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, public and citizen funding of elections, limits and transparency in funding, ranked-choice voting (RCV), abolishing the Electoral College or nullifying its impact through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and improving ballot access for third parties, among others.
The U.S. Constitution gives states wide latitude to determine how elections are conducted, although some rules, such as the ban on poll taxes, are mandated at the federal level.
The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC and related decisions would require a constitutional amendment to permanently change, and several have been proposed.
The American Anti-Corruption Act (AACA) is one collection of reforms that appear to be consistent with existing US Supreme Court rulings, developed by Republican Trevor Potter, who had previously served as head of the US Federal Elections Commission under Democratic President Bill Clinton.
"[3] Lessig favors systems that share as broadly as possible the decisions about which candidates or initiatives get the funding needed to get their message to the voters.
Following Bruce Ackerman, Lessig recommends giving each eligible voter a "democracy voucher" worth, e.g., $100 each election year that can only be spent on political candidates or issues.
Unlike the current Presidential election campaign fund checkoff, the decisions regarding who gets that money would be made by individual citizens.
While the Supreme Court of the United States has already struck down many forms of public funding of political campaigns, there are forms of public and especially citizen financing that seem consistent with the constitution as so far interpreted by the courts and could therefore be secured by standard legislative processes not requiring amending the constitution.
[6] The Citizens United v. FEC decision, January 21, 2010, of the U.S. Supreme Court has received substantial notoriety, pushing many people to work for a constitutional amendment to overturn it.
They had obtained roughly 300,000 individual signatures for their Motion to Amend and had secured the passage of 367 local resolutions and ordinances.
Clean elections typically refers to systems where candidates receive a fixed sum of money from the government to run their campaigns after qualifying by collecting small dollar contributions (e.g., $5) from a large enough group of citizens.
Systems of this nature have been tried in Maine, Arizona, North Carolina, New Mexico, Vermont, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere; some of these have been disqualified at least in part by the courts.
[13] The implementation of term limits and elections for Supreme Court Justices has been proposed as an alternative to the current Senate confirmation system, which has become more partisan in recent years due to political polarisation.
[25][26][27] In 2023, the North Dakota Legislative Assembly introduced Bill HB 1273, which would ban approval voting statewide.
In November 2020, St. Louis passed Proposition D to authorize a variant of approval voting (as unified primary) for municipal offices.
[31] In a primary field of four candidates, St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones and Alderwoman Cara Spencer advanced to the general election.
[32] The two women defeated President of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen Lewis E. Reed as well as utility manager Andrew Jones.
One of these is FairVote, which provides a long list of endorsers of IRV, including President Obama, Senators John McCain and Bernie Sanders, five U.S.
[38] Fair Representation Act proposes to introduce STV, along with the multi-member districts, for elections to the House of Representatives.
In the United States House of Representatives and many other legislative bodies such as city councils, members are elected from districts, whose boundaries are changed periodically through a process known as redistricting.
Partisan gerrymandering is considered to occur when the legislator in office, redraws state election districts in a way that secures their own political agenda over the opposing party.
