What does it mean when we say “rigged elections”?

For starters, the Republican Party wants to shut independents out of primaries altogether while Democratically controlled states like California and New York have made it more difficult for independent voters to participate.

And the two major parties have, literally, a bipartisan partnership that actively prevents a third candidate from participating in the general election presidential debates.

This is in addition to the huge increase in fundraising limits the two parties gave themselves last year in anticipation of the presidential election.

And there are a slew of more “rigging” techniques like gerrymandering I’m not even going to touch here.

So why don’t politicos talk more about how our election system actually works?

In the two-sided national narrative -- where electoral competition is considered within the context of, “does this help the Republicans or the Democrats?” -- we rarely discuss a more fundamental question: How does our election system help or hurt the individual voter?

Last week, John Oliver became one of the first national commentators to highlight the inherent conflict between the rights of political parties and the rights of individual voters in our partisan-based system.

Fact is, from closed primaries, to the debate rules, to gerrymandering and campaign finance rules -- both political parties are winning their bipartisan war on voters.

So, “Sanders telling the truth about a rigged primary is … well, it’s telling the truth.”

And it’s also true when Donald Trump says it.

Will Governor Gary Johnson Become a Viable Third Party Option?

If you haven’t heard of Gary Johnson, you might want to. He’s a the former Republican governor of New Mexico, where he was widely popular, but his anti-war and civil libertarian positions failed to gain much traction in the Republican presidential primary 8 years ago.

So he left for the Libertarian Party, where his third party status has kept him out of the news cycle … until recently. And with an electorate yearning for another alternative, and the Libertarian securing ballot access in all 50 states, why shouldn’t the former governor be included in the debates?

It Is Not All Bad News for Sanders…

A new survey from the Public Policy Institute of California suggests that the race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in California is now a toss-up.

That isn’t the only good news for Sanders this week, according to IVN writer David Yee.

Yee writes that 11 of the 15 members of the DNC’s platform committee may be friendly to Sanders’ policy positions, meaning even if Sanders doesn’t win the Democratic nomination, he will have a major influence on the platform that Hillary Clinton will have to run on.

Trump Clinches GOP Nomination; California Voters Confused

IVN San Diego News Editor Jeff Powers reports that Donald Trump clinched the GOP nomination last Thursday, reaching the necessary 1,237 delegates needed to win on a first-round vote at the Republican National Convention. The news broke on the eve of a rally Trump had in San Diego, California.

According to California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a large surge of voters either registered to vote or changed their registration information in the last few weeks -- nearly 200,000 on May 23rd alone, the final day to register for the primary. Many of these voters may now be confused about their options; especially, if they registered Republican.

In fact, some voting rights attorneys have already filed a lawsuit in California, claiming that the state has not done enough to educate voters about the confusing process. To help educate voters, IVN explains how the California presidential primary works and how voters can participate.