Electronic voting machines can be hacked. There have been so many problems, irregularities and malfunctions that voters have no confidence in them. Because there have been problems with paper ballots being lost, destroyed or mysteriously disappeared we demand that the ballots have a clear and accurate monitoring system, where ballots are hand counted and that hand counting be recorded and verified and the chain of ballot handling unbroken.

Companies like AirBnB are exacerbating California’s affordable housing crisis, but lawmakers in Sacramento want to give the company a free ride. Assemblymember Matt Harper -- an Orange County Republican -- has introduced AB1220, a bill that prohibits cities from collecting taxes on short term residential rentals, like those rented through AirBnB. Sign on to tell your Assemblymember to support affordable housing, not handouts to Airbnb: reject AB1220. The explosion in short term rentals through AirBnB is decreasing long term rental stock in California, and driving up prices. And in many California cities, there are laws against converting scarce housing resources to tourist use. Using political influence, Airbnb has engaged in a systematic campaign to dismantle those laws and avoid paying any taxes to offset their impact. Now, Airbnb is taking their lobbying efforts to the state level, and this bill could exempt the company from local taxes. It’s bad enough cities are losing valuable rental housing stock. The least AirBnB and the property owners that use it can do is pay their fair share. We can kill this bill if we let Democrats in Sacramento know we are watching. Democrats control the legislature, but history shows they will quietly pander to special interests like Airbnb unless we expose this. This bill could be heard any day in the Assembly Committee on Local Government. If enough of us speak out right now, we can make sure this bill never makes it out of Committee. But we have to act now or you can be guaranteed that Assemblymembers will push it forward. Sign on right now to tell your Assemblymember to reject AB1220.

As the legislature continues to cut public funding for education, we believe that voter approved funding by proposition must be restored. A true conservative invests in the future and for Arizona that is education.

HF 1455, recently introduced by Rep. David Bly (D) and Rep. Rod Hamilton (R), and SF 1657, introduced by Sen. Kevin Dahle (D), propose a state Rural Distributed Generation Tax Credit. The bills would provide farms and rural small businesses with a 30% tax credit on the capital and installation costs for small-scale wind turbines (up to 40 kW), solar thermal arrays, or geothermal heat exchangers. Family farms and rural businesses are best poised to implement distributed generation renewable energy systems. These entities readily meet the spatial requirement, property line setbacks, permitted use, and accessory use definitions established in zoning codes and are also located away from natural gas lines. Livestock operations are among the large energy consumers in rural Minnesota as well. Electricity consumers in rural areas pay higher electricity rates and service charges than investor-owned ratepayers due to economics involved in servicing fewer customers per mile of electrical line. The Rural Distributed Generation Tax Credit would reduce the cost of the investment to accelerate the payback and enable diversification of farm and rural small business income. Community Wind Gardens would allow individual Xcel Energy utility customers to buy into a local wind project and receive a credit on their utility bill according to how much energy their share of the project produces each month. This would enable all customers, including those who can’t install their own wind turbine (i.e. renters and people in low wind areas), to invest in local wind projects and reduce their utility bills. Please contact Minnesota legislators and ask them to support the Rural Distributed Generation Tax Credit and Wind Gardens!

The PA Game Commission intends to vote on the trapping of otters in the near future. Please help this wonderful animal .

President Obama is currently contemplating issuing an Executive Order requiring disclosure of campaign contributions for federal contractors. This would be a very exciting victory for our movement to shine the light on corporations that are attempting to buy our elections. It is very likely that significant grassroots pressure will make the difference. Join us as we encourage President Obama to shine the light on corporate corruption of our democracy as part of nationwide rallies on April 2 – the year anniversary of the McCutcheon U.S. Supreme Court ruling that further put our democracy up for sale.

America’s criminal justice system is broken. In recent decades, we have incarcerated far too many people and kept them in prison far longer than necessary to ensure public safety. These policies have resulted in unsustainable costs and unacceptable racial disparities. Each year, over 600,000 people walk out of prison and return to our communities. They seek jobs at our local businesses, relax in our public parks, and stand in line with us at the supermarket. Instead of doing everything we can to help them transition into productive lives, we erect barriers that make it harder for formerly incarcerated individuals to rejoin society. It is time to recalibrate our approach to crime and punishment. The bipartisan REDEEM Act, recently introduced by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rand Paul (R-KY), would help to protect and restore the lives of individuals who have had contact with the criminal or juvenile justice system, while reducing recidivism. The legislation would repeal the felony drug ban for some people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. It would allow the sealing of criminal records and improve the accuracy of FBI background checks. And it would make necessary improvements to the treatment of young people who encounter the juvenile justice system. By removing barriers to reentry, the REDEEM Act would help returning citizens safely rejoin society and begin new lives. It would restore a measure of justice and fairness to the criminal and juvenile justice systems while promoting better outcomes that improve public safety. I urge you to support this important legislation to protect and restore lives while keeping communities safe. Please sign on today as a cosponsor of the bipartisan REDEEM Act. Sincerely,

