How It Really Works

Vice President Kamala Harris is slated to make her speech at the DNC Thursday, in which she will formally accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States. It is a historic moment that has not come without scrutiny....

As the political landscape in the United States gears up for the 2024 presidential election, the media's focus is often on the perceived threats to democracy posed by individual candidates or movements, like the rhetoric around the MAGA crowd and former President Donald Trump, who is treated as the ...

Election integrity became a hot button issue during and in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. It is a phrase voters have heard a lot since November 3, as Donald Trump and many of his supporters claim widespread fraud took place that denied him re-election....

The first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is scheduled for Tuesday, September 29, at 9 pm (Eastern). Plenty of commentators, though, have questioned whether either candidate should debate the other from a campaign strategy standpoint. Others have wondered if a substantive debate on the nation’s most pressing issues is even possible in the current political climate. Meanwhile, there is a growing contingent of voters and grassroots reform activists who want to see more tha...

On July 23, 2019, the Independent Voter Project (IVP)-- one of 7 plaintiffs -- filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Alex Padilla (Boydsten v. Padilla) for failing to provide an open presidential primary as required by the state constitution. Over the last several years, IVP has warned the secretary of state and the state legislature that millions of registered voters would be disenfranchised by a semi-closed presidential primary process that is both confusing and broadly criticized. The ...

The 2016 presidential primaries in California didn’t go smoothly. The election was marred by widespread confusion and frustration as millions of voters had to navigate a complex and restrictive semi-closed primary process. As a result, they were completely disenfranchised by the process. The Independent Voter Project had anticipated this issue, and offered legislative solutions in 2015 and 2016, but neither the legislature nor the secretary of state took up the cause. As a result, millions of ...

Partisan gerrymandering. Money in politics. The Electoral College. Undue restrictions on who votes and how we vote. Every contentious election issue discussed today was either inherited from 18th-century England or came out of a compromise in our democracy’s incubation when there were few voters and...

It is periodically reported that California’s Prop 14 (Non-partisan Top Two Primary) was drafted in the middle of the night in the back rooms of the California Legislature. Nothing could be further from the truth....

Electoral reform includes any reforms to the electoral and political systems that make lawmakers more accountable to the people who elect them. The purpose of election reform is to improve voter opportunities and create better choices at the ballot box, giving better representation to everyone....

1. Both parties engage in and benefit from gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing district lines for partisan gain. In 2010, Republicans invested millions in statewide races to retake state legislatures for the purpose of controlling congressional redistricting. Since then, Republicans have created highly gerrymandered maps in states like North Carolina and Virginia. Democrats are guilty of gerrymandering as well: Maryland hosts some of the most contorted, gerrymandered districts in the count...

There is a widely-held perception that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are drastically different in their policy, proposals, philosophy of government, and general modus operandi. While there are certainly some significant differences between the two parties, the number of similarities ...

The following is a breakdown of the general types of primary elections with an explanation of the Constitutional principles that apply to each system's components....