Search query: oregon

United Van Lines (UVL) is one of the largest moving companies in the United States. Each year since 1977, UVL has issued a study of interstate migration patterns. This study reports the share of outbound shipments in total interstate shipments for UVL for each of the 48 “Lower United States” (e.g. all states but Alaska and Hawaii). We include this data in State Data Lab, along with a wide variety of other economic, demographic, and government financial data. On January 2 2014, UVL publicly rele

Entrepreneur Mark Frohnmayer is spearheading an initiative in Oregon to completely reform the electoral system in the state. The system combines a nonpartisan top-two primary system -- similar to the elections in California -- with approval voting. Frohnmayer calls this new nonpartisan election, "The Unified Primary." It is important to make a distinction between "open" and "nonpartisan" systems as the words are often interchanged, but they don't mean the same thing. An "open" system merely me

The GOP is trying to redesign its nomination process aiming to rein in the recent rash of extreme nominees who keep losing winnable races. These fringe nominees have secondary effects as well. Many blame the duration of the government shutdown on moderate Republicans fearing tea party primary challengers. So how can the GOP regain its balance and find its center? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db6Syys2fmE Go basic. Look to the voting method itself. Our choose-one method, plurality voting, lim

Last week, both Illinois and Hawaii passed same-sex marriage making them the 15th and 16th states to do so. Overall, 2013 has been quite a year for the LGBT community. These last two states just seem to put the icing on the proverbial cake. It all comes on the heals of the 2012 election where voters in three states (Maine, Maryland, and Washington) approved same-sex marriage and rejected a ban on it in the state of Minnesota. So, what has transpired during the year? Rhode Island, Delaware, Mi

Marijuana legalization activists gained considerable momentum this week. On Tuesday, the city of Portland, Maine, passed Question 1: 67 percent to 33 percent. The measure legalized possession of up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana by adults over 21 years of age. Likewise, Colorado passed Proposition AA Tuesday, which added a 15 percent wholesale tax and 10 percent sales tax on marijuana transactions. These two ballot measures follow a national poll by Gallup that found support for outright legalizat

Reports of National Security Agency surveillance capabilities and oversight continue to surpass previous assumptions. Dragnet data collection lie at the center of legal and privacy concerns. This week, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) introduced the USA Freedom Act. According to the bill, the act's stated purpose is, To reform the authorities of the Federal Government to require the production of certain business records, conduct electronic

What originally began as a way to weaken the power of political machines such as Tammany Hall, primary elections gradually became a way for the two mainstream political parties to control the electoral process while creating a clearer divide between the parties. Both Republicans and Democrats began appealing to their bases in the primaries just to make it to the general election. Mark Frohnmayer, a scion of Oregon politics and a self-described “serial entrepreneur,” has picked up the torch to t

Political scientists and party pollsters run with a common narrative: Independent voters are a myth. "We think of them as closet partisans who act in almost indistinguishable ways to those who identify as partisans," Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth explains in a recent National Journal article. There is a group of independent voters, however, that defy this reasoning. Here are the top 30 reasons why, despite the partisan narrative, independent voters are not a myth: 1. Forty

The history of voting rights in the U.S. has been a long battle of disharmony and disenfranchisement since the country’s formation and although freedom and voting are frequently associated with one another in our current culture, restrictions to true freedom in this regard still remain unsettled, contentious, and often unperceived. While democracy was forming in the colonies, the Old World ideology that it was nothing short of mob rule was held strongly by many prominent colonists, thereby limi

Republicans and Democrats continue to shrink and the IPO has unusual fallback. Monthly Trends: The month of September showed continued losses in membership for the Republican and Democratic Parties. The IPO lost membership at the same rate as the major parties as well. While the “other minor parties” category has seen the most growth percentage wise and has about the same total growth in registrants as NAV, all of that growth has been attributable to the Working Families Party, which has grown