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Presidential politics has taken center stage this election year, for good reason. But if you're interested in making a political impact, you may be focusing on the wrong race. The truth is, when you vote for a candidate (or donate to their campaign), you can't be sure you will get what you voted for. Politicians make all sorts of promises during the campaign, but after the election, often for perfectly good reasons, their positions are less clear. This is the nature of indirect democracy. Ball

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Friday that he supports Governors Gary Johnson and Bill Weld appearing in the presidential debates for the same reason he supported nonpartisan elections in California: he believes we need an open political system, not a closed one. Gov. Schwarzenegger was a major supporter of Proposition 14 in California, which reformed the semi-closed partisan primary system for statewide and federal elections to an open, nonpartisan system. He also s

In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Gary Johnson says Founding Fathers like James Madison and George Washington were right... a political system dominated by two parties was doomed to failure. Johnson writes: John Adams expressed He wasn’t alone. James Madison warned against the dangers of factionalism. And in his farewell address, George Washington called “party dissension” a kind of “frightful despotism,” warning that a party leader would be prone to pursue his own agenda “to the

In recent years, there have been several top-down attempts to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United. That decision, made in 2010, birthed legal entities known as super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money so long as they do not coordinate with a candidate. In 2014, Democrats failed to muster enough votes to overcome a Republican-led filibuster over a proposed constitutional amendment. And in 2015, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig announced a presidenti

In an interview for Colorado Public Radio, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper said he supports most of the state initiatives that will appear on the November ballot, including two initiatives that would bring back presidential primaries and open state and federal primaries to independent voters. "I support the presidential primary because I think it's good for Colorado. I think it puts us on the map and it gets more people involved in the primary," Hickenlooper said on Initiative 140. Initiat

The Commission on Presidential Debates has suggested that they will give Gary Johnson or Jill Stein "an inch" if they get close enough to the required 15 percent polling threshold to be included in the presidential debates. However, at least one debate sponsor in Colorado is apparently not so lenient. Lily Tang Williams is running for U.S. Senate in Colorado. However, she is being excluded from a televised Senate debate because her party's registration missed the mark by 0.023% -- barely a frac

Before a crowd in his home start of Vermont and speaking to supporters attending more than 2,600 watch parties across the country, Senator Bernie Sanders announced on August 24 the launch of "Our Revolution." The newly created organization seeks to institutionalize the former presidential candidate's progressive movement and develop a grassroots network whose three stated goals are "supporting a new generation of progressive leaders, empowering millions to fight for progressive change and elevat

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,

Evan McMullin’s first full week as a candidate for president has been both surprising and, for some of us, predictable. McMullin talks and acts like a seasoned candidate, and not like a novice traversing his first national campaign. Predictable are the dismissive tones from a political class heart hardened to newcomers. The most successful independent and insurgent candidates burst forth riding a sugar high of excitement, generating animated crowds looking for the new, and garnering quizzical b

It is a big week for both Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein. On Monday, August 15, the Johnson-Weld campaign dropped a huge money bomb to raise $1.5 million in a single day, while Stein and her running-mate, Ajamu Baraka, will make their case to the American people during a CNN town hall Wednesday. Both Johnson and Stein want to boost their presence in the national political spotlight in order to qualify for the fall presidential debates. In order to do so,