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In 47 US states, the secretary of state is a recognized statewide office, and in most of those states, voters get to decide who holds it. But in three 3 states — Maine, Tennessee, and New Hampshire — the legislature holds that power exclusively.

In an age when democracy feels more like a battleground than a meeting of minds, something remarkable happened in my small New England town, Manchester-by-the-Sea.

It may be hard to believe, but as of April 2025, there is still one election in the US from the last election cycle that has not been called: the 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court election between incumbent Democrat Justice Allison Riggs and Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin.

In discussions with an elderly voter in Colorado about Proposition 131, the unsuccessful 2024 ballot measure to create a nonpartisan primary with ranked choice voting (RCV), in the general election, we learned something important. This individual had voted against Proposition 131, casting his mail ballot on the day he received it. A week later, he received a campaign ad mailer that Colorado’s governor and Denver’s mayor had endorsed Proposition 131, which may have influenced his decision.

With two post-census election cycles in the books, congressional district maps are mostly set for the remainder of the decade – which means we will know the outcomes of the vast majority of House elections before voters even cast ballots in November 2026, 2028 and 2030.

Perhaps one of the most pervasive myths in American politics is that a voter should vote because it matters to them personally.

While working to activate, energize, and turnout their voters on Election Day, Democrats and Republicans are playing wedges with the pie chart, but the Dems are crying foul.

The 2024 presidential election is considered extremely tight and much like the 2020 election will be decided by less than 100,000 votes in a small handful of states – if polling is any indication of the state of the election.

In the United States, elections–and the governments they produce–are lagging indicators of public sentiment. Elections simply provide a quantitative measure of what the voters believe. The governments that emerge from elections merely establish order and discipline with respect to those policies and approaches that have already been emotionally and intellectually pioneered and adopted by the American people.

Close and contested elections are a part of American history, and the upcoming presidential election will likely continue this tradition.