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When the bombing of Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, the Trump administration had not informed the American people exactly what it was prepared to achieve.

Was the attack intended to degrade Iran’s nuclear program? Trump had declared that “obliterated” after last June’s bombing.

Was it to slow Iran’s ballistic missile program? U.S. intelligence assesses that Iran is years away from any ballistic missile that could strike the United States.

Was it to show support for Iran’s opposition, as Trump’s earlier “HELP IS ON ITS WAY” posts on Truth Social suggested? A bombing campaign that was bound to kill innocent Iranians, including 175 people at a girls elementary school near a military base, seemed an odd form of support.

I am a scholar and former practitioner of intelligence and national security policy in the White House. I believe there are lessons in effecting political change in Iran that can be taken, ironically, from the very U.S.- and British-led clandestine campaign in the mid-20th century that set Iran on the road to the intense anti-Western and anti-American sentiment that has characterized its government policy for decades.

How does this end?

President Trump has said he wants regime change in Iran but has articulated no strategy for achieving that end.

Strategy is the connection between means and ends. For waging a war, it means asking whether the military means available match the desired military outcome. In trying to effect political change, it means asking whether the instruments employed will produce the desired change.

As journalist Fareed Zakaria put it, “‘Bomb and hope’ is not a strategy.”

Looking at the last U.S. effort at regime change in Iran – the CIA’s 1953 covert program to oust Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and strengthen Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s rule – offers insight into what might have been … and what still might be this time around in Iran.

Mossadegh had moved to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company – effectively, British oil interests. Britain responded with an an oil embargo and a severe economic squeeze on Iran.

Western powers feared that prolonged Iranian instability could open the door to Soviet influence in the oil-rich country – a central Cold War concern.

By early 1953 the U.S. government, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, authorized the CIA to prepare a covert plan to remove Mossadegh and restore effective power to the shah, who at the time held a more ceremonial role. British intelligence had been pushing a similar agenda, and the two services collaborated on both the strategy and its implementation.

The operational details, especially those declassified in recent decades, paint a striking picture of a carefully planned clandestine political intervention that was successful, rather than a simple military invasion.

A far cry from ‘bomb and hope’

The British-American budget for the joint plan was modest by military standards. It was aimed at propaganda and influence operations, and it sought to shape public perception and political support.

It was composed of three elements. First it funded newspapers and printed propaganda designed to discredit Mossadegh, portraying him as corrupt or sympathetic to communism. The propaganda also promoted fears of instability and communist infiltration.

Second, according to declassified histories, agents staged “false flag” incidents – attacks attributed to communists, for example – to stoke fear and backlash against Mossadegh among religious and conservative groups.

Third, the coup planners attempted to engage influential clerical leaders and organizations to amplify anti-Mossadegh sentiment.

Shaping the crowds on Tehran’s streets proved critical to the operation. The CIA organized demonstrators to pose as pro-shah protesters, including paying individuals to chant slogans and confront Mossadegh supporters.

These orchestrated demonstrations climaxed on Aug. 19, 1953, when pro-shah forces and sympathetic leaders in the Iranian military – with CIA financial and logistical backing – seized key points of the country, confronted Mossadegh loyalists and helped topple his government. Estimates suggest around 200 to 300 people were killed in the chaotic fighting in Tehran.

What might have been, and what might be

The Mossadegh coup occurred in a less transparent world. However – and regardless of how you feel about it – the coup suggests the value of having a strategy to accomplish political change and, beyond Israel, bringing allies along if possible.

So far, Trump has called for the Iranian military and the Revolutionary Guard to lay down their arms. But the Trump administration has provided no guidance on how to do so, or to whom to do so.

Surely, the administration should be able to devise a plan for potential political change in Iran. It has insight from the years it has spent negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. Recent events suggest the extent of Israeli, if not American, penetration of Iran.

In 2018, for instance, Israel’s Mossad national intelligence agency broke into an Iranian facility and stole archives on Iran’s nuclear activities, 55,000 pages and another 55,000 files stored on CDs.

In June 2025, Israel conducted covert drone operations deep inside Iran, in concert with airstrikes on Iranian missile and military infrastructure. Mossad reportedly established an undercover drone network and launched explosive drones to neutralize air defenses and missile launchers before the main attack.

The successful targeting of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his close associates in the latest round of airstrikes suggests the extent of likely Israeli monitoring of Iranian communications by Mossad and the CIA.

Crises tend to put pressure on governments to open communications channels, and the take from any successful eavesdropping might be passed to opposition groups to help them organize and avoid capture.

If Israel can smuggle explosive drones into Iran, it should be able to make the satellite internet provider Starlink and its kin available to enable the opposition to better – and more safely – organize.

It is late in the day to emulate the Mossadegh coup with information operations, and it is probably more difficult in an era of ubiquitous social media, not newspapers. But it’s not too late to try.

