Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

On election security, Democrats and Republicans see different Americas

Election booth

A new poll shows that Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided on the security of U.S. elections going into the 2020 voting season.

Hill Street Studios/Getty Images

Like so many other attitudes toward pressing problems these days, attitudes about election security are deeply divided along party lines, a poll out Tuesday finds.

Overall, 41 percent of people surveyed this month worry the country is either not very well prepared — or not prepared at all — to keep this year's presidential election secure and free of foreign interference.

But while two-thirds of Democrats believe the country is not ready, 85 percent of Republicans say the opposite, according to the results of a Marist Poll conducted for National Public Radio and PBS NewsHour.


The survey also found that seven out of eight Democrats (88 percent) believe Donald Trump encouraged interference in the presidential election he won four years ago, while only 13 percent of Republicans believe the same.

A variety of investigations found that Russian operatives attempted to hack into election systems during the 2016 campaign and election. They had little direct success, but the attempts have caused widespread official anxiety about the security of the country's voting systems heading into the 2020 election — and the allocations of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to plug vulnerabilities.

Three other results from the survey similarly exposed deep partisan divides when it comes to perceptions about the state of American democracy:

  • Barely half of Democrats believe American elections are fair, but 80 percent of Republicans believe they are fair.
  • While 54 percent of Democrats believe it is likely a foreign country will tamper with the voting this year, just 19 percent of Republicans think that.
  • Among Democrats, 58 percent think it is likely many votes in the 2020 election will not be counted. Among Republicans, 38 percent have this fear.

Marist surveyed 1,259 adults during the first full week of this month; the results have a 3.5 percentage point margin of error.

Read More

Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

"On Las Vegas Boulevard" sign.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash. Unplash+ license obtained by IVN Editor Shawn Griffiths.

Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

CARSON CITY, NEV. - A surprise last-minute bill to open primary elections to Nevada’s largest voting bloc, registered unaffiliated voters, moved quickly through the state legislature and was approved by a majority of lawmakers on the last day of the legislative session Monday.

The bill, AB597, allows voters not registered with a political party to pick between a Republican and Democratic primary ballot in future election cycles. It does not apply to the state’s presidential preference elections, which would remain closed to registered party members.

Keep ReadingShow less
Voter registration

In April 2025, the SAVE Act has been reintroduced in the 119th Congress and passed the House, with a much stronger chance of becoming law given the current political landscape.

SDI Productions

The SAVE Act: Addressing a Non-Existent Problem at the Cost of Voter Access?

In July 2024, I wrote about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act when it was first introduced in Congress. And Sarah and I discussed it in an episode of Beyond the Bill Number which you can still listen to. Now, in April 2025, the SAVE Act has been reintroduced in the 119th Congress and passed the House, with a much stronger chance of becoming law given the current political landscape. It's time to revisit this legislation and examine its implications for American voters.

Read the IssueVoter analysis of the bill here for further insight and commentary.

Keep ReadingShow less
Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries
person in blue denim jeans and white sneakers standing on gray concrete floor
Photo by Phil Scroggs on Unsplash

Independent Voters Gain Ground As New Mexico Opens Primaries

With the stroke of a pen, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham enfranchised almost 350,000 independent voters recently by signing a bill for open primaries. Just a few years ago, bills to open the primaries were languishing in the state legislature, as they have historically across the country. But as more and more voters leave both parties and declare their independence, the political system is buckling. And as independents begin to organize and speak out, it’s going to continue to buckle in their direction.

In 2004, there were 120,000 independent voters in New Mexico. A little over 10 years later, when the first open primary bill was introduced, that number had more than doubled. That bill never even got a hearing. But today the number of independents in New Mexico and across the country is too big to ignore. Independents are the largest group of voters in ten states and the second-largest in most others. That’s putting tremendous pressure on a system that wasn’t designed with them in mind.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

"Voter Here" sign outside of a polling location.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Stopping the Descent Toward Banana Republic Elections

President Trump’s election-related executive order begins by pointing out practices in Canada, Sweden, Brazil, and elsewhere that outperform the U.S. But it is Trump’s order itself that really demonstrates how far we’ve fallen behind. In none of the countries mentioned, or any other major democracy in the world, would the head of government change election rules by decree, as Trump has tried to do.

Trump is the leader of a political party that will fight for control of Congress in 2026, an election sure to be close, and important to his presidency. The leader of one side in such a competition has no business unilaterally changing its rules—that’s why executive decrees changing elections only happen in tinpot dictatorships, not democracies.

Keep ReadingShow less