Articles by Greg Parker

La fecha límite para que los habitantes de California se registren para votar en las elecciones primarias del 7 de junio se acerca rápidamente y millones de votantes ignoran que no podrán formar parte de la contienda electoral. Para poder votar por el candidato de su elección, los ciudadanos de California necesitan registrarse con el partido indicado antes del 23 de Mayo. Tras la confusión que ha surgido en varios estados con elecciones primarias cerradas como Nueva York y Arizona, el gran inte...

The deadline for Californians to register to vote for the June 7 primary is quickly approaching and millions of voters don't know they cannot vote in the presidential contests. In order to vote for the candidate of their choice, California voters need to make sure they are registered with the appropriate party by May 23. Coming on the heels of mass voter confusion in closed primary states like New York and Arizona, elevated interest in the 2016 presidential contests will likely create a similar...

Just when you thought independents couldn’t face any more voter discrimination this year, they will be hit with four closed primaries in a single day on April 26. This comes a week after independents were disenfranchised by the closed New York primary on April 19,  a primary where voters were required to register with a party six months in advance and a record amount of independents were told they didn't re-register in time or were turned away from the polls. The five contests on Tuesday are C...

Horror stories abound in New York after the Tuesday primaries as voters report being dropped from rolls, turned away by poll workers, and subjected to long lines in understaffed polling places. City authorities admitted that at least 125,000 voters were mysteriously purged from the polls in Brooklyn alone. The New York state attorney general’s office reported that its voter hotline had received 562 phone calls and 140 emails by Tuesday afternoon, more than five times as many complaints than dur...

Jane Sanders, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, called the closed primary system in New York “silly” on MSNBC's Morning Joe. During the interview, she advocated for open primaries and same-day registration. Sanders expressed concern over the large number of voters who wouldn’t be able to vote for her husband because they weren’t registered with the Democratic Party and didn't re-register by the October 9 deadline when Bernie Sanders or his platform were still relativ...

Of the many state primaries and caucuses so far with rampant voter confusion, North Dakota and Colorado are perhaps the worst offenders. In these two states, voters had very little say and the winners were left to party officials to decide. North Dakota is a unique state in that it doesn’t have any voter registration. Voters are simply trusted to be eligible and a resident of the state based on the ID they bring to the booth. But this year, things are even weirder in North Dakota. On April 2, ...

The voter turnout in the Wisconsin primaries Tuesday surpassed expectations and broke records. Around 1.1 million voters turned out in the Republican primary while 1 million showed up on the Democratic side. It was the highest primary turnout in the state in decades. The 49% voter turnout smashed the 40% projection made by the Government Accountability Board, even beating the 47.7% turnout of 1972 when George McGovern (D) and Richard Nixon (R) won their respective primaries. The only state wit...

The Electoral Integrity Project recently compiled a comprehensive ranking of 139 countries based on the overall quality of their election practices, taking into account factors such as campaign finance rules, overall vote count, and voter registration procedures. The United States ranked 47th out of 139. Experts monitored presidential and parliamentary elections all over the world from 2012 to 2015, measuring the quality of each based on 49 indicators. The countries at the top were Denmark, Fin...

Gary Johnson’s bid for the Libertarian Party nomination continues to pick up steam after an endorsement from a key party official this week. William Redpath, a Virginia native, has spent years protecting the rights of independent and third party candidates, ensuring that they appear on ballots across the nation. From 2006 to 2010, Redpath served as chairman of the National Libertarian Party. He’s been the chairman of the Virginia Libertarian Party and treasurer of the National Committee. And th...