“And they’re off!”  The date of the article is January 29, 2023. It has barely been 12 weeks since the 2022 mid-term election.

A new bill has been proposed in the Texas Legislature that would give local municipalities and school districts the authority to implement ranked choice voting (RCV) for nonpartisan elections. 

The nonpartisan reform group Open Primaries hosted a virtual discussion Wednesday to talk about the growing demand for primary reform that gives all voters, regardless of political affiliation, an equal and meaningful say in elections.

After a mere 15 tries, Kevin McCarthy finally holds the gavel as Speaker of the House. Drowned out in stories of successive floor votes and physical altercations between middle aged men were a few voices who proposed the idea of moderates from both parties coming together to elect a Speaker that represented the center, as opposed to the party’s extreme flank.

The 118th Congress is off to a rocky start. First, it took 15 votes for the majority to elect a Speaker – a debacle that included a scuffle on the House floor. Now, the majority has adopted new House rules that gut (quite literally) the Office of Congressional Ethics. 

RepresentUs, the nation’s largest anti-corruption organization, has spoken out against the new rules, asserting that they will make it harder to identify and fight corruption in Congress.

Billionaire industry titan Mark Cuban has a solution for the ongoing Speaker dilemma is the US House: Use ranked choice voting.

“Is there a better commercial for Rank Choice Voting than what is going on with the Speaker's vote in the House?” Cuban tweeted Thursday. “The current system, from primary to generals to speaker voting, empowers the extremes to the expense of constituents. Time to change.”

Each year in November, California and Texas lawmakers from across the political spectrum, industry leaders, and policy experts come together in Hawaii to discuss the biggest issues affecting voters, businesses, and policymakers during the Independent Voter Project’s (IVP) Business and Leadership Policy Conference.

Independent voters are often ignored by the media and pollsters. They are vilified by the major parties for not picking a side. Yet, in the 2022 midterms and in every election in recent history, independent voters have defined the outcomes.

The most critical movement right now in the US is to give voters an election system that is accountable, competitive, and free of corruption. Hundreds of organizations across the country are working toward meeting this goal, and many of the movement’s leaders met in December to celebrate victories and discuss next steps.