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Florida may be on the verge of scrapping partisan primaries for most elections.
Florida voters will decide whether to end partisan primaries
Floridians will decide this fall whether to transform the state's polarized politics by opening most primaries to all voters, regardless of party.
Because Florida is the nation's biggest battleground state, the result will be enormously important to the future of one of the core causes of the democracy reform world — diminishing the Republican and Democratic duopoly over political power.
The measure's place on the November ballot was assured Thursday by the state Supreme Court, which is called on to review every constitutional amendment proposed through the gathering of petition signatures. The court ruled 4-1 that the proposal met the necessary legal and clarity requirements.
Can't argue with science: An MIT study supports unrigging elections
Griffiths is a contributor to Independent Voter News.
The beginning of the 2020 presidential election was an unmitigated disaster. Results that should have been reported the night of the Iowa caucuses instead took days as a result of technical issues with an app and inconsistent numbers being reported. Politicos were baffled while accusations of a rigged process arose after the candidate with the most votes didn't leave with the most delegates.
At the center of the controversy was independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, and suddenly the question became whether or not we would witness a repeat of 2016. Was the party once again trying to sabotage the Sanders campaign? Are we looking at yet another rigged 2016 presidential primary process?
Many Sanders supporters took to the Internet to cry foul, while Sanders called the caucuses an "embarrassment" and a "disgrace."
California primary voters will have more flexibility to change their party affiliation prior to the the March 3 primary if a voter registration bill is enancted.
Bills advance in California for more open primaries, mandatory voting
California, the biggest and one of the bluest states in the country, is about to enact a bill that will make voter registration less rigidly partisan.
The measure looks likely to be on the books in time to permit many thousands of additional people to vote in the Democratic primary on March 3. California has the biggest trove of delegates in the country, 415 of them — by far the biggest prize of 16 states and territories voting on Super Tuesday.
And it is not the only voting bill drawing headlines in Sacramento this week. A Democratic lawmaker who's been central to several of the state's recent expansions of access to the ballot box proposed making voting mandatory.
Something has to give: The case for independents
Mikalaski is a staff writer for Independent Voter News and marketing coordinator for IVC Media, a digital marketing firm affiliated with IVN.
This is the first in a three-part series on independent voters.
The most basic right in a healthy democracy is the right to vote. Without this right, governments can turn into the worst of autocracies and dictatorships, ignoring the needs of citizens and abusing the power of the state. Voter discrimination is not a new phenomenon and has been around since the very beginning of the United States.
When we talk about voter discrimination in the U.S., many obvious examples come to mind.
When our country was formed in 1776, only white men over the age of 21 were allowed to vote. Black men weren't legally given the right to vote until the 15th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1870 and even so, previously Confederate states passed Jim Crow laws that continued to systematically disenfranchise black voters.
