Government-US Electoral System

How open primaries and ranked-choice voting can help break partisan gridlock

by Daily News Lesson 6/6/24 PBS

How the parties select their candidates is a major factor in the increasing partisanship we've seen in recent years. Recently, Alaska has been trying something different. It's already showing results but facing some resistance. Judy Woodruff traveled there for her ongoing series about divisions in the country, America at a Crossroads.

Voters will decide critical statewide ballot measures in midterm election

by Laura Barron Lopez 18/10/22 PBS NEWS

For many voters this year, the focus has been on contests for governor, senator or local representatives, but voters in 36 states will decide the future of abortion access, health care and even voting itself. Laura Barrón-López sat down with Reid Wilson of Pluribus News to discuss the ballot measures.

Why Billionaires Fund Anti-Trans & Anti-Black-History Political Movements

by Thomnhartmann 16/8/23 DAILY KOS

 Almost 12 percent of Americans, over 37 million of us, live in dire poverty. According to OECD numbers, while only 5 percent of Italians and 11 percent of Japanese workers toil in low-wage jobs, almost a quarter of Americans — 23 percent — work for wages that can’t support a normal lifestyle. (And low-income Japanese and Italians have free healthcare and college.)

How the far right tore apart one of the best tools to fight voter fraud

by Miles Parks 6/6/23 NPR

On a night in January 2022, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin stepped on stage in a former airbase in Houma, La. With American flags draped from the stage, the topic of the night was democracy

Once Hard Core MAGA, He Now Sees Trump as a Wannabe Dictator

by Paul Glickman 15/6/25 DAILY KOS

Danny Collins’ family lived “pretty much in poverty” during his childhood in Fort Pierce, Florida in the ‘80s and ‘90s. When he was 9, he discovered that the woman he thought was his biological mother was in fact his stepmother. It turned out that his biological mom left when he

We’re all on the same team’: Inside the Alaska model for US politics

by Francine Kiefer 21/1/23 The Christian Science Monitor

When Democrat Mary Sattler Peltola went looking to hire a chief of staff, she chose someone with hands-on experience and a deep knowledge of her home state, Alaska. He was also a Republican. Alex Ortiz’s last job was serving in the same role for her predecessor, Don Young, a giant in the state who died in 2022 after setting a record for longest-serving Republican congressman in United States history.

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New York City might elect a truly progressive mayor – thanks to ranked-choice voting

by Katrina Vanden Heuvel 18/6/25 The Guardian

With a week left until New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, one might have thought that the former governor Andrew Cuomo would be measuring the drapes at Gracie Mansion. Real estate developers, corporations like Doordash, a smattering of billionaires and even Billy Joel have shoveled cash into his campaign, with his Super Pac spending more money than any other outside force in the city’s political history. This is on top of his entering the race with major name recognition advantage, amounting to a 20- or 30-point lead as recently as May.

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