I believe those brave opposition elements in Iran, who have been killed by their government and bombed by the United States and Israel, deserve no less.

Gregory F. Treverton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The Oregon Supreme Court on Feb. 5, 2026, issued a ruling that will have a wide impact. More than 1,400 criminal cases had to be dismissed, the justices ruled, due to lack of adequate counsel available for defendants.

Like other states, Oregon must provide defendants with legal representation if they cannot afford attorneys on their own. But Oregon has less than one-third of the attorneys it needs to provide adequate defense for indigents, or people who can’t afford counsel on their own.

Shortages of this scope are common around the country. Pennsylvania faces a similar shortage of about 30% of the public defenders it needs, with insufficient numbers of attorneys in nearly every county. New Mexico needs 67% more attorneys to provide effective counsel. Kansas needs 277 more public defenders, or roughly triple its current number.

As public policy researchers who study legal defense issues, we believe it’s clear that such shortages have repercussions throughout the criminal justice system.

Without enough lawyers providing indigent defense, defendants sit in jail longer, plead without guidance and risk wrongful convictions. Prosecutors face delays in clearing their cases. Court dockets slow, costs rise and public trust declines.

In other words, indigent defense shortages harm not only defendants but the justice system as a whole.

Rights to an attorney

The Sixth Amendment guarantees individuals facing criminal charges the right to defense counsel, at government expense if required. This right was clarified by a landmark Supreme Court case in 1963, Gideon v. Wainwright. The court ruled that states are required to provide attorneys to defendants who cannot afford an attorney.

About 80% to 90% of state defendants and more than 90% of federal defendants cannot afford a lawyer. The exact rate varies by state, year and type of charge, but it generally falls well above 50% of all criminal cases.

Fulfilling the promise made in Gideon often falls to public defenders and private lawyers appointed by courts. Sixty-three years after the decision, the pool of lawyers willing to fulfill this promise is rapidly shrinking, aging and is overburdened, with lawyers sometimes working without pay.

Texas reflects this national problem. There are too few lawyers handling too many cases, putting the whole criminal justice system at risk. In a research report for the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, our team at Texas A&M University found that the state lost 1,345 attorneys who had been handling indigent defense cases between 2014 and 2023, or about one-fourth of all such attorneys. That decline happened even as the total number of lawyers in Texas grew by more than 25,000.

The problem is worse in rural areas, where judges cannot find enough attorneys to appoint, slowing court operations. In Texas, 27% of attorneys in rural counties are already overburdened and exceeding recommended caseload guidelines.

“I understand the irony of a prosecutor advocating for money for a public defender office, but at the end of the day it would help the county carry out its constitutional obligation,” Val Verde County prosecutor David Martinez told the Texas Tribune. “It would save the county hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run.”

Fewer attorneys available

This problem is not new. A 2004 report from the American Bar Association outlined funding shortages that hampered hiring of defense counsel, leading to inexperienced and sometimes incompetent lawyers handling excessive caseloads.

But the problem has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruption of the labor market.

Our research shows that attorneys who take indigent defense cases often do so out of a strong sense of civic duty and commitment to public service. Attorneys are asked to do far more than just apply the law. They regularly help clients navigate housing, transportation, substance use and mental health needs. Without a strong sense of calling, many attorneys choose other areas of practice instead of public defense.

Some attorneys with a sense of motivation are still unable to join public service. Citing the cost of repaying law school loans, they enter private practice instead.

No simple solutions

The shortage of attorneys willing to take indigent defense cases is a serious policy problem. Solving it requires expanding the pool of attorneys who are available to take these cases – both the attorneys who are practicing today and the attorneys who will enter the profession in the future.

Policymakers have mainly focused on expanding the pool of existing attorneys. The most common tools include increasing appointment fees, offering additional financial incentives and creating or expanding public defender offices.

These approaches can help in the short term, but their effects are limited. Raising fees rarely brings new attorneys into indigent defense; instead, it often lures attorneys from neighboring jurisdictions that already face shortages.

Raising fees for private lawyers also fails to address public defender offices, where attorneys are salaried and often paid less than prosecutors. Loan forgiveness programs can help recruitment and retention; research shows they matter for public service careers, but these programs are uneven across states and uncertain over time.

Financial incentives alone will not solve a workforce problem rooted in supply. A sustainable solution requires expanding the pool of prospective attorneys. We believe it would help for recruitment to begin much earlier, at the high school level, especially in rural areas, and continue through college and law school.

Current efforts tend to focus only on law students who are already committed to legal careers. Partnerships between counties, state agencies, bar associations, universities and community organizations could help build pipelines leading to public defense careers. They might offer, for example, internships and mentoring, or reduce barriers for students who want to serve their communities.

