Articles by Jane Susskind

In a move likely to upset Democrats and Republicans at the national level, a federal court-panel has enjoined Wisconsin state officials from using existing district maps and ordered the state to redraw district lines by November 1, 2017. Wisconsin has indicated that it plans to appeal to the Supreme Court, which is required to take the case. This remedial order comes in response to a recent challenge to the 2011 redrawing of district lines, or Wisconsin’s Act 43. In Whitford v. Gill, 12 Democr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2G8jhhUHg If there is one thing voters can agree on in the 2016 election, it’s that our electoral system is alienating the very people it seeks to represent. On Sunday’s airing of HBO's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver discussed the undemocratic nature of presidential primaries and caucuses and how the complex rules of participation continue to confuse voters every election. Oliver explains that the process hasn’t always been this convoluted. Up until 50 years a...

Reaching over 5 million people per week on Facebook, engagement on IVN’s Facebook page has now surpassed that of the National Republican and Democratic Parties combined. Read More: The Independent Voter Network (IVN) – Who “We” Are Although the Democratic Party has over 1.2 million "Likes" on Facebook, more than three times the number of people are engaging with Independent Voter. And although the Republican Party has over 2 million "Likes," seven times more people are engaging with Independen...

On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver made the case that residents of Washington, D.C. should be represented by a member of Congress who can vote on their behalf. While D.C.’s population is larger than Vermont and Wyoming and the territory’s gross domestic product is higher than that of 16 states, residents do not have full representation in our political process, Oliver argues. "The people of D.C. clearly deserve a greater voice in their own affairs,” Oliver says. While Congress came cl...

The recent killing of the beloved lion Cecil in Zimbabwe by American dentist Walter J. Palmer has sparked an uprising on social media, with renewed calls to ban trophy hunting from people across the globe. If you've been on Twitter for more than 30 seconds over the last couple of days, it’s almost certain you've seen at least one tweet about Cecil. It’s even more likely that the comment spoke negatively about Palmer. As a result of the collective and socially-driven hatred toward Palmer, there...

While a majority of Americans - 52 percent - now favor weed legalization, the federal government has done very little to act on the changing views of the nation. Many states, however, have taken matters into their own hands, passing legislation to better represent the changing attitudes of their residents. Today, 4 states - Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and Alaska - plus our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, 24 states have legalized medical ma...

In a historic move, President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit a federal prison, in an effort to draw national attention to the need for reform in the American criminal justice system. "These are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made. The difference is they did not have the kinds of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mis...

Bernie Sanders, the 73-year-old independent Vermont senator and 2016 presidential candidate, has taken the Internet by storm, earning the title “king of social media” and "Facebook royalty." The online success of Sen. Sanders can be summed up in one, simple word: Authenticity. Authenticity: noun, the quality of being authentic; genuineness. His posts do not follow what the so-called “experts” have pronounced as the equation for success and he breaks almost every rule provided by Facebook Best...

A recent NBC poll confirms that the partisan political environment is, in fact, taking a toll on the two major parties, with voter registration revealing that self-identified independents are the fastest growing voting bloc in America. NBC commentators coin it “the rise of an 'independents’ era,” reporting that in 2014 the number of people self-identifying as independent was at 39 percent, passing that of Democrats (32 percent) and Republicans (23 percent). As of June 2015, the number of self-...