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Just a few weeks after the storming of the Capitol and the impeachment trial, Gallup found for the first time that 50% of voters identify as independents.  Registered independent voters are now the largest or second largest group of voters in half the states and will be the largest or second largest group of voters in almost every state in the country within a few years at current rates of growth. More significant than the raw numbers--which are impressive--independent voters are participating

Alaskans for Better Elections, along with Alaska’s Division of Elections, have filed for summary judgment in a lawsuit to overturn the historic election reform a majority of voters approved in November 2020 under Ballot Measure 2. The amendment under Ballot Measure 2: * Broadens transparency in money flowing into state elections; * Implements a nonpartisan top-four primary; and * Makes Alaska the second state to adopt ranked choice voting in general elections. Read More: Alaska Becomes

Editor's Note: The following piece was originally published as a "Letter to the Editor" for the Portland Press Herald and has been republiched on IVN by request and with permission from the author. ‍ Maine voters still live in a darkened room called the closed primary. In a 2014 New York Times op-ed, Sen. Chuck Schumer urged America to adopt a top-two open-primary system. Sen. Joe Baldacci is sponsoring a top-two open-primary bill in Maine, L.D. 1121. It's truly democracy in action! In an op-

The Equal Vote Coalition announced Monday that a historic new bill has been introduced in the Oregon State House that would establish STAR (Score, Then Automatic Runoff) Voting as the default voting method in Oregon. Oregon would be the first state to adopt the voting method’s use. STAR Voting is different from alternative voting methods that have gained traction across the country, like ranked choice voting and approval voting. Voters can think of it as scoring candidates the way they would r

Photo Credit: Ahmed / Unsplash The general perception of young voters is that they are largely detached from politics and thus have no interest and don’t participate. Yet, the largest segment of the voting population -- Generation Y -- and the generation that follows, Gen Z, could completely change the way elections, and by extension politics, are conducted in the US. Public opinion polling shows broad dissatisfaction with the current two-party political structure: An overwhelming majority of

“It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.” - Independent voters have been in the forefront of a movement to change the rules of the political game in the United States. We have led efforts to open the primaries to all voters, establish independent non-partisan redistricting commissions and introduce reforms like Ranked Choice Voting to the voting process itself. However, d

U.S. democracy is in existential crisis. The country already suffers from unrepresentative winner-take-all, single-seat-district legislative elections, a two-party duopoly, partisan gerrymandering, the corrupting influence of big money in politics, and an Electoral College and US Senate that give vastly outsized influence to some voters over others. In the case of the Electoral College, it can also prevent the presidential candidate receiving the most votes from being elected. But now even w

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Forever, and ever, and ever...

2020 was a weird year. Can we all agree on that? Here’s something weird about 2020 that you may not have noticed amid all the shouting and freaking out: Democrats nominated and successfully fielded a presidential candidate who is the exact same as Donald Trump in a curiously suspicious number of ways. And they’re not trivial. At least not to the Democrats who maligned Trump for four years in a furious and inexhaustible frenzy of partisan political note writing over hours, days, and weeks no

When representatives from the League of Women Voters, RepresentUs, and the Independent Voter Project first met in 2019, political insiders said it would take a miracle to bring an innovative election reform to the City of San Diego that would allow voters to “rank” four candidates in the general election, instead of choosing just one. In 2020, while COVID was putting the brakes on much of the world, more than a dozen organizations and thousands of local residents formed the More Choice San Dieg