Expanding the pool of attorneys will require years of coordinated investment across states, counties, courts, law schools and the legal profession. Short-term incentives can prop up overburdened systems, but long-term recruitment will be needed to keep courts functioning and fully protect the constitutional right to counsel.

Georges Naufal has received funding from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission.

Emily Naiser has received funding from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Does politics stress you out? Did the last election cause you to lose sleep, lose your temper or lose a friend? If so, you weren’t alone.

For the better part of two decades, the American Psychological Association has documented a steady increase in the phenomenon of “political stress” among American voters. However, research and reporting during that same period have focused primarily on the political consequences of increasing polarization and division rather than the psychological consequences of the modern political climate.

As a political scientist studying how the public engages with politics and media, I wondered: What does it mean to live in a political environment that is highly confrontational, emotionally charged and difficult to escape? And how does that environment affect people over time?

During the 2024 presidential election, I teamed up with three colleagues to answer those questions. Our book, The Anxious State: Stress Polarization, and Elections in America, published in January 2026, summarizes what we learned.

While several features of the modern political landscape contribute to political stress, one culprit in particular is alarmingly efficient at converting politics into chronic stress – social media.

Political stress builds fast

We conducted four large, nationally representative surveys tracking Americans’ political attitudes and well-being, one every three months over the course of 2024. Across our election year surveys, roughly 4 in 10 American adults consistently reported that politics had caused them to experience at least one significant stress reaction in the past month. These included nontrivial conflicts with friends and family, sleep disruptions, lost tempers and being unable to mentally or emotionally disengage from politics.

In a country of roughly 260 million adults, that amounts to well over 100 million people experiencing measurable political stress in any given month.

In just one example, at each point in 2024, around 17% of American adults reported losing sleep over politics. This translates to roughly 44 million people nationwide. Sleep loss is not a trivial inconvenience. Extensive research shows that insufficient sleep is associated with impaired cognitive function, chronic health problems, diminished productivity and an increase in traffic accidents, just to name a few.

Our findings point to similar trends from the effects of lost tempers, fractured social networks and excessive political rumination. And while some degree of political stress might be expected in the lead-up to a highly consequential election, what surprised us most was how little these numbers changed over time. Despite a year filled with dramatic political events, reported levels of political stress rarely budged.

This stability suggests that political stress is no longer driven primarily by isolated moments of breaking news or electoral upheaval. Instead, it appears to be sustained by the environment in which people now encounter politics – and that environment is increasingly shaped by social media.

Why social media is different

Social media differs from earlier forms of political communication in a crucial way: Content is not presented chronologically or editorially; it is presented algorithmically. Platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok are designed to maximize attention and engagement, which means they privilege content that provokes strong emotional reactions.

In other words, content that causes outrage, fear, moral condemnation and conflict is simply more likely to keep users scrolling, clicking, commenting and sharing.

As a result, political information on social media is more likely to reach people through a sensationalized and emotionally charged lens than information encountered through traditional news sources. And given the architecture of social networks, this content tends to reach users whether they seek it out or not.

Time spent online is stressful, but engagement makes it worse

Our findings show that even passive exposure to political content on social media is linked to elevated political stress. But active engagement – such as likes, reposts and comments – makes the problem substantially worse.

People who reported frequently encountering, commenting on or sharing political content online consistently exhibited the highest overall levels of political stress in our survey. Compared with those who primarily consumed political information passively and without engaging, active participants were far more likely to report losing sleep, losing their temper and feeling unable to disengage from politics.

In other words, the more that social media turns users from observers into participants in political conflict, the greater the psychological toll appears to be.

A generational divide

These effects, while substantial, were not distributed evenly across the population.

Younger Americans, particularly members of Gen Z, reported higher levels of political stress associated with social media use than older cohorts. This is not especially surprising. Younger adults are more likely to rely on social media as a primary source of political information.

For a generation that has never known a political environment without algorithmically curated feeds, the boundary between politics and everyday life is especially thin. Politics does not arrive at scheduled times, through discrete channels. Rather, it is interspersed with expressions of social identity, entertainment and peer interaction. And this constant exposure comes with a psychological cost.

Social media alone certainly isn’t to blame for the anxious and divisive state of America’s political climate. In our research, we identified a number of factors that contribute to Americans’ current levels of exhaustion with politics, including sharp increases in partisan hostility and negative – often uncivil – campaign tactics.

But social media nonetheless stands out for how efficiently it amplifies this stress – and that is unlikely to change unless and until voters become more aware that their emotions and well-being are being negatively influenced by the very platforms they turn to for information and connection.

I don’t own or “work for” the publisher selling our recent book, but the exposure for these data would presumably benefit both they and me.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Shortly after the opening salvo of U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026 – with missiles targeting cities across the country, some of which killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – President Donald Trump declared the objective was to destroy Iran’s military capabilities and give rise to a change in government.

