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Although California is the most populous state in the nation with just over 38 million people spanning a length of about 800 miles, its political leaders at the federal and state executive levels come from largely urban areas, specifically the Bay Area. This concentration of power calls into question the very nature of a representative government. To look at these top political leaders in the U.S. Senate and in the state capital, one would assume that the Bay Area has proportionately many more

The main talk of the 2014 election has been which political party will control the Senate after the votes have been counted. Democrats have been on defense throughout most of the country as President Obama's approval rating remains low. So with just a week to go before Election Day, how will the numbers fall? Here are my predictions. In this election cycle, Democrats have 38 seats that are safe or not up for re-election while Republicans have 42. So that is where my numbers start.Democrats are

The 2014 midterm elections are less than a month away and the GOP is poised to seize a majority in the Senate, though that would require winning some close races. Some are expected to come down to just a proportionally small amount of votes. RealClearPolitics rates 10 Senate races as “toss-ups” and 7 of them involve Democratic incumbents. The difference between victory and defeat will come down to voter turnout, which in turn depends on voter access laws, which state governments have been keen

I always love seeing quotes from founding father Thomas Jefferson; especially, any about Jefferson's hatred for public debt. Jefferson's overall ideology was one of a smaller federal government with little to no debt, but a deeper look into Jefferson's political life reveals that he had a characteristic that is becoming less and less common -- he was willing to change his political views when necessary (and sometimes when only expedient). In the end, Jefferson's flexibility allowed him to "go

When I first heard about the top-two primary system, I thought "Yeah, it's alright but not all that helpful." In fact, there might be an IVN article where I endorse it, but don't exactly shout it from the rooftops. I had some of my own ideas and this one didn't exactly seem impactful. I was wrong. While I was looking at big picture ideas on how to overhaul an obviously broken process, I simply ignored the simplest and easiest way of all. For my site, I thought of many different ways we could

The fight over control of the Senate is heating up. Although Nate Silver’s website, fivethirtyeight.com, predicts that the Republicans remain slightly favored to take over the Senate, he cautions that “it is still early, and we should not rule out the possibility that one party could win most or all of the competitive races.” In many of the hotly contested races, like Alaska, abortion is again taking center stage as a major issue. For example, incumbent Democrat Mark Begich is touting his pro-c

1. California No Party Preference candidate Dan Schnur published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Daily News about the growing independent voting bloc and the future of politics. "Independent voters are not necessarily centrist. In fact, numerous studies have shown that most independents do not significantly differ in their policy positions from more traditional partisans. But, by definition, their willingness to separate from a party that advocates for their preferred policy solutions suggests an

According to one comprehensive study, the national poverty rate was approximately 27 percent in 1967: without decades of welfare programs, that rate would have risen to 29 percent by 2011 rather than dropped, as it did, to 16 percent. Yet despite this overall improvement, significant changes in these welfare programs -- in combination with economic deterioration over the last decade -- have left three groups especially vulnerable. America's welfare system is failing the poor, single individual

By the time Dwight David Eisenhower became president of the United States, he had already secured historical immortality as the supreme commander of the victorious Allied Forces in the Second World War. While vanquishing the Nazis, he could not help but marvel at the infrastructural achievements of the Germans, most notably their broad highway network called the Autobahn. The German’s national accomplishment juxtaposed strongly with the United States’ meagerly funded, crumbling interstate highw

1. An opinion piece in the News Leader argues that Virginia should not indulge partisan calls to close the state's primaries after Eric Cantor lost his seat. Interestingly enough, one of the biggest names leading the charge to change state law to allow closed primaries is former Virginia Lt. Governor Bill Bolling. Bolling suspended his campaign for the 2013 gubernatorial election in November 2012 because the state GOP decided to change the method of nomination from a primary election to a conve