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A bill was recently introduced in Oregon that would reform primary elections in a whole new way. Republican state Representative Knute Buehler, of District 54, is the sponsor of bill HB-3140, also known as the People’s Primary. The People's Primary opens the first stage of the public election process in a way no other state does. Put simply, HB-3140 reforms the current closed primary system by adding a ballot for independent voters. Voters registered with a party can vote in their party's prima

As the new year gets underway, state legislatures around the country are convening to tackle the issues of the day. In at least nine states, electoral reform is on the agenda. Building on the momentum of historic wins for ranked choice voting in Maine and Benton County, Oregon, lawmakers from Massachusetts to Hawaii have introduced bills that would expand its use in their states. The bills vary in their scope and history. Bills in Virginia and Connecticut would adopt ranked choice voting for al

With a Trump presidency coupled with a GOP Congress on the near horizon, changes in health care reform are finally on the table. Other than those with preexisting conditions, many on the left haven’t been thrilled with Obamacare but will defend it as a “step in the right direction,” presumably toward universal health care or a single-payer system. The right didn't initially respond with pointing out what was actually wrong with Obamacare, somehow feeling the need to engage in hyperbole until th

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

News broke Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump will tap former Texas Governor Rick Perry to head the Energy Department, a move that has the mainstream media recalling the 2011 Republican presidential debate where Perry blanked on naming Energy as a department he would eliminate. Sure, there is a bit of irony there, and the mainstream media likes to focus on this irony. However, there is something crucial many media pundits are missing: Perry's legacy as Texas governor was helping grow the

Keep up with the reform efforts building on the post-election momentum. Big change starts small, and these organizations have been hard at work to fix our broken system, little by little. With so much negativity in the media, it is nice to catch up on some of the encouraging efforts of hardworking Americans, fighting for reform. The following summaries have been provided by the organizations themselves: Open Primaries Open Primaries launched a new petition asking the incoming chairs of the R

It’s called Score Runoff Voting, and it’s about to take Oregon by storm. SRV is a relatively new concept from the minds of Mark Frohnmayer, political scion and founder of the Equal Vote Coalition, and score voting advocate Clay Shentrup, Co-Founder of the Center for Election Science, who were inspired by ranked choice voting advocate and executive director of FairVote Rob Richie's concept of a single approval voting primary/ranked choice runoff ballot. In some ways, the idea for SRV started wi

There's a lot that American voters may be divided over, but there's one issue that hopefully we can all get together on and embrace a nonpartisan, obvious, and sane position. Demonstrators who have been blocking traffic on streets and highways as part of your protests: please stop! Stop the madness now. The vast majority of the 63 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election have not been out blocking traffic, which is why this is something that we can hopefully all

Editor’s note: This article was co-authored by Chris Micheli and Michael Daft. This article was originally self-published by the authors and has been republished on IVN with their consent. California voters on November 8 approved Prop. 64, which is an initiative statute that legalizes marijuana and hemp under state law, with specified limitations. The ballot measure designates state agencies to license and regulate the recreational marijuana industry and it imposes a state excise tax on retail