Duluth City Council

"BE IT RESOLVED, that the Duluth City Council recommends and requests the state of Minnesota to add ranked and cumulative processing capability as a certification requirement for new voting equipment."

Click here to view the entire resolution.

Hopkins City Council Resolution

"Be it resolved that the Hopkins City Council recommends that the Minnesota HAVA state plan committee require any new voting equipment, purchased with Federal funds, have the ability to handle ranked ballot voting....be it also resolved that should the City of Hopkins expend funds on voting equipment in the future, at the time of the expenditure is shall be determined if it is feasible to upgrade the voting equipment to allow for ranked ballot voting."

Click here to read the full resolution (JPG).

Instant Runoff Voting in the City Powerpoint Presentation

This primer on Instant Runoff Voting was originally presented to the Minneapolis City Council on April 22, 2005. Click here to download.

Minneapolis City Council on Voting Equipment

"That the Minneapolis City Council urges the State of Minnesota to add ranked and cumulative ballot processing capability as a certification requirement for new voting equipment."

Click to download entire resolution.

Ramsey County Board on Instant Runoff Voting

"Resolved, The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners, based on their review of this item, supports the concept that would allow local units of government to use Instant Runoff Voting as an alternative voting method in local elections."

Click here to view the entire resolution.

Municipal Voting System Reform

From the article:
"Some election reform advocates are starting locally by proposing that Minnesota cities act under their home rule powers and adopt Single Transferable Vote (STV) as their voting method. But some have asserted that cities are not free to conduct such an experiment, arguing either that the Legislature must specifically authorize such a system, or that a 1915 Minnesota Supreme Court case has held the method unconstitutional.

"This article reports on the reform efforts and alleged legal hurdles to Single Transferable Vote and concludes that the opposing arguments are insubstantial and are not obstacles to reform."

Click to read the entire article (PDF).

The Gerrymandering Game

Our current election system guarantees that there will be minorities
in every district who remain unrepresented by someone with their political
views. District lines can be drawn either to shut out minority voices
or strengthen them — A process called "gerrymandering." As
this game illustrates, the way in which district lines are drawn has
a great effect on who wins representation in Single-Member District,
Winner-Take-All elections.

Below is a map of the political geography of a typical city. There are
40 Democrats (D) concentrated in the center and 32 Republicans (R) dominating
the suburbs. Our current winner-take-all election system divides such
areas up into districts, each represented by a single elected official.
The city pictured must be divided into four districts, each with six "neighborhoods" (a
cluster of three letters).

First, imagine how to draw district lines to create a district plan
which gives Republicans a strong advantage over Democrats. (Hint: The
tactic known as "packing," in which strongly partisan areas
are packed into a single district, should be used here.)

Next, create a district plan where the Democrats have the advantage.
(Hint: "Crack" the Republicans among several districts.)

When you think you have it figured out, check out the solutions...Gerrymander
Solutions

Gridlock! No Contest Elections 2004

From the report:
"America's winner-take-all, two-party system together with the development of strongly Democratic or strongly Republican legislative districts over most of our nation and state have resulted in situations in which: a) minority party voters see little point in bothering to go to the polls; and b) elected officials see little point in responding to the concerns of their minority constituents. FairVote Minnesota's latest study, Gridlock! persuasively demonstrates how the current system subverts true democracy and suggests common-sense ways by which the problem can be effectively addressed."

Click here to read the full report (PDF).

So How'd We Do? A report on No Contest Elections 2004 predictions

From the report:
"Based on the experience of two previous reports, we believed we could predict the results of over 85 percent of the 2004 state house races with at least 85 percent accuracy. We exceeded our own expectations. Our model accurately predicted 90 percent of the seats where there was at least a 3 percent spread between the average party strength of the DFL and Republican candidates."

Click here to read the full report (PDF).

No Contest Elections 2002

From the report:
"This report is the second in a biennial series. The inaugural 1999 report faulted noncompetitive elections as undemocratic, failing to provide adequate accountability, creating imbalance in political power, Balkanizing the state, excluding most voters from the campaign debate, and taking away incentives to vote. This report adds discussion of the trade-offs associated with 'minority opportunity' districts that show themselves in this districting plan."

Click to view the entire report (PDF).

