How We Vote

Almost every problem on our Where We Stand page traces back to one broken thing: how we choose our leaders. Fix that, and the rest becomes possible. This is the reform we care about most.

The problem with the system we have

Today most elections use simple plurality voting — whoever gets the most votes wins, even with far less than majority support. That single rule quietly distorts everything:

• The “wasted vote.” If you genuinely prefer a third candidate, voting for them can feel like throwing your vote away — or worse, helping the candidate you like least. So people vote out of fear, not conviction.
• Spoilers. A candidate many people are fine with can split the vote and hand victory to someone most voters didn’t want.
• Primaries reward the extremes. Low-turnout partisan primaries are dominated by each party’s most fired-up base, so the rest of us choose between two options neither side is thrilled with.

The result is leaders chosen by the loudest factions instead of the broadest agreement.

The simple idea

There’s a fairer test, sometimes called the Condorcet method — we just call it head-to-head voting:

The candidate who would beat every other candidate in a one-on-one matchup is the rightful winner.

That’s it. If someone can win every head-to-head race, they clearly have the broadest support — and they should win.

How it works on your ballot

1. You rank the candidates instead of picking just one — first choice, second, third, and so on (a short, top-five ballot keeps it simple).
2. Behind the scenes, the system compares every pair of candidates using everyone’s rankings — as if running a round-robin tournament.
3. The candidate who wins all of their one-on-one matchups wins the election. In the rare case of a tie (a “rock-paper-scissors” loop), a clear, published tie-break rule settles it.

If you can rank your favorite restaurants for a group dinner, you can vote this way.

Why it beats the alternatives

• vs. plurality: no more wasted votes and no more spoilers — you can rank an independent first and still have your preference between the major candidates count fully.
• vs. runoff elections: no costly second election and no turnout collapse — it’s decided on one ballot.
• vs. ranked-choice (instant-runoff): ranked-choice can eliminate a broadly-liked consensus candidate early just because they weren’t enough people’s first pick. Head-to-head voting finds the candidate most people can live with — not just the biggest faction.

Best of all, it changes the incentives: to win, candidates have to be acceptable to people outside their base. That rewards coalition-building and civility instead of stoking division. It doesn’t elect radicals — it elects consensus-builders.

We can start now — no amendment required

This doesn’t take a constitutional amendment or new technology. The way we count votes within a state isn’t fixed in the Constitution, so we can begin where change is most reachable: city councils, school boards, mayoral and state races. Each fair, broadly-supported winner becomes proof it works, and momentum builds from the ground up — long before it ever reaches a national race.

We don’t have to wait for Washington. We can start at home.

Want the deeper history and the math behind it? It's laid out in full in Righting the Ship.