Framing the operation as a war of liberation, Trump called on Iranians to “take over your government.”

In the first days alone, Israel dropped over 2,000 bombs on Iranian targets, equal to half the tonnage of the 12-day Israel-Iran conflict in June 2025. Heavy U.S. bombing, meanwhile, has targeted Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as well as ballistic missile and aerial defense sites.

The destruction is real. But, as an international relations scholar, I know that destruction is not the same as political success. And the historical record of U.S. bombing campaigns aimed at regime change shows that the gap between the two – the point at which Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya campaigns all stalled – is where wars go to die.

Destruction is not strategy

Decades of scholarship dating back to World War I on using air power to force political change has established a consistent finding: Bombing can degrade military capacity and destroy infrastructure, but it does not produce governments more cooperative with the attacker.

Political outcomes require political processes – negotiation, institution-building, legitimate transitions of power.

Bombs cannot create any of these. Instead, what they reliably create is destruction, and destruction generates its own dynamics: rallying among the population, power vacuums, radicalization and cycles of retaliation.

The American record confirms this. In 2003, the George W. Bush administration launched “Shock and Awe” in Iraq with the explicit aim of regime change. The military objective was achieved in weeks. The political objective was never achieved at all.

The U.S. decision to disband the Iraqi army created a vacuum filled not by democratic reformers but by sectarian militias and eventually ISIS. The regime that eventually emerged was not friendly to American interests. It was deeply influenced by Iran.

In 2011, the Obama administration led a NATO air campaign in Libya that quickly expanded from civilian protection into regime change. Dictator Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown and killed.

But there was no plan for political transition. Chaos and political instability have endured since. Asked what his “worst mistake” was as president, Barack Obama said, “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.” Libya remains a failed state today.

The intervention also sent a powerful signal to countries pursuing nuclear weapons: Gaddhafi had dismantled his nuclear program in 2003. Eight years later, NATO destroyed his regime.

Even Kosovo, often cited as the success story of coercive air power, undermines the case. Seventy-eight days of NATO bombing did not, by themselves, compel Slobodan Milosevic, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to withdraw.

What changed was the credible threat of a ground invasion combined with Russia’s withdrawal of diplomatic support. The political outcome – contested statehood, ongoing ethnic tensions – is hardly the stable governance that air power advocates promise.

The pattern is consistent: The United States repeatedly confuses its unmatched capacity to destroy from the air with the ability to dictate political outcomes.

Why this war?

The recent U.S. attacks on Iran raise a fundamental question: Why is the United States fighting this war at all?

The administration has declared regime change as its objective, justifying the campaign on the grounds of Iran’s nuclear program and missile capabilities.

But that nuclear program was being actively negotiated in Geneva days before the strikes. And Iran’s foreign minister told NBC the two sides were close to a deal. Then the bombs fell.

Iran did not attack America. And it currently does not have the capability to threaten the American homeland. What Iran challenges is Israel’s regional military dominance, and I believe it is Israel’s objective of neutralizing a rival that is driving this operation.

Israel targeted 30 senior Iranian leaders in the opening strikes. Israeli officials described it as a preemptive attack to “remove threats to the State of Israel.” I see the strategic logic for these killings as Israel’s, and Americans are absorbing the costs.

U.S. military bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have taken Iranian missile fire. American service members are in harm’s way – three have already been killed – not because Iran attacked them, but I believe because their president committed them to someone else’s war without a clear endgame.

Each coercive step in this conflict – from the 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear deal, to the 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander, to the June 2025 strikes – was framed as restoring leverage.

Each produced the opposite, eliminating diplomatic off-ramps, accelerating the very threats it aimed to contain.

The regime is not one man

Decapitation strikes assume that removing a leader removes the obstacle to political change. But Iran’s political system is institutional — the Guardian Council, the Assembly of Experts and the Revolutionary Guard have survived for four decades.

The system has succession mechanisms, but they were designed for orderly transitions, not for active bombardment. The group most likely to fill the vacuum is the Revolutionary Guard, whose institutional interest lies in escalation, not accommodation.

There is a deeper irony. The largest protests since 1979 swept Iran just weeks ago. A genuine domestic opposition was growing. The strikes have almost certainly destroyed that movement’s prospects.

Decades of research on rally-around-the-flag effects – the tendency of populations to unite behind their government when attacked by a foreign power – confirms that external attacks fuse regime and nation, even when citizens despise their leaders.

Iranians who were chanting “death to the dictator” are now watching foreign bombs fall on their cities during Ramadan, hearing reports of over 100 children killed in a strike on a girls school in Minab.

Trump’s call for Iranians to “seize control of your destiny” echoes a familiar pattern. In 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in the name of freedom.

