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Through the vote, citizens communicate information about their interests, preferences, and needs and make important decisions about who should hold office. Unfortunately, at the local level that voice is exceptionally weak. Disadvantaged segments of the population—racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, those with a limited education—tend to vote significantly less regularly than others…This is an excerpt from " Municipal Institutions and Voter Turnout in Local Elections," authored by Zoltan L.

I broke my own rule this week and compared somebody to Hitler. It was only a little argumentum ad nazium. I suggested that Russian’s recent move to seize the largely Russian-speaking Crimean region of Ukraine had a lot of historical parallels to Hitler’s 1938 invasion of to annex the largely German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Apparently, Hillary Clinton has been thinking the same thing, and has taken the predictable fire that such comparison’s inevitably bring. There was onl

It seems that in every cycle there is debate about which states should hold the first presidential primary elections. Some state always seems to try to jump ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire. Since 1972, the Iowa Caucuses have been first in the nation and New Hampshire has been the first "primary" since 1920. There, of course, have been states that have attempted to circumvent Iowa and New Hampshire, claiming that they don't truly represent America as they are small states with seemingly narrow

Utah's fourth congressional district is up for grabs after Democrat Jim Matheson announced his retirement last year. Returning after a narrow loss against Matheson in 2012, Republican Mia Love is the current frontrunner in the race. With only 3 months until the nominating convention, one primary challenger, and the absence of any serious Democratic competitors, the seat is likely Mia Love's for the taking. The news has perplexed Democrats and even shocked the Mia Love campaign. Reasons for the

Table of Contents State-by-state Information How Do Primaries Work? Partisan v. Nonpartisan Closed (Partisan) Semi-Closed (Partisan) Open (Partisan) Open (Nonpartisan) Variants of Traditional Election Systems Top-Two Nonpartisan Primaries Top-Four Primary Instant Runoff Voting Approval Voting Unified Primary Other Voter Resources Independent Movements in Your State GENERAL ELECTION DATE: November 4, 2014 How do I vote? The following voter guide is tailored to provide vital info

Now that same sex marriages can be legally performed in 17 states (plus the District of Columbia), the other states are starting to feel the pressure that comes when you are on the wrong side of the zeitgeist. For two of these states—Utah and Oklahoma—the pressure has come in the form of the federal court system, which has invalidated provisions in their constitutions outlawing same-sex unions and forbidden recognition of such unions performed in other states. This means, of course, that it is

Primaries first began in the early twentieth century as a response to increasingly strong party control over elections. At the time, voters wanted a larger say in who would be chosen as their candidate, instead of the long-standing tradition of party bosses choosing who would run for office. Progressive reformers viewed direct primaries as a way for constituencies to increase transparency and allow for citizens to participate in the electoral process. As primaries became a feature of local, stat

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. . . . It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States.”—Abraham Lincoln, 1858 His “House Divided” speech at the 1858 Republican Convention in Illinois was not, as we often remember it

A bipartisan team of California lawmakers is pushing a bill through California's legislature that would prevent any state-related entity from  disclosing information on citizens to federal agents without a warrant. State Senators Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and Joel Anderson (R-San Diego) introduced Senate Bill 828, also called the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, on Monday. Specifically, the bill would prohibit "an employee of the state... a corporation... or a political subdivision of the state fr

In a world where privacy seems to be continually decreasing, one man has dared to fight back. Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) plans to make a push for regulations protecting cellphone users from government data-gathering programs. Changes Markey hopes to introduce include: requiring law enforcement to get a warrant before obtaining cellphone data locations, requiring the FCC to limit how long carriers can keep certain information, and requiring law enforcement personnel to submit a signed a