Research & Analysis

From international elections analysis to creative thinking about local voting systems, FairVote for years has written widely and substantively about important democracy topics and done groundbreaking research.


Research Reports analyze American and international elections and election practices, studying the effect on voter participation, fairness in representation and competitive choice.

Policy Perspectives provide elected officials, reform advocates and the media with analyses of elections and electoral reform issues at every level of government.

Democracy Innovations introduce new ideas and strategies to advance our vision of "the way democracy will be."

Research Reports

  • International Snapshot: Japan 2009

    November 24, 2009

    The Japanese parliamentary elections in August 30, 2009 marked a turning point in Japan’s political history. Since 1955, Japan has been dominated by one party, with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as the governing party for all but 11 months. But in these elections the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) defeated the LDP, winning 308 seats to 109 for the LDP in the 480-seat House of Representatives.

  • Get 'Em (Ready to Vote) While They're Young

    May 26, 2009

    A movement is growing within the states to swing the doors of our democracy wide open, encouraging and facilitating the active participation of young people in the electoral process.

  • Universal Voter Registration: An International Perspective

    April 21, 2009

    The United States is one of the few democracies in the world where the government does not take any responsibility in registering its citizens. This one-of-a-kind, self-initiated voter registration process acts as a major barrier to voter turnout and leads to often inaccurate voter rolls.

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Policy Perspectives

  • Delegating Democracy

    April 3, 2008

    Parties have great opportunities to review and improve their election systems by incorporating reforms that give more voters an equal voice and an equal vote. From representative delegate allocation regimes to ranked choice voting and expanded suffrage rights, a political party's nomination process can be a true laboratory of democracy.

  • Fuzzy Math: Wrong Way Reforms for Allocating Electoral College Votes

    August 9, 2007

    This paper analyzes two of the three major options available to state leaders interested in taking action to reform how their state allocates its Electoral College votes: the whole number proportional and congressional district systems. It evaluates them on the basis of whether they promote majority rule, make elections more nationally competitive, reduce incentives for partisan machinations, and make all votes count equally. We use vote returns from a number of previous elections to analyze what the outcomes would have been if Electoral College votes had been allocated according to the whole number proportional and the congressional district systems.

  • The Feasibility of Instant Runoff Voting in Vermont

    March 9, 2007

    FairVote commissioned a complementary report by Caleb Kleppner, one of the nation's foremost experts on the use and administration of ranked choice elections. This report lays out a full range of implementation options for Vermont and includes topics such as voting equipment, counting procedures and voter education programs.

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Innovative Analyses

  • Suffragium Ex Machina

    November 12, 2009

    Today the machinery of American democracy (literally) is increasingly dependent on one large corporation with little interest in transparency, competition or innovations that might affect its bottom line. For years FairVote has proposed publicly controlled voting processes, ideally with transparent administration and clear lines of accountability grounded in publicly owned voting equipment.

  • If You Proportionally Allocate, They Will Come

    August 27, 2009

    Turnout between the major parties for the 2008 presidential nomination cycle was disparate, to say the least. Democratic turnout nearly doubled those of the Republicans over all, and nearly tripled the Republicans’ turnout post-Super Tuesday, February 5th. 

  • Primary Power to the People

    July 17, 2009

    The parties should begin to debate a plan that includes traditional state-based nomination contests culminating in a final, decisive national primary.

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