Editor's note: This piece originally appeared on The Free and Equal Elections Foundation's website and has been republished on IVN with permission from the authors.

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Last week’s showdown between the sitting U.S. President and his opponent was an exhausting production that played into the divisiveness of our country, rather than focusing on solutions.

This is an independent opinion. Have one of your own? Email it to hoa@ivn.us

How does San Diego compare to other coastal cities? Like San Francisco and Santa Barbara, San Diego is well-positioned on the beautiful Pacific coast.

This is independent opinion. Have one of your own? Email it to hoa@ivn.us

Represent San Diego and Independent Voter Project announced this month it will host a free screening of the award-winning documentary, “UnRepresented.” 

The documentary by Daniel Falconer features accounts by democracy advocates, academics and government officials of the “corrupt dealings” they have witnessed. Organizers said the documentary also offers “ideas for fixing the system, offered by concerned citizens on both the left and the right.”

West San Ysidro Boulevard in San Diego has an extra pop of color. Creatives have added fresh street art along the high-traffic thoroughfare — less than four miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Vacant buildings, alleyways and businesses serve as canvases for a series of commissioned murals.

One of the murals is the work of a self-taught cartoonist. The vibrant narrative reflects the artist’s comic strip background. It’s the first public mural created by Fifi Martinez. 

It was a simple phone conversation that attorney Kevin Shenkman believes may have been his calling: to ensure every neighborhood or community was properly represented in government. With about 20 election reform lawsuits under his belt, you could say Shenkman has more than answered the call.

A high-profile Malibu attorney, Shenkman has litigated against municipalities across the Golden State following passage of the California Voting Rights Act in 2002, giving individuals the ability to sue if they felt a particular group wasn’t properly represented on public bodies.

Independent Voting recently released the results of its second national survey "Confronting A New Reality: Independents Speak Out,” interviewing over 3,600 independent voters across the country on the

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

Last week TPR shared a new report from Embarcadero Institute disputing the accuracy of the state's methodology for calculating local housing needs.

Unite America recently released a new video titled "How America's two-party doom loop is driving division," based on the doom loop theory of political reform scholar Lee Drutman. The two-party doom loop refers to the vicious cycle of tit-for-tat politics escalated by the Republican and Democratic Parties for the sole purpose of government control.