Voters added or expanded the use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in two US cities in the same week this month:  Redondo Beach, California, and Burlington, Vermont. 

An overwhelming majority of Redondo Beach citizens voted to add their city to the 6 California cities already using RCV (Albany, Berkeley, Oakland, Palm Desert, San Francisco, and San Leandro) and Eureka, which will use RCV for the first time in 2024. 

Notable Republican and Democratic leaders in Rhode Island have come together to change how the state conducts its primary elections. The effort, called the People’s Primary, seeks to bring more competition and participation in state elections.

“It has become obvious over the years that our primary elections are the most important in defining how we will be governed. The results over the last decade have indicated very serious problems,” said Hassenfeld Center for Leadership Founder Gary Sasse, during an interview for IVN.

The 2022 midterm elections were the least competitive, and most partisan in modern history, according to new findings from the nonpartisan group, FairVote. As a result, the "People's House" isn't actually representative of the American people at all.

Update: A Senate bill to implement semi-open primaries passed the Senate in a bipartisan vote on Monday, February 20. Senate Bill 73 would allow unaffiliated voters to choose between a party ballot in taxpayer-funded primary elections. The bill now goes to the state House for consideration.

Arkansas State Senator Clarke Tucker (Little Rock) has introduced a state constitutional amendment that would implement a nonpartisan top-two primary system in Arkansas similar to the systems in place in California, Washington, and Alaska.

Voters have expressed their desire to see systemic reform to how we elect our public officials. When asked what specific reforms they want in a recent poll, many said they would like to see a proportional representation system -- which would mean a complete election overhaul.

The Missouri House approved a proposal Thursday that would make it harder for citizens to amend the state’s constitution via ballot initiative. The resolution would raise the vote threshold to pass constitutional changes from a simple majority to 60%.