Washington – They call Missouri the “Show Me State.” Well, this year the people of Missouri need to show us all whether they’re going to let the power brokers in the state legislature kill the election law reforms adopted by a majority of Missouri voters two years ago. Normally, when we talk politics in America, […]

Washington – No state has done more for voter rights and ballot access this year than Virginia, and women were the key drivers of those reforms. Go back half a dozen years and Virginia’s state government looked Deep South and Deep Red. The Virginia legislature was run by Republicans, mastered and marshaled by men. Democrats […]

Washington –  Just a few months ago, the smart money in Democratic political circles was no longer betting on Wisconsin as a likely winnable state in the November election battle to unseat President Trump. But the surprising outcome of the state’s April 7 election has put Wisconsin back in play. Wisconsin voters set off Republican […]

Washington – Okay, America, how do we vote in 2020 with coronavirus facing us? Wisconsin chose to bull ahead – stick with its April 7 date and in-person voting. Democratic Governor Tony Evers proposal the state put off the primary until June or at least make it  all vote-by-mail. But Republican leaders in the legislature […]

  by Hedrick Smith What struck me when I began reporting on grassroots citizen reform movements in states as varied as Florida, Connecticut, and South Dakota was how creative and ingenious political amateurs were in generating ideas for reform and how gutsy and resourceful they were in mobilizing millions of voters to adopt state-level reforms […]

by Hedrick Smith It’s been a couple of weeks since our film, THE DEMOCRACY REBELLION, began airing on PBS stations across the country, and the response to these stories of grassroots political reforms has been fantastic! “Your brilliant program is the only bright spot in my day. I actually watched it on my cellphone in […]

Washington – Except for the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination, our national media is so mesmerized and monopolized by the political war zone in Washington that you’d think nothing important ever happens in the rest of the country (except perhaps natural disasters). Unfortunately, that means the major media have largely missed one of the […]

WASHINGTON – The news flow has been pretty rough in the closing weeks of 2019 – the harsh conflict over impeachment, threats from North Korea and the persistent challenge of China, the dangers of fresh Russian interference in the 2020 elections, relentless partisan warfare. But there’s another story about American Democracy that gets little play […]

Washington – The populist revolt against the Electoral College burst into action after Al Gore won the nationwide popular vote for president in 2000 but George W. Bush won the Presidency. It gained new momentum after Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016, but Trump won the White House in the […]

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 […]