On Monday, the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers (NANR) announced that it would match all contributions that reformers across the country make to support initiatives in Maine to expand the state’s landmark ranked choice voting law and to open the state’s primary elections to all voters.

The biggest story happening right now nationwide that is not getting any attention from the mainstream media are the campaigns, ballot proposals, signature drives, and legislative efforts going on RIGHT NOW to give voters an election system that protects their right to a meaningful and equal vote in the taxpayer-funded election process -- from the primary to the general election.

Imagine that California’s 4.7 million Republican and 8.6 million Democrat voters were not able to vote for a presidential candidate of their choice in March 2020.

And NO ONE seemed to care.

California’s 5.6 million NPP voters don’t have to imagine, because for the state's second-largest voting bloc by a wide margin, this IS their reality. Even though California’s constitution requires an “open presidential primary,” meaning every voter is supposed to be able to vote for whomever they want, they cannot.

California is headed for a disastrous presidential primary in 2020. Nearly 6 million registered citizens are denied a meaningful vote. Half a million voters have no idea they are registered with a third party, meaning they cannot cast a ballot for any candidate outside that party. Many voters will be confused. Millions more will be disenfranchised.

It happened in 2016. It will happen again in 2020, unless something changes.

For the last several years, I’ve been spending time in rural Wisconsin in a small farmhouse set on 130 heavily-wooded acres on County Road T, Polk County. This is the northwestern Wisconsin of hardscrabble dairy farming, bitter winters and luminous springs.

Pundits ignore us. Primaries exclude us. Political scientists say we are just “closet partisans.”

Nonsense.

The Independent Voter Project (IVP) is a 501(c)4 organization that seeks to re-engage nonpartisan voters and promote nonpartisan election reform through initiatives, litigation, and voter education.

At least 26 million voters in the United States were denied the freedom to vote in the 2016 presidential primary elections. A large portion of these voters were independents. I am assuming that a similar problem occurred in the 2018 mid-term elections.

It is time to create a new primary election system. This undemocratic process has continued for far too long. It is time that we give ownership of the election process back to the American people.