That produced the Shah, the Shah’s brutal reign led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and the revolution produced the Islamic Republic now being bombed.

What comes next? And what guarantee is there that whatever emerges will be any friendlier to Israel or the United States?

What does success look like?

This is the question no one in Washington has answered. If the objective is regime change, who governs 92 million people after?

If the objective is stability, why are American bases across the Middle East absorbing missile fire?

There is no American theory of political endgame in Iran — only a theory of destruction. That theory has been tested in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – and Iran itself over the preceding eight months. It has failed every time, not because of poor execution, but because the premise is flawed.

Air power can raze a government’s infrastructure. It cannot build the political order that must replace it. Iran, with its sophisticated military, near-nuclear capability, proxy networks spanning the region and a regime now martyred by foreign attack, will likely not be the exception.

U.S. law prohibits the assassination of foreign leaders, and instead Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader while American warplanes filled the skies overhead. Washington has called the result freedom at hand, but it has not answered the only question that matters: What comes next?

Farah N. Jan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

If you gathered every American with a prison record into one contiguous territory and admitted it to the union, you would create the 12th-largest state. It would be home to at least 7 million to 8 million people and hold a dozen votes in the Electoral College.

In a close presidential race, this hypothetical state of the formerly incarcerated could decide who wins the White House.

It may sound far-fetched to conceive of former felons determining the outcome of a presidential election, not by voting but by failing to vote. But there’s a real chance they already have – not just once, but twice. That’s in addition to affecting the outcomes of some U.S. Senate and gubernatorial elections.

I am a political scientist with a long-standing interest in the question of why mass incarceration rates vary so widely across states. My 2024 book, “The Jailer’s Reckoning,” explores that question and measures its political, social and economic impacts.

One of my findings is that the sheer number of people who’ve cycled through prisons over the past 40 years is influencing election outcomes.

Scholars vigorously debate the reasons why the United States locks up more of its citizens than any other liberal democracy, or even most authoritarian regimes. Less examined are the consequences of this decades-long social experiment in mass incarceration.

The consequences, however, likely include affecting the results of close elections. Incarceration certainly plays a key role in depressing voter turnout, which lags, in no small part, because felony convictions have made so many people ineligible.

Mass incarceration has led to a fast-growing bloc of citizens who either are legally barred from voting or have just stopped bothering. Under the right circumstances, this slice of the electorate is large enough to tip an election.

Imprisonment and the franchise

Felony conviction reduces political engagement, sometimes entirely. Inmates are legally barred from voting in all but two states, Maine and Vermont. Ten states bar ex-felons from voting either permanently or for some period of time, depending on the crime, absent unusual circumstances such as a governor’s pardon.

In Idaho, Oklahoma and Texas, a criminal record means that as many as 1 in 10 citizens are ineligible to vote. Among Black Americans, that number can jump to 1 in 5.

However, even when legally eligible, ex-convicts rarely exercise the right to vote. Turnout rates among this population may be as low as 10%. Contact with the criminal justice system lowers political trust, which in turn reduces the likelihood of political engagement among ex-convicts.

Although scholars debate the exact partisan tilt of this potential constituency, there’s a consensus that it is disproportionately Democratic. The upper end of estimates suggest that if this group showed up to the polls, 70% would cast ballots for Democrats.

Even estimates that are much lower sketch a picture of an alternative political world. In 2000, roughly 7% of Florida’s 11.7 million voting-age residents were disenfranchised due to past convictions. They represented about 800,000 potential voters.

If 10% of them had voted and, say, 55% voted Democratic for president, that would have translated to a 6,000-vote swing for Vice President Al Gore. In reality, Texas Gov. George W. Bush won the state – and with it the presidency – by 537 votes.

Florida Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott may have owed their initial, tight gubernatorial victories to felony disenfranchisement, since the outcomes could have been much different if former felons had the franchise.

In 2018, Florida voters did approve a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights automatically to most former felons. But a subsequent law requiring felons to pay off fines and fees has kept nearly 1 million Floridians from being able to vote, according to the Sentencing Project, a group that opposes mass incarceration.

An electorate in the shadows

Serving time behind bars or having a felony record is not a social anomaly. It is an increasingly normalized feature of American life.

The most careful scholarly estimate suggests that at least 20 million Americans have served time in prison or lived under felony supervision, or both. That’s now a conservative estimate, as it is based on 2010 data.

Given their lack of voting habits, the millions of people in this group constitute a vast shadow electorate, far larger than the roughly 2% of American citizens legally ineligible to vote due to being currently incarcerated.

These disenfranchised or absent voters are a quiet force with the potential to reshape American democracy. The statistical models in my book show that in statewide races this constituency represents roughly a 1- or 2-percentage-point swing.

