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A full complement of commissioners presided over the Federal Eelection Commission's open meeting on Thursday, marking the first time the regulatory body was fully staffed since Cynthia Bauerly stepped down in February. Lee E. Goodman, a lawyer with a background in campaign finance, and Ann Ravel (pictured right), the former head of California's electoral watchdog, took their seats on the bench for the first time. The mood was cautiously optimistic as both of the new commissioners spoke about the

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

Concerns about rising tuition and how students can afford to finance their major investments in post-secondary education are widespread. Solid insights into these questions require accurate and up-to-date information about prices. reports on the prices charged by colleges and universities in 2013-14, how prices have changed over time, and how they vary within and across types of institutions, states, and regions. We also provide information on the net prices that students and families actually p

California is a unique place. Just ask anyone who's ever lived there. So naturally the state boasts a unique system for nominating its elected officials as well and the road to the system that's currently in place in California was a bumpy one. But, as with many things, whether or not the change produces the desired result remains to be seen. Closed Primary Prior to 1996 From 1909 until 1996, California had a closed primary system, meaning that in order for a voter to participate in the prima

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin joined U.S. Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) for a little bit of face time in front of the World War II Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. The three popular figures in the tea party made it clear that the Obama administration is using veterans as pawns in a larger political game. "Our veterans should be above politics," Cruz said. "It is shameful that the administration is barricading and trying to shutdown the memorials." He added: "Weeks ago,

As states continue searching for ways to defy excesses of power from Washington DC, one state has joined a few others in objecting to one of the more controversial prerogatives emanating from the national capital. Last week, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law an act that states that the Golden State will not comply with the federal government's enforcement of indefinite detention of "enemy combatants." Passed in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the defense spendi

All of us do really dumb stuff. We occasionally trip, forget our train of thought, or go the wrong way. Fortunately, most of us aren't in front of an arsenal of camera operators and photographers when we do it. Politicians, however, live in constant scrutiny. If they goof up like normal human beings, it's likely to get caught on film and played endlessly by every news network in the country and immortalized in a Saturday Night Live sketch. Here are the top six political "OOPS!" moments. 1. Bu

Demand, meet Supply Amidst some disenchantment with both major political parties, the chart above shows, when looking across the 50 states, the share of votes earned by candidates that were not either Democratic or Republican has fallen significantly for U.S. House of Representative elections since 2000. The State Data Lab resource (Votes Cast for House Election – Other), developed by Truth in Accounting, shows that states with relatively high shares of non-major party votes in 2000 also had s

The partisan battles in North Carolina are extending their reach into the court system. Over the past year, the Republican controlled legislature, aided by a Republican governor, Pat McCrory, enacted a host of controversial legislation that banned gay marriage and put in place new abortion restrictions. Then last week, they passed new voting laws which MSNBC called "a truly abominable piece of anti-democratic legislation." The bill was purportedly to prevent fraud, although fraud has not been a

An IVN article revealed the top five states with the highest number of registered independent voters. Surprisingly, a majority of these states still have primary elections that disenfranchise this growing segment of the population. Massachusetts, Alaska, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut lead the nation with the highest percentages of independent or no party preference voters, hovering between 43 and 52 percent. However, despite the fact that in each of these states independents are mor