A new poll from The McCourtney Institute for Democracy shows that what Americans want most right now is legislative and systemic reform to a political system that continues to fail them.

The institute’s latest Mood of the Nation poll found that 28% of respondents said the biggest issue on their legislative wish list is political and electoral reform, including proportional representation and term limits. 

A US district court in Delaware on Monday found state statutes that prevent independent voters from being appointed as judges to be unconstitutional. Pro-voter reforms are calling it a win as they attempt to break the major parties’ strangling grip over US elections.

“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.