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FairVote on June 12 released Government of the Few in the “Decided Dozen" -- Frozen Representation and the Distorted Demographics of Decisive Primary Elections. Report authors Andrew Douglas and Zack Avre zero in on the “Decided Dozen”—12 states where control over the state legislature and the outcome of the great majority of general election races is never in doubt, leaving the only meaningful choices and power to voters in low turnout, unrepresentative primary contests. Source: FairVote: The

Historically, when an election has a wide-open field of candidates, both inside and outside of the two-party system, it's a symptom of America facing a major crossroads. Sometimes it's a party ideological battle, like in our third presidential election of 1796 -- where the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans struggled with the new identity of the nation they helped create. Even more radical, when social change issues stress the election process, strange things start to happen -- like in the

We Californians are to blame when it comes to our water shortage -- but ultimately for reasons most of us never contemplate. The problem is our willingness to cede to single-party control in our state. Regardless of which side of the aisle you purport to stand on, putting all our water through one filter is proving to be disastrous for a multitude of reasons. We truly lose due to the simple fact that California is a 'blue' state and doesn't look to change its voting patterns nationally anytime

Ferguson, Mo. -- Voters in the City of Ferguson, Missouri turned out in record numbers for city council elections Tuesday night. Nearly 30 percent of registered voters went to the polls, almost doubling the turnout of the last city election. The increase in turnout resulted in historic changes in the composition of the city council. Before the elections, Ferguson, which is over two-thirds African-American, had only one black representative on the 6-person city council. After the ballots were co

Any doubts about whether Hillary Clinton intends to run for president in 2016 were dispelled in early April when Politico reported that some entity or individual -- the details are still not clear -- signed a lease to rent two floors in Brooklyn Heights, New York as the site of her campaign headquarters. According to rules set by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), such clear campaign-related activities necessitate that Mrs. Clinton file the necessary paperwork with the FEC within 15 days,

Daylight Savings first originated in Germany during World War I to save electricity, and the UK quickly followed their lead. When Daylight Savings was first adopted in the U.S., it was part of a war policy, also implemented during the First World War to save fuel.The U.S. ceased to recognize Daylight Savings after the war and didn't adopt it again until the Second World War. 1966 was the first year that Daylight Saving Time (DST) became a nationwide, peacetime policy that all states had to use

MISSOURI -- Missouri State Representative Keith English recently cut ties with the Democratic Party to become the Show Me State’s only independent legislator. In line with the state’s nickname (which describes the character of Missourians, who are not gullible), he wants to see more transparency in both state and federal politics. While English is certainly worried that his non-party allegiance will hurt him in his 2016 re-election bid, he is more concerned over the level of hyper-partisanship

The call for body-worn video cameras on police officers is growing across the United States. Laws to require the use of these cameras were introduced in almost a dozen states in January, including California. While many associate the spark of the discussion around body-worn police cameras with Ferguson, Missouri, Los Angeles was the center of another August incident, where an unarmed black man was fatally shot in an altercation with police. The incident, which resulted in the death of Ezell For

Vote Hemp, a major grassroots hemp advocacy group, on Thursday announced the introduction of complementary bills in the U.S. House and Senate, S. 134 and H.R. 525, titled the " Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2015," with support on both sides of the political aisle. The Act would remove federal restrictions on the cultivation of industrial hemp, the non-drug oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis. “With bi-partisan support in the Senate and House, we are eager to see 2015 be the year Congress

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has submitted two new election reforms to the Kansas Legislature that are a direct response to the 2014 U.S. Senate race, where Republican incumbent Pat Roberts was almost defeated by independent Greg Orman. Public polling before the midterm elections suggest that all the statewide incumbents, including Kobach, were vulnerable -- something Kobach wants to remedy with new rules for candidate withdrawals and reinstating straight-ticket voting. In the 2014 U.