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The U.S Supreme Court's October term isn't filled with landmark cases, but one in particular may have a profound effect on the U.S election system. The Evenwel v. Abbott case was filed back in February by Ed Blum of the Project on Fair Representation. He runs a one man show, with his website's contact information consisting of his personal cell phone number. Blum is best known for filing the Shelby v. Holder case, which rendered Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 unconstitutional. Hi

On August 17, Air Force veteran Chris Keniston was formally declared the first official presidential candidate of the Veterans Party of America. However, few people have likely heard of Keniston or the Veterans Party, founded in 2013, since not a single major news outlet covered the event. Yet for Keniston, this wasn't unexpected. "I don't expect any assistance from the mainstream media at all," Keniston said in an interview for IVN. "I truly expect that if I'm ever mentioned on a mainstream m

As deeply divided as Americans are now on political issues, Bernie Sanders is having the unique effect of being even more polarizing to some voters while also attracting others who wouldn't normally touch someone so fiscally liberal. His populist message is resonating very strongly with people who are tired of a country where working people still struggle to make ends meet, but also with opponents of crony capitalism across the political spectrum. On the other side, opponents of big government,

The governor of Arkansas aims to end the state's decade-long hiatus on executions in October. Gov. Asa Hutchinson has set dates for the executions of eight convicted murderers, according to Reuters. The first two men are sentenced two die in October. But this decision is already being challenged, according to Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "The lawyers for the prisoners who are facing death warrants will be filing motions for an injunction to bar all

The federal government is now two weeks away from experiencing the second government shutdown in two years if it does not pass a continuing resolution (CR) by October 1. In 2013, the cause of the government shutdown was a tussle between the Republican-led House and the Democrat-controlled Senate over funding for the Affordable Care Act. This time, the debate is between Republicans in the House over whether to deprive Planned Parenthood of $500 million in federal funds. President Obama has sai

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. -- California legislators, public affairs representatives, and reformers of all stripes attended the first-ever California Nonpartisan Primary Summit on Wednesday at the Citizen Hotel in Sacramento. The event, co-hosted by the Independent Voter Project (IVP) and California Forward (CA Fwd), featured a series of discussions on nonpartisan primaries, voting rights, and the future of election reform. Proposition 14, better known as California’s nonpartisan, top-two primary, was

This weekend saw the candidates sharply carving out their individual stances on the parties' platforms on immigration at the Iowa State Fair. While Donald Trump dazzled party-hardliners with his plan to change the Constitution to abolish jus soli (right of the soil), birthright citizenship, as well as deporting all illegal immigrants without a path to citizenship, Americans in general don't seem to have as aggressive of a stance on immigration. Even within the Republican Party, half support a

The first round of the Republican primary debates will be held Thursday night at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. The field of Republican presidential candidates stands at 17, but only 10 will be included in the primetime debate at 9pm ET, while the other seven will compete in an undercard debate at 5pm ET. The 10 candidates who will appear at the prime-time debate are: Donald Trump, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, retired n

This week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told residents in states where recreational marijuana use is legal to smoke their weed now because when he is president he will enforce federal laws. In a town hall meeting in Newport, New Hampshire, Christie told users of legal marijuana, "If you're getting high in Colorado today, enjoy it." He continued, "As of January 2017, I will enforce the federal laws." Christie believes marijuana use alters the brain and is a gateway drug to harsher substances

As Bob Conner reported for IVN in 2014, New Jersey’s independents spent approximately $100 million to pay for primaries in which they could not vote between 2000 and 2013. The obvious question is, how did this come to be? How did taxpayers come to subsidize party primaries? The origin of government-administered primaries begins in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when state governments began to intervene to curb the influence of party bosses and tackle corruption. A series of reforms – including