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Dear John,

With less than two months until the 2024 general elections, your inbox is likely overflowing with campaign emails. We’ll get to the point: We’re sharing two new reports on how ranked choice voting (RCV) improves primary elections, a one-stop shop showing RCV’s unique benefits for each state, and analysis of how Hispanic and Latino voters benefit from RCV.

Report: “Fewest votes wins” in primary elections

Fewest votes wins: plurality victories in 2024 primaries catalogs candidates who won their statewide or congressional primary with under 50% of the vote. A whopping 70 candidates did so this year:

  • 33 of these non-majority winners won their primary in a “safe seat” for their party, meaning they will almost certainly win the general election. When they do, they will have been selected by a fraction of a fraction of their constituents.
  • Another 17 non-majority winners are advancing to highly competitive general elections. Recent research from Northwestern University and FairVote shows that they’ll be less likely to win without a majority mandate from their own party.

RCV would solve both problems – strengthening party nominees and ensuring winners represent a majority of voters.

Our other report, The 2024 presidential primaries and ranked choice voting, looks back at this year’s presidential primaries and highlights how RCV would improve the process in 2028:

  • More than 300,000 Republicans cast “zombie votes” for candidates who dropped out before their state’s primary day. Because of single-choice voting, these voters were not able to express their preference among the candidates still running.
  • Most of the candidates who ran dropped out before a single vote had been cast, often due to concerns they would “split the vote” with ideologically similar candidates.

RCV would let more candidates stay in the race and virtually eliminate zombie votes – as we saw in RCV presidential primaries in 2020 and 2024.

Why our states need RCV

Over the years, FairVote has tracked how the problems caused by “choose-one” elections have impacted local, state, and federal elections across the nation, and how RCV could help. Our new webpage is a one-stop shop showing how RCV would benefit voters in all 50 states. Find your state on the list!

Hispanic and Latino voters deserve more choices in elections

With the 2024 election weeks away and amidst Hispanic Heritage Month, there’s a lot of discussion and prognostication about which candidate will win the “Hispanic vote” or “Latino vote.” However, Hispanic and Latino voters have far more nuanced views than analysts often acknowledge.

Ranked choice voting enables more candidates to run and share their ideas without being labeled as “spoilers.” Check out our new analysis of how RCV would give Hispanic and Latino voters more choices – and allow them to express a wider range of preferences – in our elections.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far during a busy campaign season. Stay tuned for updates on this year’s elections, RCV ballot measures, and two new webinars we’ll be announcing soon!

Onwards,
Ashley Houghton
FairVote Chief Program Officer

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