San Diego, CA- San Diego Union-Tribune Columnist Michael Smolens  spent a few minutes at our IVN Studios to talk about the political landscape in San Diego.

IVN San Diego's "Beyond the Headlines" will dive deep into the issues impacting San Diegans lives. The goal of the conversation is to elevate our political discourse and look for solutions to make our city a better place.

Georgia's Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp, says his state's election system is secure. However, voter advocates disagree and have filed suit in federal court.

Kemp, who oversees elections as secretary of state, is being sued on claims that he allowed a massive breach that exposed the voting records and personal information of millions.

A new report published by the Cook Political Report (CPR) says that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's GOP primary victory has moved the governor's race to "Toss Up" status -- painting an uncertain future for the state's top office.

Cook Political Report is a nonpartisan newsletter that is widely used to gauge competitiveness and trends in US House, US Senate, governor's races, and more in the US.

Lately, I’ve been glued to my laptop watching CNN news clips from 1999, when Donald Trump was weighing a possible presidential run in the Reform Party. “Everybody wants me to run for President …” he told the media at the time.  The media smirked, “What vanity!” as they turned their attention to more serious matters.

Three siblings from Austin, Texas are set to make cash off of gerrymandering. No, they're not running for office; they're creating a board game called Mapmaker that educates people about the very serious political game of manipulating voting district boundaries.

It's not a sexy topic for many or one that is easy to understand. But if a game will do it, then why not?

At DefCon, a hacker conference in Las Vegas, savvy computer programmers as young as 8 participated in a contest organized by R00tz Asylum, a non-profit organisation that promotes white hat hacking to improve cybersecurity.

Of the thirty-nine participants aged 8 - 17, thirty-five were able to exploit vulnerabilities in an exact replica of the state of Florida's voting machines, as well as replicas of the election websites of 13 battleground states.

Ballots submitted by unaffiliated voters in the Republican primary for Kansas governor may not be counted, according to Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach currently has a tight 110-vote lead over Governor Jeff Colyer. But the 9,000 uncounted provisional ballots spread throughout 105 counties have not yet been tallied. These make up the votes who may or may not meet the requirements to be considered valid - such as a lack of party affiliation.