Third Parties Argue Top-Two Primary Puts Them At a Disadvantage

At the end of May, the Green Party, Libertarian Party and Peace and Freedom Party released a joint statement on the effect of California’s top-two primary on third parties.

California top-two primary was adopted in 2010 and used for the first time during the 2012 elections. In their statement, the parties highlight three main areas in which they believe the new system has negatively impacted their participation in the electoral process.

In Kiera Wilmot’s Shoes

In the past month or so, I was intrigued by the story as it was reported about Kiera Wilmot, the young black woman in Florida who got in trouble for exploding a pop bottle bomb.  What first attracted me to the story were the similarities to my own experience.  At 16 years old, I was an honor student, with straight A's in science courses, and I was also threatened with expulsion for something I did that was school related.

Curing The U.S. Senate of Dysfunction: Limit The Filibuster

The putative justification for the use of the filibuster in the U.S. Senate is to protect the rights of the legislative minority and to ensure that legislative proposals, especially critical or controversial ones, receive sufficient scrutiny before they are adopted—or rejected if the filibuster is sustained and able to withstand a cloture vote (at least 60 votes, three-fifths of the Senate membership). That is the theory.

But, the filibuster also functions in more nefarious ways, such as Strom Thurmond’s unsuccessful, but record-length filibuster against a civil rights bill.