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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsvVgf63Op4 Video Credit: New York Times Today’s horrific events in Washington D.C., crystalize just how sick the swamp has become. The divisive rhetoric from our media, both social and over-the-air is infiltrating other areas of society. A comedian beheads the president, an off-broadway play depicts a scene where he is fatally stabbed. Violence begets more violence. And the President isn’t helping matters either. His use of twitter, poking fun at the media an

Recording Votes: Fixing the Electoral College Our Electoral College (EC) is out of date. Powerful coalitions exist to push for its effective abolishment and a switch to a popular vote, but the support for this movement is not as strong as proponents had hoped. Constitutionally speaking, it will be easier to update the EC and improve it. In this section, I discuss three proposed methods for use of the EC: Winner-Take-All, District Plan, and Proportional Plan. Winner-Take-All method for the Elec

Now comes the hard part. The house passing health care repeal and replace legislation is a significant short-term win for President Trump, but it won’t mean anything lest he can wrangle the Senate’s support. And that won’t be easy. Clearly the bill is going to be put through the ringer in the Senate, as it should, and it will likely undergo significant changes and modifications before and if it is enacted into law, but make no mistake, this was an important political step for Washington, D.C.,

Last week, Congress avoided a government shutdown by agreeing to a continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded for another week. Then over the weekend, US lawmakers agreed to a deal that will extend funding through September while Congress and the White House continue to negotiate longer-term fiscal policy priorities. The US House passed the budget deal Wednesday. But amidst Washington's annual kabuki theater dance around fiscal policy and possible government shutdowns, a litt

In round one yesterday of March Madness, the premier spectacle of American sports, 32 teams went to the free throw line 634 times and converted 438 of their charitable gifts (you are not reading this anywhere else). Sixty-nine percent ain't that good; but it ain't the bad, either. But you are reading this because winning teams from the free throw line outshot their opponents in 12 of yesterday's 16 games. In several games the difference was critical to the game's denouement. In the Princeton

On Wednesday, March 1, a nonpartisan, top-two bill proposed by Illinois state State Rep. Sara Jimenez (R) was assigned to Election and Campaign Finance Committee. The bill, HB3655, was originally introduced on February 10, and would make Illinois the third state to adopt a top-two primary system for statewide elections. IVN reported in January on another bill, HB0285, introduced by state Rep. Mike Fortner (R) that would reform state primary elections the same way. Fortner's bill was also assign

President Donald Trump’s first weeks as president seem to be centered around one strategy: Prove to the American people that he’s a man of his word and that unlike most politicians, he will actually keep his campaign promises. Despite the rocky start, he has mostly been successful in this endeavor. Travel ban? Executive order signed. Border wall? In the works. Restrictions on lobbying? Done. Trump has shown voters he is indeed a man of his word with the stroke of a pen. In fact, according to Ga

A wave of bills aimed at reforming primary elections in four states were introduced last month. Legislators in Idaho, New Mexico, Illinois, and Virginia are looking to do away with their state’s partisan primary in favor of a nonpartisan top-two system. A top-two primary is where all candidates, regardless of party affiliation appear on the same primary ballot and the top-two vote-getters advance to the general election in November. Idaho Idaho State Senator Grant Burgoyne, D-Boise, explained

This piece, written by Rob Richie, originally appeared in Cato Unbound as the lead essay in a series on ranked choice voting in December of 2016. American democracy today is working more poorly than it has in generations. Even as the toxic 2016 presidential campaign featured the two most unpopular major party candidates in modern history and Congress has historic lows in approval, minor party presidential challengers were marginalized, and nearly 98% of congressional incumbents won re-election.

Recently, Real Clear Politics extrapolated demographic trends to project which states are likely to gain or lose U.S. House seats in the reapportionment that will occur after the 2020 Census. Their forecast, shown below, has nine states losing one U.S. House seat and six states gaining seats. These are only projections, but given that we are now six years into the decade, many of the demographic shifts of the decade are already well advanced and difficult to reverse. Overall, we see a reduced n