On October 27 the Associated Press reported that Republicans fear Libertarian candidates could cost them the United States Senate. The party holds fifty-three seats and can lose three and keep control with Vice President JD Vance breaking ties. The AP […]
The South Rises described four states, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi, held by one coalition at every layer at once, and asked whether the checks built into their governments still worked once the arithmetic stopped requiring them to. November 3 […]
A New England town meeting runs off a warrant, the list of articles the selectmen post weeks ahead, and every voter in town gets a say on each one. Massachusetts voters will see something close to a statewide warrant on […]
In 1643 Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed the United Colonies of New England. Each colony sent two commissioners, and any decision needed six of the eight votes. The confederation handled what no single colony could, chiefly defense […]
Schisms Within ended on a question: whether a primary-season fracture costs a coalition the general election, or whether November simply reassembles what August split apart. The Great Lakes states, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, vote on November 3, and […]
In 1268 the Republic of Venice settled on a way to choose its doge that still looks like a puzzle invented to torment students. The Great Council drew thirty of its members by lot. The thirty were cut to nine […]
Seven states will put an environmental measure in front of voters this November, and reading through all nine at once — a $500 million Arkansas bond, a Colorado sales-tax carve-out, a right to hunt written into a state constitution, a […]
An Industrial Park from a Bloated Government already traced what California's government has become in plain fiscal terms: a general fund that roughly doubled in a decade, a single-year surplus larger than most states' entire budgets, a swing into tens […]
Swap out the council, the mayor, the party in charge of a given town, and three problems stay exactly where they were. They aren't failures of any particular administration's competence or good faith. They're built into what a municipality is […]
What Sacramento Is Deciding, Austin's Long Recess, Beacon Hill's Interval Training, and The View from Tallahassee each read one state capital's session for what it actually decides about social liberty, bill by bill. The South Rises broke that pattern once […]
The South Rises took the East South Central states as a single unit because all four were governed, this year, by the same coalition with enough margin that the ordinary checks on that coalition had mostly stopped checking. The Great […]
A libertarian visiting rural Nebraska and a libertarian visiting Manhattan tend to notice opposite things. In the country, the complaint is usually that government is too far away, too slow, too indifferent to conditions only a local actually understands. In […]
Nothing on this site sorts cleanly onto a ballot line, and that's worth addressing directly rather than treating as an accident of subject matter. Personal Sovereignty argued that a Millian respect for individual judgment is the irreducible unit underneath the […]
What Sacramento Is Deciding, Austin's Long Recess, and Beacon Hill's Interval Training each took a single state capital as the unit worth watching. This entry breaks that pattern on purpose. Growing a Movement as a Design Problem argued that the […]
Our federalism pieces have spent months on a single recurring question: at what altitude should a given decision actually be made. Splitting the Atom of Sovereignty described a constitutional design that keeps that question open and arguable rather than settling […]
Most of what a government is, historically, is one thing: a single will at the top, however that will gets chosen or replaced. A king, a parliament, a politburo — the label changes, but sovereignty itself stays whole, a single […]
Three regions into this beat and no two legislatures have run on the same clock. What Sacramento Is Deciding covered a state in continuous annual session against a hard floor deadline. Austin's Long Recess covered one that meets once every […]
What Sacramento Is Deciding and Austin's Long Recess gave this beat two structural patterns already: a legislature in continuous annual session against a hard floor deadline, and a legislature that meets once every two years and spends the other nineteen […]
Ask someone how a political movement grows and they'll usually answer in terms of message, money, or charisma — the right slogan, enough donors, a leader people will follow. Those things matter, but they're not what actually determines whether a […]
What Sacramento Is Deciding opened this site's legislature beat with California, mid-session, bills moving through committee on a clock. Texas is the second region on that beat, and it immediately breaks the format that piece assumed: there is no Texas […]
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