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San Diego, Calif.- San Diego Union-Tribune Columnist Michael Smolens joined me for a wide-ranging conversation about the many political issues facing the City of San Diego and State of California. In our latest IVN Podcast, Smolens had strong comments on City Councilman Mark Kersey moving from Republican to Independent, the chance that the convention center expansion passes in March 2020, and the substantive changes needed for the 2020 ballot to avoid the same issue we saw in 2016 with NPP vote

An Update on the Lindbergh Intermodal Transportation Center (ITC) Option By Carl Nettleton The San Diego Association of Government’s (SANDAG) leadership in developing a proposed Grand Central Station to link San Diego International Airport with regional ground transportation modes is an important initiative whose time is long overdue. The options for the Grand Central Station concept have been reduced to the Navy’s SPAWAR facility and a location called the Intermodal Transportation Center, bot

San Diego, Calif.- By a vote of 5-4, the San Diego City Council is moving forward with efforts to place the convention center expansion measure on the 2020 March primary ballot, moving it from the 2020 November General ballot. The next step is for an ordinance to be drafted and then voted on by the council at an upcoming meeting. The decision blows a hole in the 2016 voter approved Measure L, which stipulated all citizens initiatives should be placed on November General election ballots. Meas

San Diego, Calif.- It's exceedingly difficult to get 66% of voters to agree that the sun rises in the east, which makes it all the more impressive that in November 2016, 65.79% of voters approved Measure L, the law that puts all initiatives on November ballots by default to ensure they’re decided in elections where the most voters participate. San Diego voters agreed that the core ideas of Measure L, that San Diego's biggest civic decisions are made when the most voters are participating, in th

It is no secret that both parties control the presidential nomination process. But what is less-known is that taxpayers, not the parties, fund the primary election. So, why wouldn’t every voter, regardless of party, get to participate? That’s why the Independent Voter Project (IVP) responded to another partisan “solution” this week to California’s confusing (and taxpayer funded) semi-closed presidential primary, which would continue to shortchange over 5.6 million independent voters. Instead

The 2016 presidential primaries in California didn’t go smoothly. The election was marred by widespread confusion and frustration as millions of voters had to navigate a complex and restrictive semi-closed primary process. As a result, they were completely disenfranchised by the process. The Independent Voter Project had anticipated this issue, and offered legislative solutions in 2015 and 2016, but neither the legislature nor the secretary of state took up the cause. As a result, millions of

San Diego, Calif.- A state appeals court has ordered the city of San Diego to compensate city workers who lost their pensions following a voter-approved pension reform initiative that was illegally placed on the 2012 ballot. The three-justice panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that workers whose pensions were replaced by a 401(k)-style plan, per 2012’s Proposition B, should be paid the difference between what they would have received via the original pension system and the current

I’ve got some good news and some bad news. And once we put it all together, it’ll be news you can use — an easy way to join the Second American Revolution, now in progress. First, the bad news: You are being violated by your own government. Hustled and conned. We all are. Our voices and our votes. Our tax dollars, too. On a piece of parchment that birthed this country, our founders emphasized that lawmakers would derive “their just Powers from the consent of the governed.” That’s us. But those

There are hundreds, literally hundreds of organizations and individual campaigns working right now to fix the myriad of problems that face our political and electoral processes -- from the local to the national levels. The organizations tackle voter rights, primary election reform, ballot access, gerrymandering reform, campaign finance reform, alternative voting methods, electing candidates outside the two major parties, and more. The following are 10 of the biggest organizations working to ref

Perhaps it is not surprising that Friday’s vote on HR1, the omnibus election reform bill, broke strictly along partisan lines...