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Depending on what news station you watch, you might think that one party is the savior and the other, the enemy, of our sacred right to vote. But what if a larger battle is being waged to secure our right to vote? A battle that threatens insiders on both sides of the partisan political aisles? A battle ignored by a mainstream media that has embedded itself in partisan rhetoric? A battle that would expose the hypocrisy of both parties? From Alaska to New York and Maine, there has been an unprec

Former Gehl Foods CEO and founder of the Institute for Political Innovation, Katherine Gehl, has 4 myths about US politics to bust. Think the system is broken, as in not working the way it was intended? Think you only have two options? Think politicians are the problem? In a series of videos, Gehl breaks down common misconceptions and misunderstandings about the way our political industry works. These videos challenge the way we talk about our political system, because simply changing the way we

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in The Fulcrum and has been republished with permission from the publisher. ‍ While much of the country's election reform legislation has been rife with partisanship, Vermont is bucking that trend. Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed into law on Monday a measure that will automatically send Vermont's 495,000 registered voters a mail-in ballot ahead of statewide general elections. The General Assembly approved the legislation on a bipartisan basis

Bess Truman famously said “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Well, even though I’m a dog person myself, cats might just hold the key to fixing our politics. Let me explain why. If you’ve ever seen the show "My Cat From Hell" you know that cat behaviorist Jackson Galaxy helps cat owners figure out why their cats are misbehaving and get them back to having a mutually beneficial and harmonious relationship. The nonpartisan innovation community needs to take the same approach with fix

It has become popular on the Left to ascribe Republicans’ recent attempts to change voting laws as anti-democratic, even potentially criminal.  There are those, such as Paul Waldman at the Washington Post, who have gone so far as to suggest that the Right has descended into madness. One common thread is that Republican legislators, either in Congress or at the state level, have willfully and cynically renounced the sacred principles embodied in the United States Constitution, the core of which,

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from The Fulcrum. ‍ Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, was recently featured on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" to discuss his piece in The Atlantic: "Party Primaries Must Go." Troiano argues that a small minority of Americans decide the majority of our elections and the situation needs to change moving forward to ensure a healthy democracy.

The movement to take control of primaries out of the hands of political parties is growing. However, nonpartisan primary systems are only in place in a few states, and the only nonpartisan system in the South, Louisiana’s primary, is being targeted by partisan insiders. Fortunately, a bill that would have closed congressional primaries in the state was just dropped by its sponsor. Louisiana has what is commonly referred to as a “jungle primary,” which simply means all candidates, regardless of

We all know the system is broken. It’s rigged. It does not work. How do we know? Because our leaders are not producing solutions to the issues we care about. No one is listening, just talking past each other. But what if the system is working the way it was designed to work? What if politicians are operating very rationally and logically based on incentives of the political system in place? That is what many of the smartest observers of our dysfunctional mess of a political system think. So we

Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared in the Rapid City Journal and has been republished on IVN with permission from the author. ‍ I am a fourth generation South Dakotan and a lifelong Republican. I was once again disappointed last week as another legislative session came to an end marked by senseless disputes between far-right Republicans and their slightly more moderate brethren on issues of little importance to most of us. They debate issues like limiting the rights of the small num

‍ Demographics in the American electorate are shifting, the needs and priorities of voters are changing, yet politics in the US hasn't changed much in the last half century. In fact, the only thing that has changed is that the government has gotten less and less responsive to voters. I discussed some of the driving forces behind this in a previous examination of what it means when reformers refer to the US political system as a two-party duopoly. Two private political organizations, the Republ