There is only one week until the Massachusetts US Senate special election and the two contenders find themselves in a tightening race. The deciding factor may come down to the independents' share of the vote.

As part of our effort to report on social media trends, tools, and technology, we will be periodically recognizing politicians, candidates, and political organizations who are utilizing social media in effective and creative ways. 

Name: Senator Mark Warner

Facebook: 21,182

Gerrymandering has been blamed for the increasingly partisan political environment in the United States. In 2008, Californians decided to take the redistricting process away from politicians by creating a citizen-based redistricting commission and it works.

Washington State has held nonpartisan top 2 open primaries since 2008 following the US Supreme Court decision (7 – 2) declaring that Washington’s Initiative 872 was constitutional. With three major election cycles complete, we can draw some conclusions based on primary and general election results.

When Kiera Wilmot and the ACLU claimed she was just exercising her scientific curiosity when she made a bottle bomb, a kind of improvised explosive, which got her expelled from school and nearly resulted in her being prosecuted for a felony, was what she did fairly excused as a science project?

According to the Ledger:

In a previous article, 5 arguments against the Common Core state standards were articulated. The standards were summarized as the following: