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In the current political environment, the perception is that there is much that divides Americans. Yet there is one important thing that unites most people across the political spectrum: the idea that America's political system is not working for the people and something needs to change. Donald Trump often uses the term "drain the swamp." Regardless of how one feels about the president as a person or leader, most voters agree with the sentiment -- though are not sold that anyone in Washington w

There is a proposed constitutional amendment that is slated to be on the November ballot in Missouri aimed at eliminating corruption, creating a more transparent legislative process, and ending partisan gerrymandering. However, there are two lawsuits challenging the initiative. Amendment 1 -- brought by the group, CLEAN Missouri -- garnered more than 340,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. It was certified by Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft on August 2, but opponents hav

It has been a long hot summer in the war of the paper ballots in Georgia. The Secretary of State Brian Kemp is set to face off with plaintiffs on September 12th in oral arguments over a lawsuit accusing his office of inadequately addressing weaknesses in Georgia's voting system. The group of voting rights activists who filed suit in Curling v. Kemp requested a preliminary injunction to block the state’s use of 27,000 AccuVote TS and AccuVote TSX voting machines in the upcoming November election

Updated on Thursday, August 23, 2018 Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1942, two years later her family moved to Buffalo, New York and from there to Detroit, Michigan which became her home. These moves occurred in the middle of the Great Migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow south to northern and western cities.In Detroit her father, Rev. C. L. Franklin became the prominent pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church, where Aretha began singing gospel.Rev. C. L. Franklin b

Lately, I’ve been glued to my laptop watching CNN news clips from 1999, when Donald Trump was weighing a possible presidential run in the Reform Party. “Everybody wants me to run for President …” he told the media at the time.  The media smirked, “What vanity!” as they turned their attention to more serious matters. But the tragedy-to-farce (or is it farce-to-tragedy?) story gets even more byzantine. At the time, Trump’s possible candidacy was being promoted by some leaders of the Reform Party

Three siblings from Austin, Texas are set to make cash off of gerrymandering. No, they're not running for office; they're creating a board game called Mapmaker that educates people about the very serious political game of manipulating voting district boundaries. It's not a sexy topic for many or one that is easy to understand. But if a game will do it, then why not? "First and foremost, we want to teach politicians that gerrymandering is not a game and politicians should not be choosing voters

In the latest episode of "In Full Color," I talk with Katie Fahey, the founder and executive director of Voters Not Politicians. Voters Not Politicians -- which started from a single Facebook post -- is a citizens-led, grassroots campaign to get a citizens' redistricting commission passed in Michigan. With the support of 425.000 voters, the Voters Not Politicians measure qualified for the November ballot. Partisan interest turned to the courts to try to kill the measure and protect the status

The Michigan Supreme Court in a 4-3 ruling Tuesday rejected a constitutional challenge brought by a GOP-backed group and the state attorney general to remove an initiative from the November ballot that would institute an independent redistricting commission to redraw state electoral districts. "It is not a judge’s role to philosophize a theory of government. Rather, we are stewards of the people and must faithfully abide by the decisions they make through the laws they adopt. We accomplish this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SFm-w9-Ky0 Voters Not Politicians recently launched a new ad for their proposed ballot measure (Proposition 2) to institute a nonpartisan redistricting commission in Michigan. The measure is currently before the state Supreme Court where mostly Republican-backed groups and the state's attorney general are trying to remove it from the ballot. The narrator of the ad starts by saying that as voters, we have the "freedom to choose our leaders," and that this right

The independent and nonpartisan reform movements have never seen the momentum they are seeing today. Voters are ditching the Republican and Democratic Parties in droves. A record number of independent and third party candidates are running. And, powerful coalitions are forming to transform the US political system into one that is more representative of the diverse political landscape in America. We are witnessing history in the making. Here are the 15 biggest developments in the independent mov