I am writing today from La Labor, a small village in the San Pedro Ayumpuc municipality of Guatemala. I am with a group of students who are working in a health clinic and a school run by the sisters who also run our university. It is a trip that our students take every year. None of them ever comes back quite the same as they were before—in a good way.

For the 46.5 million Americans living below the poverty line, 16 million of which are children, life has become a consistent struggle. This struggle does not simply begin and end with monetary concerns, but in fact surrounds both a physical and mental exertion of the individual.

Attend an hour candidate orientation, collect 100 signatures from qualified voters, pay a $200 filing fee, submit, and then you are off to campaign for a seat on the San Diego City Council. To many, this process may seem simple enough for an elected official that fixes potholes and extends library hours.

The Democratic Party is currently challenging the open primary system in Hawaii. Although Hawaii's primary system is funded by all taxpayers, the Democratic Party is asking the court to close the primary, thereby preventing voters not affiliated with the major parties from being allowed to participate.

It may not go as far as many reform advocates wanted, but the USA Freedom Act has been called a step in the right direction by the American Civil Liberties Union. However, that was before even more changes were made to make the language of the bill even more ambiguous.

With only 2 weeks left until the June 3 nonpartisan, top-two primary, tensions are rising in the California Republican Party. Under the new primary system, which will undergo its second major test in 2014, all candidates and voters participate on a single ballot and the top two vote getters advance to the general election. This means candidates are selected by a broader base of the electorate rather than a small group of purely partisan voters.

Legislation that would legalize marijuana for medical dedications in New York cleared its first obstacle in the state Senate on Tuesday by passing the Health Committee in a 9-8 vote. A sole Republican, Sen. William Larkin of Orange County, joined eight Democrats to approve the bill.

On May 20, I passed the 150-mile mark of my 1,000-mile walking tour of Massachusetts. In these first few weeks, I have had over a hundred conversations and personally collected even more signatures for getting on the ballot. Just over a tenth of the way in, I can now say without any doubt that this is how representative democracy was meant to be.

With the announced retirement of South Dakota U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D) back in March, it seemed that a takeover of the seat by Republicans was all but certain due to a lack of viable Democratic candidates. However, the surprise reemergence of former Republican Senator Larry Pressler, now running to reclaim his seat as an independent, has served to make the race more interesting