Colorado's Vote-by-Mail System Could Save the 2020 Election. Why Aren't More States Using It?

In Takoma Park, Maryland, the voting age for local elections is 16. Lowering the age has increased turnout among youth—and studies show that the sooner people start to vote, the more likely they are to be lifetime voters.

Gerrymandered Congressional districts, drawn using evermore individualized voter data, are set up to tip elections across the United States. Lawmakers and voting advocates are pushing back and creating new methods of making the maps. From independent commissions to constitutional amendments, here’s what’s happening in California, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, South Dakota and Utah.

Politicians across the country draw voting maps to favor their own political parties. In Michigan, a state with extreme congressional gerrymandering, voters are saying enough is enough. A nonpartisan group called Voters Not Politicians has collected 425,000 signatures in support of a ballot measure to create an independent commission to determine voting districts. The all-volunteer force gathered proposals at town hall meetings and spoke with voters at parades, football games, and even highway rest stops.

A statistic called the efficiency gap seems like a simple way to measure partisan gerrymandering. It’s easy to calculate and relies on actual election results, not hypothetical results, something called for back in 2004 and 2006 when alleged cases of gerrymandering were found by the U.S. Supreme Court to be too speculative to be ruled unconstitutional. However, the efficiency gap fails to account for key factors such as political geography, making it less of a silver bullet than originally hoped.

For the third election in a row, House Republicans got bonus seats in 2016, through gerrymandering. Thanks to a grassroots citizen movement and computer sleuthing, Florida admitted to breaking the law and has replaced state maps with more competitive, voter-friendly districts.

Voting is easy when a ballot arrives in your mailbox. Vote-at-home increases turnout in all precincts and elections in which it’s available. It significantly outperforms all combinations of other innovations such as absentee ballots, early in-person voting, same-day registration and election-day registration.

After trying ranked-choice voting, citizens in Maine decided to keep the system, even fighting court battles on the issue. The system allows voters to rank candidates running for an office from most desirable to least desirable. This makes it possible for voters’ choices to be taken into account even if their top pick candidate falls out of the running in an election in which no candidate wins the majority of the vote outright.

Takoma Park’s youth council may be the most powerful teen legislature in the nation. The city was the first to lower the voting age to 16 years old, so council members are not only communicating youth perspectives but also voting in local elections.

Public opinion is turning against gerrymandering faster than the Supreme Court. Five states are holding ballot measures on the issue spurred ahead by tens of thousands of citizen’s signatures, and political uncertainty is pushing legislators themselves to get behind apolitical redistricting commissions.

Seattle residents receive cash vouchers to contribute to local campaigns of their choosing. The taxpayer-funded program aims to broaden political participation and counter the influence of big donors. The idea is spreading to other cities, including Albuquerque and Austin.