Friend - My 12-year-old cousin Tamir Rice was tragically shot to death by Cleveland police on November 22, 2014. My family needs your help to make sure that the police officers who killed Tamir don't get away with murder. Tamir was in a local park playing with an airsoft toy gun when someone called 911. The caller said that the gun was “probably fake” and that the person was likely a juvenile, but even so, two police officers rushed to Tamir’s location. The officers jumped out of their car and shot him twice at point-blank range within 0.792 seconds of arriving -- we know this because the incident was caught on video. The officers then waited for more than four minutes to treat Tamir with first aid. Tamir died from the gunshots the next day. My family wants justice for our Tamir. We are demanding that the Cuyahoga County prosecutor file criminal charges against the officers who killed Tamir. Please click here to sign our petition. The way the police behaved was absolutely unacceptable. After shooting Tamir, Tamir's mom says that the police put his 14-year-old sister in the back of the patrol car when she tried to help her brother. The police even threatened to arrest Tamir's mom as she plead with them to help her dying son. These officers gunned down Tamir in broad daylight, then terrorized his mother and sister when they tried to help. They must be held accountable for their actions. Tamir was a bright, energetic young man who had his whole life ahead of him. He was a loving brother, grandson, nephew and cousin who loved sports and being around people. Now he will never get to live his life, simply because the police decided it was easier to assume a black child was dangerous than to protect him. The federal government recently issued a report detailing the Cleveland Police Department's chronic, disturbing use of excessive force. That won't stop until officers like the ones who killed Tamir are held accountable for their actions. We know that petitions can work in cases like this. After Trayvon Martin was killed, the police refused to arrest his confessed killer, George Zimmerman, until millions of people signed a petition on Change.org. We know we can get justice for Tamir, but we need your help. Please click here to sign our petition to bring criminal charges against the officers who killed Tamir. Thank you for standing with our family, and with children like Tamir all over America. LaTonya Goldsby Cleveland, Ohio

Many of us are current and former workers who love our jobs but are worried for our health and the health of our guests (including many senior citizens and families with children). Cigarette smoke puts all of us at a significantly higher risk for allergies, asthma, heart disease, lung disease, stroke, and cancer. Our communities deserve the same public health protections that apply to non-tribal establishments. Conventional wisdom in the gaming industry is that a smoking ban would hurt business, but according to the California Department of Public Health, 88% of adults in California do not smoke. A smoking ban will likely be good for business in the long term. Please sign and share with your family and friends!

Too many politically conscious citizens are barred from voting in a given election due to technicalities such as not knowing how to register to vote, or being unaware of voter registration deadlines. Enacting a motor-voter law for Virginia that includes I.D. cards will enable our state to become a more representative democracy, and set a good example for other states to follow.

America’s political system is ramping up for the 2016 presidential election. The two leading candidates for the Democratic and Republican parties are Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, respectively. Each has formed a leadership political action committee (PAC) to prepare for a run. Both are expected to announce their candidacies in the coming weeks. The Bushes and Clintons served at the pinnacle of American power without interruption for three decades beginning with Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1981. They remain as power brokers even while holding no political office; Bill Clinton serves as the de facto head of the Democratic Party. Some are concerned that potential Democratic candidates are holding back for fear of the long shadow cast on the party by the Clintons. The Bush family, too, maintains a position of power within the Republican Party. Jeb Bush has been depicted as waiting “his turn” while his brother served as president. Now, with his family and its powerful supporters behind him, his nomination is highly probable. Arthur M. Schlesinger warned forty years ago in “The Imperial Presidency” of an alarming concentration of power in the Executive Branch of the federal government. Despite this warning, power has continued shifting to the presidency at an accelerating pace. Consolidating presidential power further by limiting choice to two families is a major threat to the republic and the interests of its citizens. In the eyes of many the democratic principle of power shared among the citizenry through universal suffrage is in jeopardy. Our political system is intended to bestow equality through the voting process, but the reality is that powerful moneyed elites drive the choices put before the voters in major elections. After elections, those same few advance their priorities through direct and indirect influence that results from financial support of campaigns. The Bushes and Clintons, historically entrenched in this distorted system, are not likely to confront it. On a cultural level, the political division within the country is personified by the Bushes and Clintons. They depend on ideological polarity to muster support and gain the levers of power. To select Bush and Clinton as the party nominees for the 2016 election is to assure continued bitter division in the country for another four to eight years. It is time to move on to new and fresh ideas and faces. Regardless of one’s political affiliation, it is clear to see that the nation’s interest is best served by moving away from these two families. Visit http://www.nobushclinton2016.com for stickers and additional information.

I have been studying monarch butterflies for over forty years. In just the past 20 years we have lost 90% of them. We are losing our bees at an unsustainable rate of 30% a year. We all have to take action. N.Y.S. is on the monarch migration path and we are contributing to their demise. It is time to stop 30 years of pesticide spraying along all our roads.