Search query: pennsylvania

Earlier this year, Utah and Washington quietly joined 14 other states that have eliminated the use of registration deadlines as a final cutoff to be able to vote. The congruent actions of a red state and blue state bring the number of states that allow voters to register or update a registration when they go to vote to nearly one in three. It’s a critical threshold that could spell the end of voter registration deadlines as we’ve known them for 100 years. Enabling voters to address and fix reg

I spoke with Jennifer Bullock, the Founder of Independent Pennsylvanians and the Director of the Philadelphia Social Therapy Group. Jennifer talked about what it is like organizing independent voters while the political parties seem hell bent on driving people crazy. Please send me your thoughts and comments to jopdycke@openprimaries.org. Enjoy this episode of The Pickle! Photo Credit: Tetiana Yurchenko / shutterstock.com

A wise man once said, “Those who make the rules, rule.” Today, we wonder whether the current rules of voting and governing can deliver any kind of progress. An important rules question was on the ballot in Maine yesterday and the voters delivered a clear message. After a hard-fought campaign against a brutal opposition, the voters passed Question 1 by a margin of 55% to 45%. This was a mass veto of the state legislature’s attempt to turn back the will of the voters. In 2016, Maine voters enact

As a primary care doctor in Harlem, I see the impact of social conditions such as poverty, lead paint poisoning, and asthma-causing mold in public housing, as well as the emotional trauma that accompanies financial barriers such as not having the right medical coverage to gain timely and effective treatment. As a community organizer and political independent, I see the barriers that block poor and ordinary people from full and equal participation in our democracy. These are literally matters of

On Tuesday, the Democratic and Republican Parties of Pennsylvania nominated candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and the commonwealth's congressional delegation to Washington. Yet 1.1 million independent voters were disenfranchised by closed primaries, which are only open to partisan voters. Nearly half of U.S. states have an open primary in which any registered voter is allowed to participate, and several have closed primaries like Pennsylvania. A couple states like California have

Update 5/9/18: Issue 1 -- Ohio redistricting reform -- passed with three-fourths voter support, 74.9% voting "Yes." Update 5/8/18, 8:57 PM ET: Election results in Ohio point to overwhelming victory for Issue 1, with no active opposition opposing the measure. Ohio voters will go to the polls Tuesday for the state's primary elections. On top of voting for their preferred nominees for local, state, and federal elected offices, they will also have a chance to pass major redistricting reform. It i

Another election season, another increasingly bizarre redrawing of the electoral map. In states across the U.S., voting districts are elongated and chopped, stretched like taffy to cover certain state regions and amputated to avoid others. All these calculations and measurements work to ensure that our democratic system of government doesn’t function the way it is intended. The process of redrawing favorable district lines — affectionately termed “gerrymandering” — is an unfortunate outgrowth o

Did you participate in the National Week of Conversation? The Bridge Alliance, along with 100 sponsoring organizations, community organizers, elected officials, and more, held hundreds of events -- public, online, and private -- in cities across the country from April 20-28 with one goal in mind: Put partisan bickering aside, mend divides, and have meaningful conversations about the biggest issues facing the country. It was a historic event that followed a tumultuous year of political and soci

"Hollywood for ugly people." It is not a phrase coined by Michigan independent congressional candidate Cooper Nye. However, Nye says he can see why some people have come to view Washington, DC this way after working in the nation's capital. And the phrase -- from Nye's point of view -- is not a personal attack against individual policymakers on Capitol Hill, but rather a statement on how DC is run and the ugly, partisan, sometimes corrupt culture that has taken hold in Washington. Cooper Nye

If 2016 taught me anything, it is how disastrous political polls have become. And as we head into the 2018 midterms, we should take a hard look how we are conducting them, crunching the numbers and using the results. Voters deserve it. On November 2nd, 2016 Marquette University Law School in Wisconsin issued it’s highly regarded presidential polling results. It was memorable for two reasons. The first reason is that it was conducted between October 26th through the 31st, the time frame in which