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Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum and has been republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. ‍ Proponents of expanded voting by mail during the pandemic won victories Monday in three states, two of them solid blue but one of them reliably red. The top elections official in Alabama, a Republican, decreed that fear of the coronavirus would be reason enough to vote absentee for president this year. Vermont joined the handful of states that have decided to s

Voting is a right; This shouldn’t be a controversial statement but it is. The struggle to ensure that every adult United States citizen has the right to vote has been going on since the founding of our country. Right now, our right to vote is threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic and by apathy in some state legislatures. I am an intern for an organization called "The People.” We are proudly nonpartisan with members from all walks of life and different backgrounds. To quote our website, "The Peop

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on The Fulcrum, and was republished on IVN with permission from the publisher. Straight-ticket voting won't be returning to Texas now that a federal judge has rejected an effort by Democrats to maintain the practice. Allowing Texans to cast one quick vote, in favor of one party's entire slate of candidates, has been allowed for a century and was the way two-thirds of 2018 ballots were cast in the second most populous state. But the Republican-maj

This article was first published on The Fulcrum. The League of Women Voters has sued Alabama to ease the rules governing absentee ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Montgomery on Thursday, claims Secretary of State John Merrill did not go far enough in March, when he waived strict excuse requirements for voting absentee — but only for primary runoffs that were then postponed to July 14. The suit joins dozens filed in state and federal courts, in alm

This article was first published on The Fulcrum Updated Monday afternoon to describe four, not three, lawsuits. Expanding voters' access to absentee ballots across the South during the coronavirus pandemic is the goal of the four newest lawsuits brought by Democrats and civil rights groups. The suits, like a wave of others filed across the country during the public health emergency, attack as unconstitutional and against federal law the limited available reasons for voting at home in Alabama

Hello America! Hello my Brothers and Sisters! This campaign, this race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, has come to a critical point. A boiling point, some would say. And before we go any further, before voters in the next states cast their primary ballots and before the media casts its spin over the public, and before the kingmakers in the back rooms of the Democratic Party tell everyone that it’s over, I want to speak directly to the American people. Not just to Democrats. No

Illinois should host the first presidential primaries if the goal is to pick a state that most closely matches the demographics of the country. And Vermont, the home state of Democratic front-runner Bernie Sanders, should have minimal influence over the process because its makeup is least similar to the entire United States — meaning the results from that state would be hardly at all predictive of the nation's views. Those are among the conclusions out Thursday from the personal financial ser

I rarely give advice when it is unsolicited. But when you know someone, and you’ve had a history with them, and when the stakes are high and people are asking what you think, you make an exception. Thus, I’ve decided to offer some to Mike Bloomberg, who says he is considering a Democratic Party primary run for the presidency. I consider Mike a friend, whose campaigns for mayor of New York I helped to engineer—including running the Independence Party segment of his three mayoral bids. He and I (

A Roadmap to A Better Democracy By: Wes Messamore Reform activists from around the country gathered in the Country Music Capital of the World –– Nashville, Tennessee –– over the last weekend in March to celebrate an absolute tidal wave of policy victories in 2018; listen to inspirational speeches; share and learn the nuts and bolts of policy reform; and even to air fierce differences of opinion over the best way to reform elections in America and over other areas of public policy. How they buz

Louisiana held a special election for secretary of state in December, since no candidate got over 50% of the vote on Election Day. Yet, despite the fact that over 50% of registered voters turned out in the November election, only 17% turned out in December. FairVote Executive Director Rob Richie submitted a letter to the letter to The Advocate recently, explaining how in a society that desires instant results -- "from Instant Pots to Instagram" -- we don't get that in states like Louisiana, "wh