Search query: minnesota

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. - The biggest story in the 2018 election cycle was not what color of wave we saw. It was not President Donald Trump using the Ecuadorian immigrant caravan as a campaign issue. It was not the Democrats’ focus on the president’s behavior while holding the Oval Office. The biggest story in 2018 was the voter revolt against the political status quo. Political and election reform had its most groundbreaking year in half a century, and most media outlets didn’t pay attention. From

AUGUSTA, MAINE - Tens of thousands of voters have already voted in the Maine elections, and state officials expect higher-than-normal turnout for the 2018 midterms Tuesday. The midterm surge comes during the historic use of ranked choice voting for US House and Senate races. Maine has for years set itself apart from the rest of the nation for high turnout. Nearly 73% of eligible voters participated in the 2016 presidential election. Not very many states can boast such high numbers. Interesting,

Many political commentators today are perplexed by what seems to be the increasing polarization of the two party system in America, and the rising tensions that have accompanied a rhetorical arms race of inflammatory cross fire. It is my contention that the Republican and Democratic Parties are not in fact drifting further apart than ever before, but over recent decades have actually become more and more like each other, and that today they are nearly indistinguishable from each other in terms

Team sports and competition are popular, from baseball to mixed martial arts. However, our politics are increasingly filled with partisan rancor, and unfortunately, despite Americans disassociating with the two major parties in large numbers, positions are increasingly associated with one side or the other. Losing friends over political beliefs in the age of social media, particularly during the Trump era, is nothing new. I’ve drawn the scorn of family and friends -- many of whom came from the

The success of Maine as the first state to use ranked choice voting statewide has brought newfound national attention to ranked choice voting. There’s much to like in this replacement to our fractious, problematic, and outdated plurality voting method. Voters can vote for their top choice without fear of splitting the vote. More candidates and parties can compete without the label of “spoiler.” Campaigns become more civil and less prone to negative attacks. The winner is the consensus, majority

I. The State of Self-Driving Car Technology and The Possibilities In the 1990 film, Total Recall (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone), the protagonist played by the now former governor of California hails a self-driving car with a humanoid, robotic attendant sitting where a human driver would. What makes the surreal scene eerily prophetic is how Schwarzenegger asks the AI cab driver questions like one might ask Alexa, Siri, or Google's voice assistant, and the "Johnny Cab" sasses

Early voting has changed the game in modern politics, and that means snail mail is winning. On Friday, absentee voting kicked off in three states: Minnesota, Virginia, and South Dakota, and it signals the final phase of ‘midterms 2018.’  Sort of. It has slowed down the maneuvers of a campaign culture that has always prized speed and power, forcing it to now meet the wants of an electorate that has threatened a formerly predictable timeline by lengthening it. And if the recent past is any indic

The Koch brothers are the perennial capitalist power-donor bogeymen of the right, feared and maligned by Democrats as much as George Soros is hated by Republicans as the same kind of bogeyman of the left. However, as with many controversial matters, the Kochs aren't exactly what the partisan narrative portrays. For instance, the Koch brothers and many of the publications they funded throughout the Bush years were staunchly anti-war, and they may even be more anti-war than the Center for America

The 2018 midterm elections are about to heat up. Much of the focus is on which of the two major parties will have control of Congress after November 6 -- are we looking at a blue wave or a red wave? What gets less attention are the third party and independent candidates who are trying to break through the two-party duopoly and offer voters an alternative. Candidates like Gary Johnson, who arguably stands the best chance of being the first member of the Libertarian Party to be elected to the upp

Earlier this year, Utah and Washington quietly joined 14 other states that have eliminated the use of registration deadlines as a final cutoff to be able to vote. The congruent actions of a red state and blue state bring the number of states that allow voters to register or update a registration when they go to vote to nearly one in three. It’s a critical threshold that could spell the end of voter registration deadlines as we’ve known them for 100 years. Enabling voters to address and fix reg