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In November, voters in South Dakota will decide whether to pass Amendment V. If passed, the measure will institute a nonpartisan primary much like the one in Washington state. Under the proposed rules, all candidates would appear on a single ballot without party labels, and the top two recipients of primary votes would advance to the general election. The proponents of the reform cite numerous potential benefits, including increased voter turnout, the election of more moderate officials, depola

Presidential politics has taken center stage this election year, for good reason. But if you're interested in making a political impact, you may be focusing on the wrong race. The truth is, when you vote for a candidate (or donate to their campaign), you can't be sure you will get what you voted for. Politicians make all sorts of promises during the campaign, but after the election, often for perfectly good reasons, their positions are less clear. This is the nature of indirect democracy. Ball

Sioux Falls, S.D. -  Amendment V Nonpartisan Elections in South Dakota received two major endorsements Tuesday. The South Dakota League of Women Voters and AARP South Dakota announced their support for Amendment V, citing the 115,000 independent voters who are largely excluded from the current system. Both organizations say nonpartisan election reform is best for all voters. “The South Dakota League of Women Voters has long worked to expand participatory democracy,” said League of Women Voters

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Friday that he supports Governors Gary Johnson and Bill Weld appearing in the presidential debates for the same reason he supported nonpartisan elections in California: he believes we need an open political system, not a closed one. Gov. Schwarzenegger was a major supporter of Proposition 14 in California, which reformed the semi-closed partisan primary system for statewide and federal elections to an open, nonpartisan system. He also s

While no longer operative in the presidential election, the voter rebellion witnessed during the primaries is alive and well. South Dakota is now the epicenter, where Amendment V for Nonpartisan Elections gives voters the chance to reclaim their elections from the political establishment and send a message to Washington. To many around the country, South Dakota would seem an unlikely place to be leading the voter rebellion. But the state best known for Mount Rushmore has a famous and historic i

Green Party ballot access campaigns have had more success in 2016 than ever before, according to Rick Lass, Ballot Access Coordinator for the Jill Stein campaign. You can check out the Greens' infographic to see states turn green as each state's required signatures are submitted. So far, 43 states are green. Lass is sure that Greens will make it onto 44 state ballots, plus Washington, D.C. The only state so far, with no chance of turning green is South Dakota. Greens failed to gain ballot acce

© 2016 by Hedrick Smith. Republished with permission from the author. Smith is the executive editor of reclaimtheamericandream.org. WASHINGTON — In this tumultuous election year, little attention has focused on the groundswell of support for political reform across grass-roots America. Beyond Bernie Sanders’s call for a political revolution, a broad array of state-level citizen movements are pressing for reforms against Citizens United, gerrymandering and campaign megadonors to give average vot

1. Both parties engage in and benefit from gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing district lines for partisan gain. In 2010, Republicans invested millions in statewide races to retake state legislatures for the purpose of controlling congressional redistricting. Since then, Republicans have created highly gerrymandered maps in states like North Carolina and Virginia. Democrats are guilty of gerrymandering as well: Maryland hosts some of the most contorted, gerrymandered districts in the count

Green Party signature coordinators across the country are reporting an influx of Bernie Sanders supporters to the Greens' campaign. How far the new momentum will take the party in the 2016 election is yet to be seen. The first order of business is to get the Greens recognized on state ballots, or at least to get Jill Stein, the presumptive presidential nominee, recognized as an independent presidential candidate. As of August 1 Several ballot access deadlines hit this week. In addition to the

A lot of people are working hard to fix our broken system. Problem is, most people don’t know just how many important efforts are making strides because the media doesn’t spend much time talking about them. So we are. Voter disenfranchisement and disillusionment has been on the rise for a number of years, but there is something special about this presidential election season. Maybe it’s the fact that we now have the two most disliked presidential nominees in the history of modern politics. In