Pennsylvania is the latest battleground over the issue of partisan gerrymandering.

Several plaintiffs filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging congressional maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania General Assembly that are "so bizarrely engineered that the only fair inference is that the Republican mapmakers made them so for partisan advantage."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqc1ekCwmXw

Our democracy is fundamentally broken by a dangerous new era of fierce partisan divisions. Most voters are locked in congressional districts that are increasingly skewed toward one party.

With no power to affect outcomes, too many votes simply do not matter.

The problem goes beyond gerrymandering, redistricting, and money. The problem is districting itself.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been marred in controversy since the 2016 presidential election. Now, embroiled in a criminal investigation, the congresswoman has a 2018 primary challenger: Progressive Democrat Tim Canova.

The fate of ranked choice voting in Maine will soon be decided. The State Senate could vote as early as Friday on bills that call for full repeal or a constitutional amendment that would bring ranked choice voting in full compliance with the state constitution.

In February, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman introduced the New York Votes Act, a comprehensive set of bills to protect and expand voting rights in New York. Among other issues, the Act includes no-excuse absentee ballots, early voting, and automatic voter registration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsvVgf63Op4

Video Credit: New York Times

Today’s horrific events in Washington D.C., crystalize just how sick the swamp has become.

The divisive rhetoric from our media, both social and over-the-air is infiltrating other areas of society. A comedian beheads the president, an off-broadway play depicts a scene where he is fatally stabbed. Violence begets more violence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nh18lQVgmLQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvF1oahBnvs

Video: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) describes attack, ABC News

A shooter -- identified as 66-year-old James T. Hodgkins -- armed with a rifle shot as many as 50 bullets into a crowd of U.S. Congress members and their staff on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia Wednesday morning.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2013 that struck down pre-clearance requirements from the Voting Rights Act, Republican-controlled state legislatures jumped at the opportunity to impose restrictions on who could register and vote.

Laws implemented in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Florida are said to have had major impacts on the outcome of the presidential election in those states. Republicans in Arizona, Texas, Kansas, as well as others continue to explore legislation clearly aimed at suppressing the Democratic vote.

If we want to learn a little bit more about Trump's path to the presidency, we can look to recent history. It's not actually totally unprecedented.

Spain, going through its own very tough economic times, has vaulted the populist-left Podemos to the fore, seemingly out of nowhere. Podemos is a bunch of political outsiders with a Marxist approach to campaigning -- and they adopted this style very deliberately. They have a lot to teach us about what might become the new politics of the 21st century.