The conditions that allow human greed to corrupt institutions such as the American system of governance have the same elements as those required for a criminal conviction—motive, means and opportunity:

“It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.” - John Cleese

Independent voters have been in the forefront of a movement to change the rules of the political game in the United States. We have led efforts to open the primaries to all voters, establish independent non-partisan redistricting commissions and introduce reforms like Ranked Choice Voting to the voting process itself.

U.S. democracy is in existential crisis.

The country already suffers from unrepresentative winner-take-all, single-seat-district legislative elections, a two-party duopoly, partisan gerrymandering, the corrupting influence of big money in politics, and an Electoral College and US Senate that give vastly outsized influence to some voters over others. In the case of the Electoral College, it can also prevent the presidential candidate receiving the most votes from being elected.

2020 was a weird year. Can we all agree on that?

Here’s something weird about 2020 that you may not have noticed amid all the shouting and freaking out: Democrats nominated and successfully fielded a presidential candidate who is the exact same as Donald Trump in a curiously suspicious number of ways.

And they’re not trivial.

January 6, 2021 was — to borrow a line from a famous speech by former president Franklin Roosevelt — a day which will live in infamy. Two days later, Twitter announced that it had permanently banned @realDonaldTrump’s Twitter account due to violations of its “Glorification of Violence” policy. Other social media companies were quick to follow suit.