Articles by Debbie Benrey

A story in the Washington Post says the federal investigation into a land deal led by Jane Sanders, the wife and political adviser of Sen. Bernie Sanders, has accelerated. Prosecutors have reportedly hauled off with more than a dozen boxes of records from the Vermont college she once ran and calling a state official to testify before a grand jury. The investigation centers on the 2010 land purchase that relocated Burlington College to a new campus on more than 32 acres along Lake Champlain. W...

Mexico has decriminalized marijuana for both medicinal and research purposes. About two months ago, Mexican legislators approved the proposal by an overwhelming majority in both chambers. President Enrique Peña Nieto published the law in the “Diario Oficial de la Federación” Thursday, which officially brought the bill into effect. Mexico’s new law decriminalizes the consumption and cultivation of marijuana for both medicinal and research purposes, as well as production and distribution with th...

State Representative Gabrielle LeDoux (R-Anchorage) is the latest legislator to introduce legislation that would open state elections to all voters. Rep. LeDoux’s HB200 would establish a top-two style nonpartisan open primary election system, similar to Washington and California’s models. Alaska’s current primary elections are semi-closed, meaning voters are allowed to participate only if a political party lets them. While the Democratic congressional and state primaries are open, allowing any ...

No one in their right mind would challenge the importance of primary elections. So, if the first stage of the public election process in closed primary states, like Oregon, doesn't let independent voters participate at all, how can independent voters possibly have an equal right to vote? That’s the question being addressed by two Oregon legislators. In Oregon, 27.7% of registered voters have chosen not to join a party. But, because they have chosen not to join a party, they’re not allowed to ...

Privacy advocates have generally come from two directions: (1) libertarians, and (2) liberal Democrats. But on March 7, WikiLeaks’ data dump revealed some of the surveillance techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that even George Orwell couldn’t dream up. And Democrats have remained largely silent. Normally, a revelation of this magnitude would rally the anti-war, privacy-protecting, and transparency-demanding left. Evidence of the growing taste for partisanship over principl...

Some legislators in Arkansas are joining the fight for a more open and transparent political process that includes all voters regardless of their party affiliation, or lack thereof. On March 1, State Representative Dan Douglas (R) introduced HB1766, which would institute what the bill calls a "nonpartisan blanket primary" system, by amending the state’s election code. The bill was co-sponsored by Representative Clarke Tucker (D), giving it bipartisan support in the House. The blanket primary p...

The 2016 election cycle was an exceptionally rough one for voters and candidates alike. The divisive rhetoric and lack of support for the major-party candidates revealed a failure in our system to engage all voters and demographics alike. Last year, around 28 million independent voters registered nationwide to participate in the electoral process, becoming the fastest growing voting demographic in the United States. Yet, many states such as Massachusetts and New Jersey disenfranchised independ...

True to their promise to impose term limits, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and U.S. Representative Ron DeSantis (R-FL) kicked-off 2017 by introducing a constitutional amendment which proposes limiting service to three terms in the House (6 years) and two terms in the Senate (12 years). However, imposing term limits is no menial task, due to the 1995 Supreme Court rule ( U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton, No. 93-1456) which limits the ability for state’s legislatures or Congress to impose term limits. Limi...

Following the Executive Order that was released on January 25, 2017 regarding Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, the Department of Homeland Security released documents detailing how the administration plans to combat what they consider an “illegal immigration problem.” The memo, posted on the website of Homeland Security, aims to establish border security and immigration enforcement throughout the country. Below are the 10 key points to understanding how the new immigrat...