Washington – The key takeaway from the super-heated battle for Georgia’s 6th Congressional district, where Republican veteran Karen Handel beat Democratic neophyte Jon Ossoff, is that partisan gerrymandering is king. It swings elections more powerfully and reliably than a flood of MegaMoney. Democrats and their supposedly “independent” Super-PACS turned this special election into the most […]
Our political world is feeling the after-shocks of Campaign 2016. The question now is whether President Trump and the GOP in Congress will deliver on Candidate Trump’s promises of a better deal for working middle class Americans or whether Trump’s new allegiance to the elite and the ideological conflicts within the Republican Party will do the […]
Washington – Trouble ahead on taxes and other priorities for President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan from the Republican right-wing Freedom Caucus which successfully “Gerry-rolled” the supposed Powers-That-Be on health care. The president has warned the gang of GOP right-wing rebels that he’ll be gunning for them in 2018, if they don’t toe the party […]
Sioux Falls –Time and again, opinion polls tell us that 70%, 80% and even 90% of Americans believe our political system is broken but think there’s nothing We the People can do about it. Perhaps a progressive state like California or Massachusetts might pass an isolated reform, but the political cognoscenti regard the rest of […]
Washington – The untold story of Campaign 2016 is that political reform is on the move in grass roots America. Not just Bernie Sanders’s trumpet call for a political revolution, but citizen movements at the state level pressing for political reforms against Citizens United, partisan gerrymandering and dark money to make elections fairer, ease gridlock in […]
Washington – In its focus on presidential personality politics, the mainstream media has overlooked a stunning watershed in U.S. political history – campaign reform has jumped this year from a fringe issue, popular with grass roots reformers, to a high profile cause embraced by a major White House contender. This past week, Hillary Clinton promised […]
Washington – In a stunning defeat for what one judge called “gerrymandering on steroids,” a three-judge federal court has ruled that the Republican gerrymandering of North Carolina’s congressional districts in 2011 was unconstitutional on grounds that it was racially driven and illegally packed too many black voters into two districts. The court gave the legislature just […]
Washington – Back in the 1960s, when I was covering Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis and other civil rights activists for The New York Times, I remember die-hard segregationists hurling an accusation at Dr. King that he was an “outside agitator.” “You’re comin’ into our town,” they would bellow, whether it was Birmingham or […]
Washington – It’s already clear that the next House Speaker will face crippling mutinies by the 45 Republican rebels who knocked off John Boehner and intimidated Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. And that’s because the insurgents know they can defy their party leadership without fear of retribution from the voters because Republican gerrymandering protects them. Yes, […]
OLGA,WA – If you care about American democracy and you’re sick of politicians’ clinging to power by concocting political monopolies in their home districts, then take heart – and take a cue – from the recent Supreme Court decision that casts a shadow on partisan gerrymandering. Take note, too, that in Florida the state supreme […]
Hedrick Smith, who conceived this website and is its principal writer and architect, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy award-winning documentary producer for PBS and PBS FRONTLINE. more »
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