The movement to reform New York’s election system passed a milestone on December 6, though not the one you might have heard about in the news. On the same day state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued his scathing report on April’s presidential primaries, in a packed downtown courtroom, state and New York City attorneys defended the constitutionality of closed primaries against plaintiff Mark Moody -- one of the three million independent New Yorkers, including Ivanka and Eric Trump, who co...

Governor Bill Weld’s dire verdict on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been taken as an implicit endorsement of Hillary Clinton and made into another sound bite in the horse-race coverage of the election. Regrettably the content of his warning has been largely ignored. Weld describes Mr. Trump as “a candidate who might in fact put at risk the solid foundation of America that allows us to endure... the normal ebb and flow of politics.” This warning is not about xenophobia, an impossible wa...

Dear Superdelegate, You may be a Congress member, a governor, a mayor, a party official or a president, but two weeks ago at the Democratic National Convention you did something that I and millions of others have done in the last six months: you voted to have a say in deciding who will lead this great and mighty nation over the next few years. There is, however, one unmistakable difference between your voice in this decision and those of others: yours carried thousands of times as much weight ...

I grew up in a country where most elections were fixed, voting made no difference, and the political process was a dull affair run by a party whose politics were as odious as its leaders. In that country I was able to live and vote without joining the aforementioned party, although I had to withstand poll workers knocking on my door until I exercised my civic right and duty. This past March, living in a country that prides itself on its democracy, I had to join a party in order to exercise my r...