FairVote receives recognition in national open funding opportunity
FairVote, in conjunction with Democracy Rising, More Equitable Democracy, and the RCV Resource Center, is proud to share that our joint submission to the Trust in American Institutions Challenge has been selected to move on to the Evaluation Panel stage.
The Trust in American Institutions Challenge, put forward by Lever for Change and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, is “a $10 million open call designed to scale a bold solution that will build and restore public trust in the core institutions that form the pillars of our society in the United States.”
Our proposal aims to win adoptions of proportional ranked choice voting (RCV) in at least eight jurisdictions over five years. Titled “A Seat at the Table: Building Trust Through Proportional Representation,” this project will expand proportional RCV to one million new voters – with the goal of improving trust in local government, while launching a national discussion about how to make our democracy stronger and more representative.
This project is the result of our partnership with Democracy Rising, More Equitable Democracy, and RCV Resource Center, all of which bring expertise in building, winning, and sustaining adoptions of proportional representation in cities and counties. In 2024, all four organizations played a role in the successful implementation of proportional RCV in Portland, Oregon, leading to the most diverse and representative City Council in the city’s history. Our proposal entails working with at least eight new cities interested in implementing the “Portland Model” over a five-year period.
Portland’s first use of proportional RCV saw:
- High voter engagement: Voters took advantage of the ability to rank candidates, with 85% ranking multiple candidates in the mayoral race and an average of 91% ranking multiple candidates for City Council.
- High voter satisfaction: Voters preferred the new system by a 2-to-1 margin. 84% of voters said that “electing council members by [multi-member] district will better represent my part of the city.”
- High voter “buy-in”: The vast majority of voters saw at least one candidate of their choice elected to office – 70% ranked Mayor Keith Wilson on their ballot, and an average of 84% ranked a winning council member from their district.
- A diverse and representative City Council: Portland’s Council is half-women and has five members of color, roughly matching the demographics of the city. The Council has three members who rent their homes, and members endorsed both by the local Chamber of Commerce and the Democratic Socialists of America — with ages ranging from 28 to 70. The Council includes members elected from East Portland for the first time in four decades.
The Challenge evaluation panel, made up of experts from across the philanthropic, academic, and political space, will now judge each of the submissions that advanced. Organizations will be notified whether they have been selected as finalists later this summer.
To learn more about FairVote’s work on proportional representation, read about proportional ranked choice voting and the Fair Representation Act. To learn more about how proportional RCV worked in Portland, see this analysis.
