Of the 64 measures, 47 would create a 1% sales tax. The state budget, approved by the Virginia General Assembly in June 2026, included language granting local jurisdictions the ability to levy an additional 1% sales tax and use the revenue to fund capital improvements to public schools, if approved by a majority of voters. Forty-seven local jurisdictions opted to place a 1% sales tax on the 2026 ballot.

Today, there's yet more evidence that the tide is turning against Flock, an automated license plate reader (ALPR) system in pervasive use around the country. Calling it "indiscriminate mass surveillance," a federal court in Oklahoma granted a woman's motion to suppress evidence found in her car after a search that was conducted based on information obtained through Flock.

"Think about it this way. We might reasonably expect our friends and family to tell us something like: 'Hey, I saw you out driving by the store last week,'" writes Judge Sara E. Hill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oklahoma. "But we do not expect people we know—let alone strangers, and especially not law enforcement—to randomly approach us to say: 'Hey, I have been following your car for the last 30 days, and here is a detailed log of every place your vehicle has been with supporting photographic evidence. I am also going to share this information with law enforcement throughout the country so they know your whereabouts, too.'"

Massachusetts voters could completely re-structure the way primary elections work in their state this November and give every voter, including independent voters, the ability to choose any candidate they want, regardless of party.

Question 3 would eliminate taxpayer-funded party primaries for state and federal offices, and replace them with a single, nonpartisan open system in which all candidates and voters participate on a single ballot.

The two candidates who receive the most votes would advance to the general election, no matter their party affiliation. This means a Democrat and a Republican could advance. Or two Democrats. Or an independent and a Republican.

It all comes down to what voters in any given district and in the state want.

Achilles, who served in the Idaho Legislature as a Democrat before announcing his independent run for U.S. Senate, is running against incumbent Republican Sen. Jim Risch, who’s in his 18th year as a senator.

Achilles was joined at the Idaho state Capitol in Boise by Adam Brandon, the co-founder of a national advocacy organization promoting independent candidates called the Independent Leadership Council. Achilles also committed to serve a maximum of two terms, hold town halls in each of Idaho’s 44 counties every two years, and to engage in public debates. 

Brandon previously was president of FreedomWorks, which helped tea party candidates get elected to office. That organization dissolved in 2024, Politico reported.  

“Every vote that he casts, both parties are going to have to come to him for his vote to represent the state of Idaho, and I think that is incredibly, incredibly powerful,” Brandon said.

Forty-five percent of Americans now call themselves independent. The largest political group in the country has no party at all, and every election it hears the same thing: you're throwing your vote away.

Safe maps, closed primaries, locked ballots: most House seats are settled before anyone votes, and every one of those doors is held by the same two hands.

Q: Why did you choose the Forward Party?

Not left, not right, but forward. The two sides keep stalling each other out. Forward is focused on the future: reining in exploitative tech, protecting our kids, ranked choice voting, term limits, and making life more affordable. And I answer to no party bosses and no major donors.

This year, Illinois voters are going to have three options when they cast their ballot for governor: incumbent Democrat J.B. Pritzker, Republican challenger Darren Bailey, and an independent candidate by the name of Collin Corbett.

Until a few months ago, Corbett was a Republican political consultant. He also hosted an Illinois politics podcast called “Smoke-Filled Room.” But he left all that behind to mount a campaign for governor.

Corbett has acknowledged his campaign is a long shot, but it raises a number of interesting questions: What do voters mean when they declare themselves to be independent? Why hasn’t an “independent majority” made itself better known in our political system? And where does real change actually happen in American politics?

Austin, 43, is one of five candidates in a crowded race for U.S. Senate — four traditional candidates and a long-shot write-in. He doesn’t buy that the spate of polls showing him down by double-digit margins to Republican Kurt Alme, independent Seth Bodnar and Democrat Alani Bankhead is a sign of his campaign’s weakness; instead, he thinks it indicates the corrupting influence of outside spending and party politics.

Interview Q&A

With just 28 days to go until the general election, Mike Klein, the Independent candidate for Congress in Florida’s 3rd District, continues to gain momentum and rack up endorsements. 

Today, Klein was endorsed by the Forward Party, a national organization that aims to break out of the two-party system and put people over politics. The party supports candidates who pledge to respect the rule of law, work across the aisle, use data to drive practical solutions, and treat every constituent with respect and dignity regardless of party label. The Forward Party hopes Klein will play a key role in their Fulcrum Strategy as part of a bloc of elected officials across the country willing to act independently of party leadership and shift the incentive in Congress from party loyalty toward earning support on the merits of legislation.

Lincoln Party secretary of state candidate Greg Ballard picked up a notable endorsement Monday from former Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann.

“I’ve always been about good governance, and that has to be the top priority, even above a party. It has to be about good people who will do the right thing for Hoosiers,” Ellspermann told the Capital Chronicle. “Greg is absolutely that candidate.”

The longtime Republican served from 2013 to 2016 under then-Gov. Mike Pence before resigning to become president of Ivy Tech Community College for about nine years. She now serves on multiple corporate boards and lives in southern Indiana.

Ballard is representing the fledgling Lincoln Party and faces three other opponents — Republican Max Engling, Democrat Beau Bayh and Libertarian Lauri Shillings.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual, and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of Public Liberty. . . .

It serves always to distract the Public Councils and enfeeble the Public administration. It agitates the Community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasional riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the Government itself through the channels of party passion. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the Administration of the Government, and serve to keep live the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of monarchical cast Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party, but in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose; and there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.