This election will be the first in 50 years not to offer full protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the Movement for Black Lives is hopeful.
鈥淭he Federal District and Appeals Courts are willing to do what the Supreme Court wouldn鈥檛 do, which is acknowledge the reality that racial discrimination in voting persists today.鈥
This is the first election year with the same number of millennial voters as baby boomers. Here鈥檚 how lobbyists for young people could change our politics on prisons, climate, and student debt.
Black votes matter, but some question whether Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton鈥檚 endorsements from relatives of police brutality victims are appropriate.
The presidential race is basically an expensive hiring process with 319 million stakeholders. If businesses and government agencies go to such great lengths to eliminate gender bias in their hiring, shouldn鈥檛 we do the same for our elections?
Early results show Seattle passing the Honest Elections ballot initiative. Voters will receive four $25 鈥渄emocracy vouchers鈥 every election year, which they can donate to the campaign of their choice.
The criticism aimed at Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford has ranged from the deeply piercing to the explicitly racist. But what they did was necessary, a welcome harbinger of more direct disruption.
In the far north of the Great Plains, you have to be a pharmacist to own a pharmacy. Next week, voters could overturn that rule鈥攑utting the state's thriving independent drugstores at risk.
If those three measures pass, more states will be added to the list of places where healing from the drug war can begin, places where people will no longer face jail time because of a little nugget in their pockets.
The McCutcheon decision will boost the political power of the one percent at the expense of the rest of us. But it also adds to the urgency of the movement that's working to take back our democracy.