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Legislatures and redistricting commissions across the United States are in the process of drawing new maps for their legislative and congressional districts, and some states have already drawn new lines to give the party in power even more of an advantage while denying voters opportunities for meaningful representation. RepresentUs and the Princeton Gerrymandering Project have collaborated on a Redistricting Report Card so voters can get up-to-date information on new maps and what impact they w

The momentum powering the ranked choice voting movement doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Along with being used in a record number of cities in 2021, voters in 3 additional cities approved its use in future elections. Thirty-two cities across 7 states (DE, MA, ME, MI, MN, NM, and UT) used ranked choice voting for their November 2 elections. Twenty-two of those cities used the alternative voting method for the first time, most of which were located in Utah. It is important to note that there i

The current term of the Supreme Court promises to be one of the most pivotal in decades. Although abortion has received most of the attention, with both the new Texas bounty law and a direct attack on Roe v. Wade by Mississippi on the docket, the justices will rule on many other inflammatory issues, including challenges to voting laws passed in Republican-controlled states that may well determine the future of American democracy. After two centuries in which both the right to vote and ability t

The mood among Democrats these days seems to oscillate between panic and despair. The Biden administration, which billed itself as restoring competence and order to the political process, not only grievously botched the Afghanistan withdrawal and the removal of Haitian immigrants in Texas, but cannot even attain a semblance of order within its own party. Whether it be the filibuster, government spending, or tax policy, Democrats seem afflicted with an auto-immune disease that requires them to at

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum and has been republished with permission from the publisher. ‍ Public opinion of the Supreme Court dropped to its lowest point in two decades after the justices declined to block Texas' controversial abortion law, new polling shows, echoing poor marks for the other branches of government. Two-fifths of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing — a sharp decline from July when 49 percent of people indicated approval,

On September 6, 2021, Alan Braid, a seventy-six-year-old OBGYN in San Antonio, Texas, performed an abortion on a woman in her first trimester. A few years ago, this procedure would have attracted little attention. This time, however, Dr. Braid became a national headline. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, he wrote, “I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care.” What made Dr. Braid’s decision notew

On September 1, the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, refused to prevent new, draconian Texas abortion legislation from taking effect. The Court’s tentative acceptance of that law, which among other provisions, only allowed a woman to seek an abortion before she likely knew she was pregnant, provoked outrage not only among pro-choice advocates, but also from many legal scholars deeply disturbed by the majority’s seeming abandonment of accepted jurisprudence. The proper course with

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ Despite more Americans than ever opting to vote by mail in the 2020 election, a comprehensive government report found no significant increase in ballot rejections — refuting former President Donald Trump's claim that mail voting was more susceptible to fraud. Since 2004, the Election Assistance Commission has conducted extensive biennial surveys of how American

Editor's Note: This article originally published on The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ More than halfway into the year, and with most state legislative sessions concluded, the full scope of voting changes spurred by the 2020 election is coming into view. As of last week, 18 states have enacted 30 laws that limit voting access, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public policy institute at New York University Law School that ha

‍ Latino voters in Texas have the numbers to shift the political paradigm in their state. However, turnout among Latinos continues to lag. There are misconceptions and social stigmas about why this is, but the truth lies in deep systemic issues and a history of disempowerment that has left many feeling voiceless and unrepresented. In Open Primaries’ last virtual discussion of Summer 2021, the group’s president, John Opdycke, and spokesperson Danny Ortega were joined by the authors of a study t