Articles by Damon Eris

Credit: npr.org A new study of voter fraud over the last twelve years finds that, though cases of such fraud can indeed be found throughout the United States, they are “infinitesimal” in number, and that cases of in-person voter fraud or impersonation on Election Day are virtually non-existent. The study was produced as part of the News 21 Voting Rights Project, a nationally coordinated investigation conducted by two dozen journalism students from across the country, and centered at the Walter...

Credit: theprovince.com It is extremely revealing that the topic of civil rights and liberties is all but absent from the campaigns of the Democratic and Republican party presidential candidates. Concerned citizens will search in vain for any serious discussion of the issue on the websites of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Indeed, neither campaign has bothered to address the issue in their speeches, interviews or informational materials, except, perhaps, insofar as extant rights and liberties mi...

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson has written an open letter to the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates urging the organization to include all qualified candidates in the series of presidential debates that will be held this fall. Johnson argues that by limiting participation in the debates to the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties, the CPD process does not reflect the reality of the U.S. electorate today and unfairly limits the choices of voters, over a t...

Credit: breitbart.com If history is any guide, this year there will be more eligible voters who refuse to cast a ballot in the presidential election than there will be who vote for the eventual winner. In the 2008 presidential election, voter turnout was as high as it had been in a generation, yet still only about 60% of eligible voters cast a ballot. In that election, just under 70 million individuals voted for Barack Obama and nearly 60 million cast a ballot for John McCain, but roughly 80 mi...

In today's highly polarized political environment, it seems there are few things on which Democrats and Republicans can agree. Among the American public, however, a broad new consensus has emerged uniting people from across the partisan political spectrum: Republican-Democrat party control of the United States Congress is highly objectionable. A new Gallup poll on Congress Approval Rating published on Tuesday finds that just 10 percent of Americans approve of the way the Congress is handling it...

What is party affiliation? For many Americans, party affiliation undoubtedly plays a significant role in how they understand themselves with respect to our political system and contextualize their place in our political economy. For others, it functions as a core aspect of their individual self-identity, on a par with basic demographic indicators, such as ethnic background, profession, age or place of residence. And, of course, there are some for whom the notion of party affiliation or political...

Credit: Politico In our nation today, there are likely a great many Americans who view the Republican-Democrat two-party state as a natural product of our political process. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The political dominance of these two particular factions at all levels of government is rather a result of the regulation of our political process by partisan Republican and Democratic lawmakers and their party bosses. To maintain the current two-party system over the last centur...

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson received 19% support in poll published late last week. The survey, commissioned by the Libertarian Action Super PAC, was geared specifically to confront the candidate selection criteria of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which are rigged to favor of the candidates put forward by the Republican and Democratic parties. The nationwide survey of registered voters asked just one simple question: “Suppose the presidential election were hel...

Credit: Think Progress It is commonplace in our politics today to view the decision between a Democrat and a Republican is nothing more than a forced choice between competing evils. It can be difficult, however, to find data that might provide us with greater insight into the prevalence of the lesser of two evils mentality among the American voting public. Fortunately, two new polls may shed a little bit of light on the matter. A Rasmussen public opinion survey published yesterday asked flat o...