Florida voters may soon have a chance to adopt nonpartisan open primaries. At least, that is the hope of a coalition of nonpartisan organizations that are asking the state's Constitution Revision Commission to put it on the ballot in 2018.

“We're looking to develop primary reforms that let all voters vote and create more responsive candidates that actually represent the communities that elect them and are not simply responsive to the partisan few that come to elect them in closed primaries," said Jeremy Gruber, senior vice president of Open Primaries.

Atlanta, Georgia – In three counties just north of Atlanta, voters are heading to the polls for a special election Tuesday.

Complying with the tax code costs the United States a cool trillion dollars per year. That’s the entire GDP of Mexico, wasted because of the sheer complexity of our tax code, which runs to 74,000 pages or so when taken with the IRS policies and parts of the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) that bear directly on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pS4x8hXQ5c&feature=youtu.be

Vox released a scathing video on CNN broadcasting Monday that essentially shows how CNN intentionally makes its reporting more about entertainment and the "spectator sport" of politics, rather than serious journalism.

Really, the video simultaneously takes a shot at CNN and Trump defenders, claiming that by paying Trump supporters to come on to defend false or misleading claims, they are "making us all dumber."

While at Unrig the System this weekend (more on that later but a great meeting). I got to meet Pat Caddell, who has worked in presidential offices and campaigns since the Carter administration.

Seventy years ago today, April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Jackie Robinson was a baseball player and four-sports star at UCLA – football, basketball, baseball, and NCAA record holder in the broad jump – but if you think of him only as an athlete, you do not understand Jackie or his story.

But as an athlete, the argument can be made that Jackie was America’s greatest; that while he made baseball’s Hall of Fame, there are those who say baseball wasn’t his best sport.

Marshall Tinkle wrote a piece in the Bangor Daily News Thursday arguing that not only does ranked choice voting not violate the Maine Constitution, Maine does not permit the state's Supreme Court from issuing an advisory opinion on the matter.

What makes Marshall Tinkle such an expert on the Maine Constitution? Well, for one thing, he literally wrote the book on it. Tinkle, who practices law in Portland, is the author of the reference book, The Maine State Constitution.

The Maine Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case that could decide the future of ranked choice voting in the state. The State Senate asked the court to issue an advisory opinion in February.

The justices could very well give lawmakers the justification they need to drop implementation of a voter-approved ballot measure (Question 5). Ranked choice voting was approved by the second-largest referendum vote in Maine's history.

Thursday afternoon, CIA Director Mike Pompeo gave his remarks on what he views as an assault on the intelligence community by Julian Assange and his colleagues at WikiLeaks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2eE3WRS0R8

Pompeo explains that his reason for speaking is due to:

North Carolina may be jumping on the “Top-Two” train. A house bill introduced this week, H.B. 737, would reform the current partisan open primary system to a nonpartisan, top-two primary similar to the systems already in place in California and Washington state.

H.B. 737 was introduced by state Reps. Ken Goodman (D-Rockingham) and Pricey Harrison (D-Greensboro). It would put all state and congressional elections on a single primary ballot where all voters and candidates, regardless of party affiliation, participate.