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Three states -- Colorado, Oregon, and Washington state -- have all-mail voting systems in place, but if recent history is any guide, they will soon be joined by other states like California, Arizona, Montana, Hawaii, Utah, and New Jersey. The all-mail system is relatively new; Oregon was the first state to institute it after a referendum in 1998. Washington followed in 2011 and Colorado soon after in 2013. All three states introduced all-mail locally and its popularity led to its widespread use

An adage of former president Richard Nixon was to run to the right in primaries and move to the center in the general election. One of the more-discussed potential 2016 presidential candidates, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has taken an approach that might be running the axiom in reverse. Paul's first speech from the U.S. Senate floor in 2011 famously downplayed compromise. In 2012, he called Paul Ryan's contentious budget proposal "tepid." In 2013, with his party filibustering the nomination

According to one comprehensive study, the national poverty rate was approximately 27 percent in 1967: without decades of welfare programs, that rate would have risen to 29 percent by 2011 rather than dropped, as it did, to 16 percent. Yet despite this overall improvement, significant changes in these welfare programs -- in combination with economic deterioration over the last decade -- have left three groups especially vulnerable. America's welfare system is failing the poor, single individual

By the time Dwight David Eisenhower became president of the United States, he had already secured historical immortality as the supreme commander of the victorious Allied Forces in the Second World War. While vanquishing the Nazis, he could not help but marvel at the infrastructural achievements of the Germans, most notably their broad highway network called the Autobahn. The German’s national accomplishment juxtaposed strongly with the United States’ meagerly funded, crumbling interstate highw

1. Letter to The Aspen Times says many Colorado voters are denied their constitutionally-protected rights of non-association and equal access to elections under the state's partisan primary system. "The U.S. Constitution and the Colorado Constitution both guarantee “freedom of association” — the freedom to associate with whom we please, which necessarily includes the freedom not to associate — to decline to associate with certain people or organizations. The U.S. Constitution and the Colorado C

Human rights groups across the United States have increased their criticisms of the U.S. prison system over the years. While the United States boasts just 5 percent of the world’s population, the country has a quarter of the world’s prison population. In a May Human Rights Watch report, co-author Jamie Fellner explained that “the ‘land of the free’ has become a country of prisons.” While many advocacy groups have made recommendations on how to reform mandatory sentencing and criminal sanctions,

1. An opinion piece in the News Leader argues that Virginia should not indulge partisan calls to close the state's primaries after Eric Cantor lost his seat. Interestingly enough, one of the biggest names leading the charge to change state law to allow closed primaries is former Virginia Lt. Governor Bill Bolling. Bolling suspended his campaign for the 2013 gubernatorial election in November 2012 because the state GOP decided to change the method of nomination from a primary election to a conve

(Newark, NJ) — In May, New Jersey Secretary of State Kim Guadagno filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of the 47% of New Jersey voters who choose not to join a political party. The secretary of state argued that voters have no fundamental right to participate in primary elections despite the fact that their tax dollars fund them. Independents in New Jersey are required to join a political party in order to vote in the primary. On Thursday, the Plaintiffs filed their response: T

David Crane, an adviser to former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared in 2010 that public pension crises nationwide represent “the largest single financial issue facing state and local governments." According to one estimate, state and municipal governments across the country have a total unfunded pension liability of $4.1 trillion. Several states are on the verge of insolvency, and some cities have notoriously declared bankruptcy because of unmanageable debt obligations, includ

A bipartisan group of legislators looking to restore transparency to data collection programs conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA) won an initial victory late last week. Passing 293-123, an amendment to H.R. 4870, the "Fiscal Year 2015 Department of Defense Appropriations Act," prohibits the agency from searching American citizens' communications without a warrant. A majority of both parties supported the NSA amendment. The amendment was designed to stop so-called "back door searche