We Told You So! A report on No Contest Elections 2002 predictions

For immediate release
November 8, 2002
Contact: Tony Solgard, (612) 724-5540,

tony@solgard.com

Minneapolis, MN -- The results of over half of state
legislative races were a foregone conclusion. That was the prediction of
FairVote Minnesota's No-Contest Elections 2002, released a month before
the elections. It turns out that the predictions were accurate nearly 100
percent of the time.

"At the same time that the entire nation was watching the
nail-biter for the U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota, there was a non-event taking
place farther down the ballot," said Tony Solgard, author of the report.

The report found that 55 percent of Senate seats and 56
percent of House seats are "safe" for one party or the other based on difference
between DFL and GOP average party strength measured by a sample of statewide
elections. Some are so secure as to be virtually "Untouchable," and the "Most
Untouchable" legislators were identified in the report.

All of the "Untouchable" legislators were reelected. Most
of the "Vulnerable" legislators were defeated. More significantly, the report
accurately predicted the winners in 35 out of 37 noncompetitive Senate elections
and in 73 out of 75 noncompetitive House races, an accuracy rate of 94.6 percent
and 97.3 percent, respectively. The report said a month ahead of the election
that the prospects for the Republicans were bright. Now we know that this
prediction was on the mark. In fact, the predictions were cautious and could
have been more aggressive without sacrificing accuracy, as the correlation
between party strength and election victory held firm well below the 10 percent
spread used to make the predictions.

In open seats, the report was right in 20 out of 21 House
elections (95.2%) and 11 out of 11 Senate seats -- 100%! In the incumbent pairings
due to redistricting, the report "batted a thousand" in predicting three House
pairings and the only Senate incumbent match-up.

What's the point? Competitive elections are important to
the quality of our democracy. If we don't have them, we sacrifice several
important principles.

• Voters should be able to affect the outcome of an
  election. A shift in voter sentiment should result in a corresponding shift in
  the composition of the legislature. That does not happen very clearly or
  directly in noncompetitive elections.

• Legislators elected from noncompetitive districts are not
  structurally accountable to the voters and can become unresponsive to the
  interests of constituents.

• Political power is tied to geography, penalizing
  competitive areas and the state as a whole.

• The state becomes Balkanized into political regions where
  one party has no motivation to consider the interests of areas dominated by
  the rival party.

• The real campaign is directed toward swing voters in
  swing districts, leaving most voters feeling like politics is not about issues
  that affect them.

• Taken together, these effects of noncompetitive elections
  reduce voter turnout.

The report is available at

../resources/publications/nce2002.pdf.

FairVote Minnesota is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization
working for better representation, accountability, discourse, and participation
by educating Minnesotans about the impact voting systems have on the quality of
our democracy. The organization promotes voting systems that have been
demonstrated to improve the quality of democracy as measured by criteria such as
political competitiveness. These include instant runoff voting in single-winner
elections and proportional representation for councils, legislatures, and the
Congress. For more information, see

http://www.FairVoteMN.org.

FairVote Minnesota works closely with the Washington
DC-based Center for Voting and Democracy, whose Monopoly Politics report
assessing the competitiveness of U.S. Congressional elections inspired
No-Contest Elections. The Center's report is available at

http://www.fairvote.org.

*Two of the ten representatives
originally listed in this category (Richard Mulder in 20A and John Tuma in 25B)
were not on the general election ballot, though their party caucus reported to
us that they were. Thus, only eight could be included in this analysis.

**One of the senators in the Most
Vulnerable category who was reelected in spite of being statistically vulnerable
was Sheila Kiscaden, who merited a large footnote in the report's discussion
section.

No Contest Again: No Contest 2000 results

From the report:
"FairVote Minnesota today released a comparison of predictions of state legislative elections made one year ago with actual results from the November 7 election. Predicting winners in twothirds of the districts, the actual results showed the predictions to be over 90 percent accurate in the Senate and nearly 95 percent accurate in the House of Representatives."

Click here to read the full report (PDF).

No Contest Elections 2000

From the report:
"In this report, we contend that Minnesota has non-competitive elections. Before we demonstrate that, let's ask the question, 'What's wrong with non-competitive elections?' Our answer: 'Plenty!' "

Click to read the full report (PDF)

Brochures and Misc.

Books

A number of election reform related books.