Raleigh, NC – The moment of truth has come for North Carolina, which epitomizes the nation’s mounting struggle over the partisan rigging of elections by Republican or Democratic majorities in state legislatures gerrymandering election districts to maintain their party’s lock on power. Fifteen states have adopted some kind of reform to make the drawing of […]
Orcas Island, WA – How about a quickie quiz on this year’s elections? Question – What did states as politically dissimilar as Utah, Michigan, Colorado and Missouri have in common in the 2018 election? Not House or Senate races. Not red or blue. No, the unique similarity is that in those four states, People Power […]
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 […]
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 […]
Washington – What got lost in the mudslinging of the second presidential debate and the political uproar over Donald Trump’s bragging about predatory sexism was an important watershed in U.S. political history – the political reforms that a majority of Americans back in opinion polls gained a first tier advocate moving closer to the White […]
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 […]
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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