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The mainstream political narrative would have people believe that Americans are more deeply entrenching themselves under the banner of the Republican or Democratic Party as the divide between the parties continues to widen.Yet, a closer look at registration trends shows a different story. The Open Primaries Education Fund (OPEF) released a new report Monday titled, “The Next Great Migration: The Rise of Independent Voters.” Its findings show that in nearly every state that registers voters by

San Diego advocates of Ranked Choice Voting said they have renewed momentum after the election reform measure was approved in several U.S. cities and in the state of Alaska. Five cities, including Albany and Eureka in California, and the state of Alaska approved Ranked Choice Voting measures during the last election cycle. The election change allows voters to rank their candidate preferences on the ballot rather than just pick one candidate. If a candidate doesn’t receive the majority of votes

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ Next year's redistricting landscape is, at best, a mixed bag for good-governance advocates. Although the mapmaking process has become fairer and less politicized in a handful of states over the past decade, partisan gerrymandering will still have a profound impact on representation across most of the country. Democrats had high hopes of taking back enough power

The movements to reform the electoral process in the US made significant and historic gains during the 2020 election. Voters in 5 cities approved the use of ranked choice voting, and Alaska voters combined the use of RCV in the general election with the first top-four nonpartisan open primary. And, in St. Louis, voters approved the first nonpartisan open primary combined with approval voting. Changing how voters elect public officials is at the core of the nonpartisan reform effort. The curr

David Lewis was just a few credits shy of earning his associate’s degree in journalism from Long Beach City College when the pandemic hit. Lewis, 29, was already encountering scheduling conflicts between his classes and a new job at Trader Joe’s. As the assignments for his online classes started to pile up, he struggled to keep pace. In March, he left school. It was a difficult choice because he’d returned to college just months before, determined to fulfill a promise he’d made to his mother b

Alaska voters sent a clear message to state officials in the 2020 election: they want elections that better serve the interests of voters, and by doing so made history as the first state to approve a top-four nonpartisan primary with ranked choice voting in the general election. Ballot Measure 2 for Better Elections trailed in the early vote count. However, after two weeks of counting absentee ballots, it ended up ahead by a percentage point of the vote as the trends shifted more and more to i

The biggest overlooked story from this election is how reformers made history, once again. From Virginia to California, voters sent a message that they want less hyper-partisanship, greater voter choice and better representation. To celebrate our accomplishments and dive deep into how we move forward in the coming years, we’re hosting a two-day December Spotlight on Friday, December 11, and Saturday, December 12. The Zoom event will feature workshops, briefings, and group discussions, hosted

America is waiting for the drama of the 2020 presidential election to play itself out. Votes are still being counted. Lawsuits have and will continue to be filed. The heated divide between the parties is on full display while US voters desperately want politicians to put the needs of the country ahead of the gain-seeking interests of their parties. The biggest story lost in the chaos are the movements to give voters a fairer, more accountable process that empowers all voters and leads to more

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ It's often hard to see, but much more is at stake Tuesday than the presidency and control of Congress. Voters get to shape public policy by approving or rejecting more than 100 statewide ballot measures and dozens more local proposals — and this exercise in direct democracy includes plenty of ideas for bettering American democracy itself. More than a score of m

On October 21, US billionaire businessman Mark Cuban tweeted that the duopoly he would shut down “in a nanosecond” if he could was the Republican and Democratic Parties, asserting that their anti-competitive collusion was detrimental to the American people every single day: ‍ Cuban understands what activists and leaders in the nonpartisan reform space have known for a long time. The rules at every level of our political infrastructure were written to serve the interests of the Republican and De