That might not sound like much, and in single-party strongholds it is not. In genuinely competitive statewide elections, however, a percentage point or two can be decisive.

Consider the 2016 presidential election. That year, the Electoral College outcome was decided by Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Donald Trump won all three states by less than a percentage point. Again, the outcome could easily have been different if voting rights for former felons were a given.

Kevin B. Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Three rounds of nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran failed to persuade President Donald Trump that a solution to the two country’s nuclear impasse lay in diplomacy, rather than military action. A perceived lack of progress in the last of those indirect negotiations on Feb 26, 2026, was enough to prompt Trump to green-light a massive onslaught of missiles that has degraded Iran’s offensive capabilities and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several members of Iran’s senior military leadership.

In response, Tehran has launched strikes across the Middle East, targeting Israel as well as Gulf states that host U.S. airbases. At least three Americans have been killed.

While the scale of the U.S., Israeli and Iranian strikes has taken some observers by surprise, the failure of the talks that led to them was all too predictable.

For diplomacy to be successful, both sides need to agree on the issues subject to negotiation and also believe that peaceful resolution is more valuable than military engagement. This clearly was not the case in the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks of 2025 and 2026.

As someone who has researched nonproliferation and U.S. national security for two decades and was involved in State Department nuclear diplomacy, I know that even under more favorable conditions, negotiations often fail. And the chances for success in the Iran-U.S. talks were always slim. In fact, publicly stated red lines by both sides were incompatible with each other – meaning negotiations were always likely to fail.

Iran wanted the talks confined only to guarantees about the civilian purpose of its nuclear program, not its missile program, support of regional proxy groups or human rights abuses. Essentially it wanted a return to 2015’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which halted Iran’s development of nuclear technology and stockpiling of nuclear material in exchange for lifting multiple international economic sanctions placed on Iran.

Meanwhile, Trump insisted on limits to Iran’s ballistic missiles and the cutting of Tehran’s support for regional militias. These were not included in the 2015 agreement, with parties ultimately deciding that a nuclear deal was better than the alternative of no deal at all.

False hope

Nevertheless, there had been a slim chance for a breakthrough of late.

While the positions of both the U.S. and Iranian governments had ossified since May 8, 2018 – the date when the first Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal – there had been some recent movement by Iran, according to former U.S. diplomats involved in negotiations during the Obama and Biden administrations.

With U.S. military building up in the region, Iran appeared more willing to negotiate within the nuclear arena than before. There were plausible solutions to the issue of Iran’s enrichment of uranium capabilities, including maintaining a minimum domestic capacity to develop medical isotopes and a removal of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium necessary to build a nuclear bomb.

There was less openness on other points of contention. Notably, there was no movement on ballistic missiles, which had always been a red line. On the eve of the round of discussions held in Geneva on Feb. 17, Trump stated: “I think they want to make a deal.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, noted progress over the “guiding principles” of the talks.

But a lot of this optimism appeared to have dissipated by the time the two sides held another round of talks on Feb. 26. While mediator Oman’s negotiators continued to talk of progress, the U.S. side was noticeably silent. Reporting since has suggested that Trump was displeased with the way the talks had gone, setting the stage for the Feb. 28 attack.

Military brinkmanship

The threat of military action was, of course, a continued backdrop to the talks.

The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group was deployed near Iranian waters in January as a signal of support to the Iranian protesters. The USS Gerald R Ford carrier group joined the buildup before the last round of talks.

Trump warned Iran that “if they don’t make a deal, the consequences are very steep.”

The thinking may have been that Iran, weakened by both the June 2025 U.S.-Israeli strikes and diminished capabilities of Tehran proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, was playing a weak hand in the talks.

Yet Iran also signaled a willingness to engage in military action. In the run-up to the last round of talks, Iran held military exercises and closed the Strait of Hormuz for a live-fire drill. Leaders in Tehran also declared that they would not restrain its response to another attack. The world is seeing that now, with a response that has seen Iran launch missiles across the Middle East and at rival Gulf nations.

Optimism has fallen before

Trump isn’t the first president to fail to secure a nuclear deal, although he is the first to respond to that failure with military action.

The Biden administration publicly pledged to strengthen and renew the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2021. However, Iran had significantly increased its nuclear technical capability during the years that had passed since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action collapsed. That increased the difficulty – just to return to the previous deal would have required Iran to give up the new technical capability it had achieved for no new benefits.

That window closed in 2022 after Iran removed all of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s surveillance and monitoring under the deal and started enriching uranium to near-weapons levels and stockpiling sufficient amounts for several nuclear weapons. The IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, maintains only normal safeguards that Iran had agreed to before the plan of action.

Optimism also existed for a short time in spring 2025 during five rounds of indirect talks that preceded the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June as part of a broader Israeli attack.

