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On Wednesday, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state laws barring elected judges from directly asking for campaign donations. “Judges are not politicians, even when they come to the bench by way of the ballot,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the decision, joining the court’s four liberal justices in a 5-4 decision. The LA Times reports: The decision marks one of the few times the high court has rejected a free-speech claim involving politics and campaigning. Roberts split fro

Controversy over Indiana's " Religious Freedom Restoration Act" is being heralded as a bellwether for national opinion by some LGBT advocates. The bill gave businesses the right to deny service to someone if providing that service conflicted with the owner's religious beliefs. After national backlash, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a revision to the law specifying that private business owners cannot use it to justify discrimination based on sexual orientation. "I think everyone on both si

Update: After reconsidering the legislation, a committee in the Idaho House approved the cannabidiol oil bill in a 12-4 vote. Idaho is not a place one would expect to see bipartisanship. Regardless of whether you use the term “Republican” or “conservative,” Idaho consistently shows up in the top 5 states for that affiliation. The political news coming out of the state has been a long litany of arch-conservatism that has raised several eyebrows on the national stage. Recent examples have includ

NATIONAL -- There is no doubt that there are some IVN readers who support some form of proportional representation, often seen as a voting scheme that maximizes representation and makes every vote count. But the real question is, what would be the avenue to implement proportional representation nationwide? What are the roadblocks and potential legal challenges? To answer these questions, we have to examine the history of how we got to our current two-party voting system. History of Current V

There is an ongoing lawsuit attempting to close Montana’s open primary system. This lawsuit is being joined by the Montana Republican Party. State Republicans support closing their primaries because they argue Democrats and other nonmembers have been influencing their elections for years. "One example given during the state GOP’s meeting to make the case for joining the lawsuit was a vote in the state House of Representatives ... in which some Republicans supported an amendment to House procedu

Vote Hemp, a major grassroots hemp advocacy group, on Thursday announced the introduction of complementary bills in the U.S. House and Senate, S. 134 and H.R. 525, titled the " Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2015," with support on both sides of the political aisle. The Act would remove federal restrictions on the cultivation of industrial hemp, the non-drug oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis. “With bi-partisan support in the Senate and House, we are eager to see 2015 be the year Congress

On Thursday, January 15, oral arguments were made before the California State Appeals Court in San Francisco in the case Rubin v. Bowen. Third parties continue to challenge the nonpartisan, top-two open primary in the state, claiming that the system violates the association rights of political parties and disenfranchises third-party voters in the general election. Richard Winger, who runs the site Ballot-Access.org, wrote a post on the oral arguments, implying that third parties were poorly re

On Saturday, the Montana Republican Party's State Central Committee voted overwhelmingly to join a lawsuit that seeks to close the state's primary elections. Many Republicans expressed concern that nonmembers were infiltrating the party and influencing elections. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, challenges the constitutionality of open primaries in the state. Under the current system, voters are able to choose which party ballot they want to vote on when they participate in primary e

Although the midterm election fever has largely subsided, the courts are heating up over the issue of redistricting and gerrymandering lawsuits. For the 2014 term, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear three cases on redistricting commissions, and the Florida Supreme Court has also heard its own case over redistricting. Elections are contentious contests and at the heart of these arguments is who has the power to draw district lines that influence the outcomes on Election Day. All of these case

Redistricting is a process that occurs once every ten years, where census data is utilized to redraw the boundaries of each congressional district, so as to keep the representational power of each district relatively even. The underlying rationale for redistricting is to ensure that the "one man, one vote" ethos stays meaningful. Yet a political party can redraw districts in a way that favors itself at the expense of the others. By packing voters from other parties in a small number of district