https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8nyZVSVQZg

Exhibit "A" Why Voter's Don't Trust Washington.

CA Rep. Maxine Waters has been one of the most outspoken critics of President Trump. Her colorful language is certainly made for the 24-hour MSM headline-craving industry.

Okay okay okay, you came to see a sucky website. Let’s get that over first. Here’s RangeVoting.org. It looks like a 3-year-old made it as a school project and forgot to erase it from the internet in the late ’90s. But it may be our best hope for saving America’s democratic values. Let me explain…

Two private corporations, whose operatives are not elected by us, control our federal, state, and local elections. They cheat us. They prevent us from having a democracy! And now, that one of them is hit with a lawsuit for its cheating, the corporate media (who take part in the cheating) don’t even tell us about it. Soon they may, but they will belittle it or defend the undermining of democracy (or our democratic republic, if you want to split hairs) that our Founders risked their lives for and that we have always been told we had.

The justices on the Supreme Court will consider taking up two cases challenging open primaries in Montana and Hawaii Thursday. The lawsuits were brought by the majority parties in each state (Democratic Party in Hawaii; Republican committees in Montana), both asserting that the open primary system severely burdens their First Amendment right to association.

Let’s have a little chat about politics. No, not about how we’re all so divided. And not about how we should all try to get along. Let’s talk about how the whole system needs an overhaul. See, while academics quibble over whether our country is a ‘democracy’ or a ‘republic’, we can all agree that the political system in the United States is supposed to represent the people.

But it doesn’t.

The last 24 hours in Washington has brought to bare a political name and time in our country’s history that makes most shudder.

Before his dismissal, FBI Director James Comey was leading probes into Trump associates’ connections to Russia during the 2016 election.

To many lawmakers, the FBI director’s firing was reminiscent of when then-President Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor charged with investigating the Watergate scandal.

Editor's note: Every 20 years, the Florida Constitution Revision Commission meets and considers proposed reforms to the state constitution that the commission has the authority to put on the ballot. Among the election reform issues brought before the commission this year are nonpartisan elections and ballot access. Below is a speech Ryan Sharp, vice president of America's Party of Florida, will give before the commission on Wednesday, May 10, advocating for ballot access reform:

With a government as dysfunctional and polarized as ours, the question is often asked: “Why are there not more independent lawmakers in office?”

Pundits will often offer the answer that it is because A) most Americans have a partisan slant, and B) independent candidates would not have the support or resources to win.

But it is starting to look like those responses are no longer true:

More diversity. More choice. More civility. Those were just a few of the reasons touted by city councilors in London, Ontario, last week when the Canadian city made history as the nation’s first to adopt ranked-choice voting for municipal elections.

Starting in 2018, London will scrap its “first past the post” system – which boosts incumbents and can elect candidates without majority support – and allow voters to name their top three choices for city office.

In such a polarized landscape, it’s hard to believe that the majority of voters actually identify as being an independent. Making up the largest portion of voters in America, they’re the ones who often sway the vote in one direction or another.

In the swing state of Ohio, this is an all-too-apparent fact of life. Despite this fact and the state's notoriously divided voter demographic, few independent candidates have stepped up to speak for the voters.

Enter 24-year-old political newcomer Matt Teaford.