A more unstable Middle East

When I worked in multilateral nuclear diplomacy for the U.S. State Department, we saw talks fail in 2009 regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, after six years of on-and-off progress. The consequence of that failure is a more unstable East Asia and renewed interest by South Korea in developing nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, the same dynamic appears to be playing out in the Middle East.

Military strikes have already killed more than 200 in Iran and across the region. A wider war in the Middle East is a possibility, and should the Iranian regime survive, it may commit to developing nuclear weapons given that the lack of them proved no deterrent to U.S. and Israeli military action.

Talks do not necessarily need an end point – in the shape of a deal – for them to have purpose. Under situations of increased military brinkmanship, talks could have helped the U.S. and Iran step back from the edge, build trust and perhaps develop better political relations – even if an actual deal remained out of reach.

Instead, Trump opted to go a different route.

This article includes sections originally published by The Conversation U.S. on Feb. 17, 2026.

Nina Srinivasan Rathbun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The number of bills directly targeting and undermining the existing legal rights of transgender and nonbinary people in the U.S. has been escalating, with sharp increases since 2021 and with each consecutive year. Kansas dealt the most radical blow yet on Feb. 26, 2026, as a law that immediately invalidates state-issued driver’s licenses, identification cards and birth certificates for holders whose gender marker does not match their sex assigned at birth took effect overnight.

This new law, called the House Substitute for Senate Bill 244, passed after legislators overrode the governor’s veto to rush it through legislation.

There is no grace period for this law, meaning trans and nonbinary people will have immediately invalid documents putting them at risk of a US$1,000 fine and up to six months in jail for driving with an invalid license. The law also restricts bathroom use to assigned sex at birth, and it allows citizens to sue transgender people for up to $1,000 for not complying.

While 21 states have passed similar bathroom restrictions, Kansas is the first to invalidate state-issued identification documents that were legally obtained.

We are researchers who study how marginalization and resilience affect the lives of trans and nonbinary people. Our work has documented how lack of access to accurate and affirming identification documents affects the health and well-being of this community.

By mandating the use of birth-assigned sex on identity documents, Kansas denies transgender people legal recognition and curtails their freedom of movement. These laws open the door to an even wider range of discriminatory policies.

ID is essential to participate in society

Invalidating someone’s identification documents has immediate and powerful consequences that cascade into all aspects of their life.

For example, without a valid driver’s license, many trans and nonbinary people will be unable to get to work, attend classes, pick up their children, visit the doctor, see friends or go to the grocery store. Trans and nonbinary people who need to drive with an invalid license risk fines and jail time, where they would be housed according to their sex assigned at birth.

Taking a train or bus is not a solution that would work for many people. Almost half of the U.S. population does not have access to public transportation, and for those who do, it is often poorly maintained, sparse or unreliable. The two transgender men who sued the state of Kansas to block the law noted how loss of their ability to drive makes them unable to work.

The effects of invalidating someone’s legal documents goes far beyond just transportation. Legal IDs are required to access health care, obtain housing, have a job, vote, attend college, access financial assistance or even purchase cold medicine at a pharmacy.

Health effects of incorrect ID

Not having identification documents with the correct gender marker also poses a safety and health risk.

Trans and nonbinary people who have not updated their identification documents are more likely to experience psychological distress and suicidality, in part due to increased day-to-day stress. For trans and nonbinary people whose physical appearance no longer aligns with their ID, not having updated documents puts them at increased risk for harassment and violence.

Roughly a quarter of trans and nonbinary people who have not updated their identification documents experience subsequent mistreatment when showing their IDs, including verbal harassment, assault and denial of services or access to settings. In our research, we similarly found that not having one’s gender legally affirmed is associated with greater discrimination and social rejection – one pathway to negative effects on mental and physical health.

To comply with the current law sets up an impossible situation for many trans and nonbinary people who have been using the restroom aligning with their gender identity and presentation for years. These individuals are set up to face violence, legal action or criminal penalties even when they are complying with the law, as using the restroom aligned with their sex assigned at birth will appear to others as contradicting their gender presentation.

Researchers and public health officials consider accurate and affirming identification documents an essential determinant of health. The World Health Organization, United Nations and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health have called for trans and nonbinary people to have the right to legal recognition of their gender.

Another blow in a broader battle

The Kansas law is a flash point in the ongoing battle across the country for legal recognition of trans and nonbinary people’s existence.

The process for gender marker changes varies widely across states. Some require documentation of medical procedures to affirm one’s gender, while some do not allow gender marker changes at all. Some allow for gender-neutral gender markers, like the letter X.

According to the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey, which had over 92,000 participants, 59% of trans and nonbinary people have not updated their gender on any of their documents, and 23% have some of their documents updated but not others. This law and others like it will disadvantage even more trans and nonbinary people.

