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Austin made history over the weekend as it became the first city in Texas to adopt the use of ranked choice voting during a special election on May 1. Nearly 60% of city voters approved its use in future city elections. Proposition E in Austin allows city voters to rank candidates in order of preference (i.e. Choice 1, Choice 2, Choice 3, etc.) up to 5 candidates in city council and mayoral elections. If no candidate gets 50% of first choice votes, the last place candidate is eliminated and th

‍ RepresentUs, the nation’s largest anti-corruption organization, released a short video starring comedic actor Ed Helm highlighting the true impact and consequence of partisan gerrymandering. The irony of the video is as funny as it is, it shows just how serious of a problem the partisan scheme is across the country. The mock PSA, titled “Save The Gerrymanderers,” highlights the threat gerrymandering poses to voters. And, no matter how illegal it sounds like it should be, it is a problem tha

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Fulcrum, and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ Nearly every state legislature is considering bills to either roll back pandemic-era voting easements or make permanent the rules that allowed a record-breaking number of Americans to cast their ballots ahead of Election Day. But with election officials already looking ahead to the 2022 midterms, the Center for Election Innovation and Research is concerned wit

‍ Art and Barbara speak with the father of the cell phone, Martin Cooper. He reveals an obvious, revolutionary solution to filling the digital divide in San Diego that has been exasperated by the COVID-19 pandemic. (Originally aired 8April21) ‍

Just a few weeks after the storming of the Capitol and the impeachment trial, Gallup found for the first time that 50% of voters identify as independents.  Registered independent voters are now the largest or second largest group of voters in half the states and will be the largest or second largest group of voters in almost every state in the country within a few years at current rates of growth. More significant than the raw numbers--which are impressive--independent voters are participating

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum, and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ As states prepare to redraw their election maps later this year, democracy reform advocates are raising the alarm once more about the severe threat of gerrymandering facing a vast majority of the country. The Gerrymandering Threat Index, released Monday by RepresentUs, identifies 35 states — with a collective population of more than 188 million people — at ext

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2020 was a weird year. Can we all agree on that? Here’s something weird about 2020 that you may not have noticed amid all the shouting and freaking out: Democrats nominated and successfully fielded a presidential candidate who is the exact same as Donald Trump in a curiously suspicious number of ways. And they’re not trivial. At least not to the Democrats who maligned Trump for four years in a furious and inexhaustible frenzy of partisan political note writing over hours, days, and weeks no

What is the duopoly? On the surface this may seem like a common sense question: We have a political system dominated by two major parties. Hence, we have a duopoly. That simple, right?  Yet, the reasons we have a two-party duopoly in the US are far more nuanced. The Republican and Democratic Parties win nearly every partisan electoral contest in the US. But, this is not the reason for the duopoly, but a symptom of it, and unfortunately the damaging effects the duopoly has had on the political

‍ “Our frustration as a group, as mostly unaffiliated voters or voters who only affiliate with a party because we have to in order to fully participate in Kansas elections, we feel like we should not have to join a private political organization to have a full say." - Elaine Stephen, Kansans Demand Better A group of Kansas lawmakers are proposing a monumental change to their state constitution -- an amendment that by law would have to go before voters if approved by the legislature. The thing