Correction note: This article originally said that Open Primaries spent $300,000 in support of the donation disclosure initiative. It was the coalition in support of both initiatives. The article has been corrected.

Salon reported Thursday that a campaign to adopt nonpartisan elections in Arizona suspended its efforts after a major donor dropped out.

On Thursday, I was astonished to see someone argue that the gridlock and hopeless partisanship we see in Washington are just phenomenalized by the news, and that our politicians 'really do' work together.

This is, of course, vastly different than what we usually perceive our government to be doing -- between the budget shutdowns, refusal to hear SCOTUS nominations, and the sheer number of  bills dying from lack of cloture -- we have gridlock. But just how bad is it?

On Thursday, March 10, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe and Douglas Jeffe published a column in Reuters about the impact nonpartisan election reforms are having in California, including independent redistricting and the nonpartisan, top-two open primary (authored by the Independent Voter Project). They conclude that while California may appear to be a one-party state, it has actually become a "no party state."

In 1999, President Bill Clinton praised the philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) – who had just received the National Humanities Medal – for his contributions to liberal political thought. Clinton applauded Rawls for having “placed our rights to liberty and justice upon a strong and brilliant new foundation of reason” and having “helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself.”

March 9th update: Donald Trump finished first in the Michigan primary, where candidates' percentages closely tracked the Monmouth poll -- Trump earning 37% of the Republican primary vote, Ted Cruz 25%, John Kasich 24% and a fading Marco Rubio with 9%. Yet, consistent with Monmouth's head-to-head polling, a CBS News exit survey showed that Cruz would have edged Trump head-to-head.

As a follower of politics, I love seeing all the hair-brained ideas that sprout up from time-to-time arguing for this change or that, without really considering what would happen if it was actually put into practice.

We live in a federal republic. Big states have a larger share of influence, but smaller states still maintain at least some balance through the equal representation in the Senate.

The Electoral College was part of this framework. Presidential candidates had to win at the state-level, but an enormous win in one state couldn't skew the entire result.

On Friday, February 26, California Assemblymember Kristin Olsen and State Senator Anthony Cannella, with the support of the Independent Voter Project, filed a resolution with the California State Assembly urging Secretary of State Alex Padilla to create an additional nonpartisan, presidential ballot that lists all presidential candidates, regardless of party.

“Realignment.” Get used to that word because we are going to be hearing it a lot in the next few months. American political parties realign themselves every 40 or 50 years, as governing coalitions emerge, break up, and reassemble themselves in new combinations. The phenomenon of realignment--if not actually part of the design of the country--was at least anticipated in Madison’s great Federalist #10, which argues that, for a republic to remain free, factions must never become permanent.

WASHINGTON, March 9, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- President Barack Obama and leading Republican presidential candidates have called for increasing defense spending. However, given the opportunity to make their own defense budget, a majority of voters (61 percent) cut defense spending in a new in-depth survey released today by Voice Of the People. Not even a majority of Republicans made increases.