Search query: arizona

© 2016 by Hedrick Smith. Republished with permission from the author. Smith is the executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org. WASHINGTON — In this tumultuous election year, little attention has focused on the groundswell of support for political reform across grass-roots America. Beyond Bernie Sanders’s call for a political revolution, a broad array of state-level citizen movements are pressing for reforms against Citizens United, gerrymandering and campaign megadonors to give average vot

As with past election cycles, third party and independent candidates – as well as initiatives aimed at reducing the power of the two major parties – are struggling to achieve access to general election ballots. In some cases, this is the result of general apathy toward specific parties, candidates, or reforms. In other cases, however, their exclusion from the ballot stems from a variety of causes, including minor technicalities, official ineptitude, constitutionally dubious legal barriers, and,

In the weeks since the California primary, when Hillary Clinton joined Donald Trump in becoming her party’s presumptive nominee for president, FairVote has tracked both candidates’ campaign appearances. FairVote’s similar analysis in 2012 showed just how much the candidates focus on swing states that might tip the election with our current Electoral College rules. After the conventions in 2012, Barack Obama campaigned in a grand total of just eight states and Mitt Romney added only two more. The

In early July, the Pew Research Center found that 65 percent of respondents said the campaign was not focused on important policy debates. A study released by Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is now lending credence to that sentiment. The researchers – having studied news statements from eight major outlets during the primary season between January 1 and June 7 – concluded that "substantive concerns" accounted for only 11 percent of the campaign coverage. Receiv

FairVote has compiled and analyzed state-by-state data on voter turnout for the 2016 presidential primaries. Released today, it reviews trends in voter turnout nationally since 2000, as well as differences in turnout by party. Also included is a deeper analysis of the 23 states which held competitive primaries in both 2008 and 2016, exploring the effects of primary type (open, closed, or hybrid) and voter access laws. A full report can be downloaded from FairVote’s website. Record Breaking Rep

To many American voters, the dirty attacks of the 2016 election cycle are dizzying. Donald Trump has popularized the hashtag #CrookedHillary. Hillary Clinton characterizes Donald Trump as “temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be president.” Blows traded back and forth create a soap opera of vitriol and drama. And the voters can’t look away. Political attacks are nothing new, however. In fact, they’re nearly as old as the country and are a staple of presidential election politics.

After making its case in a Cook County courtroom, a group fighting to reform the partisan drawing of congressional districts still faces one more crucial deadline ahead of achieving its goal of appearing on the November 8 ballot. The Independent Map Amendment, often called Independent Maps, seeks to remove elected officials from drawing legislative districts in favor of a panel that includes Republicans, Democrats, and independents. The proposed panel and new method for drawing the maps would n

The 2016 primaries have been fraught with controversy. Stories of purging, voter confusion, registration swaps, and lawsuits against state officials and practices have been popping up across the nation. If democracy functions best when the most people participate, then democracy during the 2016 primary season suffered. While many of the lawsuits derive from inter-party competition between Republicans and Democrats, it is ultimately voters receiving the short end of the stick. Let’s take a curs

Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced Tuesday that nearly 200,000 California citizens registered to vote or updated their information at RegisterToVote.ca.gov on Monday, May 23, the final day to register for the June 7 primary elections. According to the secretary of state, total voter registration is now over 1.8 million. “Yesterday, we saw the most online registration activity this year, and the second highest total in the nearly four-year history of the online registration site,” said Ca

En todo el país, los votantes se han visto confundidos por un sistema de las elecciones primarias presidenciales excesivamente complejo y poco incluyente. Desafortunadamente, esta tendencia continuará en junio en el Estado de California. Para las elecciones no presidenciales en California, las reglas son simples. Cada votante registrado, sin importar el partido al que esté afiliado, tiene derecho a votar por cualquier candidato de su elección, gracias a Proposition 14, la iniciativa creada en 2