Independent Voter

09/03/2026

Why does President Trump continue to attack ranked choice voting? Trump recently continued attacking Alaska's election system while vowing to campaign for Sen. Dan Sullivan in one of 2026's closest Senate races.

Speaking at a White House press conference Wednesday, Trump called ranked choice "totally dishonest," claiming someone "backstage" that nobody knows picks the winner. In reality, it's simple: voters rank candidates in order of preference, and if no one wins a majority of first choices, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots count for their next choice until someone has a majority. Alaskans have approved the system twice - once in 2020, and again in 2024 when they rejected a repeal effort by just 664 votes.

Trump is not alone. Opposition to ranked choice voting tends to come from whichever party holds power. Just this summer, the DNC advanced a rule that would have banned ranked choice voting in 2028 presidential primaries - even in states where voters made it law - before reversing course after backlash from its own members and reform advocates. In Alaska, meanwhile, Republican-aligned groups have bankrolled repeated efforts to repeal the system.

What's at stake: about 60 percent of Alaska voters are registered unaffiliated with any party, and scrapping the nonpartisan system would let party leaders - not voters - decide who gets a real say in taxpayer-funded elections.

09/02/2026

Why would Mike Rogers invite JD Vance to Michigan? Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has a theory - "maybe you got a Vance bromance."

Speaking to reporters in Detroit as the vice president campaigned across town, El-Sayed jabbed Vance with a nod to the debunked internet rumor about a couch - "We don't have more couches here than they have in Ohio" - and leaned into the Michigan-Ohio rivalry, saying Michigan will "send his ass back to Ohio" in November.

Vance headlined a super PAC event in Sterling Heights alongside Rogers and gubernatorial candidate John James, where he attacked El-Sayed but never mentioned the trade war with Canada - the issue El-Sayed built his entire press conference around, calling the tariffs a "vanity war" on Michigan. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the Rogers-El-Sayed race a toss-up.

09/02/2026

"10,000 Americans change their voter registration status from D or R to I every week. CNN puts independents at 48% of the electorate. Latino independent turnout in California primaries has surged 40% since 2022, three times the overall turnout growth."

Open Primaries President John Opdycke says Ross Perot 2.0 is shaping up, but without a Perot. He argues it is "a movement built around the core American principles of fairness and competition."

What do you think? (Link in the comments.)

09/01/2026

Massachusetts already lets independents vote in party primaries.

But they still have to pick a party’s ballot before they can pick a candidate.

Now 51% of voters support replacing that system with one primary open to everyone.

Should voters have to choose a party first just to choose who represents them? (Full story in the comments.)

08/31/2026

According to Politico, a majority of working-class voters — whether they backed Trump or Harris in 2024 — believe politicians who promise to help them are mostly just trying to win their votes.

Is that cynicism — or experience?

For years, working-class voters have turned from one party to the other looking for relief, watched promises go unfulfilled, and then been told the answer is to put the other side back in power.

At what point does this stop being a problem with individual politicians and start being a problem with the system itself?

08/27/2026

Does the right to vote derive from citizenship, or upon joining a political party? (Link to article in comments)

In the face of partisan operatives trying to exclude independents from voting in California, a coalition of FOURTEEN California legislators just made a bold statement as the authors of a constitutional amendment (ACA24) to protect the fundamental right to vote, for ALL citizens.

08/27/2026

Republicans are redrawing maps. Democrats are responding. And Maryland lawmakers want fewer state constitutional restrictions when they draw congressional districts.

If both parties keep redrawing maps to beat the other side, who ends the redistricting arms race? (Full story in the comments.)

08/27/2026

Do you agree?

08/24/2026

"The more damning fact is that new voters are overwhelmingly rejecting both parties. In Pennsylvania, nearly 70% of new voters have registered as independents since last September. In North Carolina, that number is over 90%.

This hasn't happened overnight. Over the last two decades, party dysfunction and a litany of government failures — shutdowns measured in weeks, a ballooning national debt, rising health care costs, crumbling infrastructure — have driven congressional approval down and independent registration up." - IVN guest contributor Russell Dutton

Is anyone surprised? (Link in the comments.)

08/20/2026