I recently had the pleasure of watching Slay the Dragon, Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance’s stunning documentary on the fight against partisan gerrymandering in Michigan and Wisconsin. It played before a full house at Betaworks Studios in lower Manhattan.
UPDATE: An important court case that could change the way the court views partisanship in the courtroom will be heading to the Supreme Court on March 25th. At stake is whether party affiliation, when it comes to judges, can be a criterion for the who gets elected. Read the following update following the lower court's decision originally published by Richard Winger in Ballot Access News.
Hello America! Hello my Brothers and Sisters!
It didn’t take long for the presidential landscape to radically shift following a monumental Super Tuesday. Yet, despite the departure of the richest person to run for president in modern US history and the senior senator from Massachusetts, the true repercussions of Super Tuesday have yet to be fully realized.
The reason? California has millions -- yes, millions -- of votes that have yet to be counted.
With a lot of primary left to go, the Democratic presidential candidates have raised and already spent a small fortune on their White House aspirations.
So much for keeping money out of politics, right?
As long as the there's politics in money, there will be money in politics. But there are a few good non-partisan political innovations that could improve the way money flows into political campaigns to make the system more transparent and fair to candidates and voters.
Originally published on The Fulcrum.
While the Democratic contest was quickly condensing into a two-man race, 18 minimally known presidential aspirants were convening for a sprawling discussion on Wednesday.
Written by Joe Pickering of Mainers for Open Elections, originally published in the Bangor Daily News.
“Go Vote,” the March 4 BDN editorial urges. “There is no better way to reinvigorate the democratic spirit in you.” How so? Why should a plurality of voters in Maine and America have to register as a party member in order to vote in the primaries in first place?
Illinois should host the first presidential primaries if the goal is to pick a state that most closely matches the demographics of the country.
And Vermont, the home state of Democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders, should have minimal influence over the process because its makeup is least similar to the entire United States — meaning the results from that state would be hardly at all predictive of the nation's views.
In a country that often feels divided between two camps, the Republicans and the Democrats, independent voters could really be the future of politics in America.