At first glance, this feels like common sense. Voters walk into low-turnout municipal races and crowded primaries with almost no information. Beyond a party label – which is often meaningless in local governance – they are handed a list of names and told to decide.
The answer to today’s crowded field is not retreat. It is modernization. Instead of empowering party gatekeepers, we can empower voters with more choice, less vote splitting, and majority-supported outcomes.
As February wrapped up, it was reported that President Donald Trump had nominated two Republicans for the Federal Elections Commission after 10 months of the agency being unable to perform its basic functions.
On February 27, 2026, the better elections group Open Primaries released a sweeping public statement titled Declaration of Independents, framing the exclusion of independent voters from critical taxpayer-funded elections as the unfinished business of 1776.
It didn’t take long for our poll to get noticed not only in Sacramento, but all the way over on the East Coast where the New York Times featured it alongside other reputable pollsters like Emerson College and the Public Policy Institute of California.
Tune in for our independent breakdown of Trump’s record-length 2026 State of the Union: voter ID + proof of citizenship, immigration rhetoric, affordability vs “winning” messaging, a rare bipartisan beat on banning stock trading, and the moment the chamber unified around a Coast Guard rescue.
In his 2026 State of the State address, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced that he plans to call a special state legislative session in the Spring to put an end to partisan gerrymandering “once and for all.” And he will keep calling lawmakers into session until happens.
Using verified California voter file data, IVP surveyed high-propensity voters from February 13 through 20. The poll tested first-choice ballot preferences alongside issue intensity on affordability and the cost of living, immigration enforcement, more choice reform, and more.
Polls consistently show that nearly all Americans across the political spectrum agree that there is too much money in politics – whether from foreign sources, corporations, or so-called “dark money” groups.
The overlap between committee assignments and stock ownership is not automatically illegal. Because the current legal framework permits this proximity as long as disclosure rules are followed, lawmakers are not operating under a system that forces change.
In this episode of the Independent Voter Podcast, we debate election integrity, voter suppression concerns, automatic voter registration through DMVs, and whether federalizing election rules undermines states’ rights under Article I of the Constitution.
Cara Brown McCormick
Shawn Griffiths
John E Palmer
Independent Voter Project
Independent Voter Podcast
Ethan Handelman