To us, this is about more than access to driving a car – it is a direct attack on the ability of trans and nonbinary people to live and survive. As of February 2026, 711 bills are under consideration across 41 states, with 110 at the national level. The restrictions these bills propose are far-reaching – prohibiting access to gender-affirming medical care, prohibiting students from using their chosen names and pronouns, banning trans and nonbinary youth from participating in sports, restricting access to bathroom facilities and censoring public education on issues related to gender.

In the face of these legislative efforts to control and erase trans and nonbinary people from public life, trans and nonbinary people, along with their allies, continue to stand up for each other and fight for their rights.

Jae A. Puckett co-leads the Gender Affirmation Project.

Noelle Martin is affiliated with the Gender Affirmation Project.

L. Zachary DuBois does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

After the largest buildup of U.S. warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, American and Israeli military forces launched a massive assault on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026.

President Donald Trump has called the attacks “major combat operations” and has urged regime change in Tehran.

To better understand what this means for the U.S. and Iran, Alfonso Serrano, a U.S. politics editor at The Conversation, interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat who now teaches at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

Widespread attacks have been reported across Iran, following weeks of U.S. military buildup in the region. What does the scale of the attacks tell you?

I think that Trump and his administration are going for regime change with these massive strikes and with all the ships and some troops in the area. I think there will probably be a couple more days’ worth of strikes. They’ll start off with the time-honored strategy of attacking what’s known as command and control, the nerve centers for controlling Iran’s military. From media reporting, we already know that the residence of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was attacked.

What is the U.S. strategic end game here?

Regime change is going to be difficult. We heard Trump today call for the Iranian people to bring the government down. In the first place, that’s difficult. It’s hard for people with no arms in their hands to bring down a very tightly controlled regime that has a lot of arms.

The second point is that U.S. history in that area of the world is not good with this. You may recall that during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the U.S. basically encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, and then made its own decision not to attack Baghdad, to stop short. And that has not been forgotten in Iraq or surrounding countries. I would be surprised if we saw a popular uprising in Iran that really had a chance of bringing the regime down.

Do you see the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground to bring about regime change?

I will stick my neck out here and say that’s not going to happen. I mean, there may be some small special forces sent in. That’ll be kept quiet for a while. But as far as large numbers of U.S. troops, no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Two reasons. First off, any president would feel that was extremely risky. Iran’s a big country with a big military. The risks you would be taking are large amounts of casualties, and you may not succeed in what you’re trying to do.

But Trump, in particular, despite the military strike against Iran and the one against Venezuela, is not a big fan of big military interventions and war. He’s a guy who will send in fighter planes and small special forces units, but not 10,000 or 20,000 troops.

And the reason for that is, throughout his career, he does well with a little bit of chaos. He doesn’t mind creating a little bit of chaos and figuring out a way to make a profit on the other side of that. War is too much chaos. It’s really hard to predict what the outcome is going to be, what all the ramifications are going to be. Throughout his first term and the first year of his second term, he has shown no inclination to send ground troops anywhere.

Speaking of President Trump, what are the risks he faces?

One risk is going on right now, which is that the Iranians may get lucky or smart and manage to attack a really good target and kill a lot of people, like something in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or a U.S. military base.

The second risk is that the attacks don’t work, that the supreme leader and whoever else is considered the political leadership of Iran survives, and the U.S. winds up with egg on its face.

The third risk is that it works to a certain extent. You take out the top people, but then who steps into their shoes? I mean, go back and look at Venezuela. Most people would have thought that who was going to wind up winning at the end of that was the head of the opposition. But it wound up being the vice president of the old regime, Delcy Rodríguez.

I can see a similar scenario in Iran, if Khamenei and a couple of other leaders were taken out. But the only institution in Iran strong enough to succeed them is the army, the Revolutionary Guards in particular. Would that be an improvement for the U.S.? It depends on what their attitude was. The same attitude that the vice president of Venezuela has been taking, which is, “Look, this is a fact of life. We better negotiate with the Americans and figure out some way forward we can both live with.”

But these guys are pretty hardcore revolutionaries. I mean, Iran has been under revolutionary leadership for 47 years. All these guys are true believers. I don’t know if we’ll be able to work with them.

Any last thoughts?

I think the timing is interesting. If you go back to last year, Trump, after being in office a little and watching the situation between Israel and Gaza, was given an opening, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Qatar.

A lot of conservative Mideast regimes, who didn’t have a huge problem with Israel, essentially said “That’s going too far.” And Trump was able to use that as an excuse. He was able to essentially say, “Okay, you’ve gone too far. You’re really taking risk with world peace. Everybody’s gonna sit at the table.”

I think the same thing’s happening here. I believe many countries would love to see regime change in Iran. But you can’t go into the country and say, “We don’t like the political leadership being elected. We’re going to get rid of them for you.” What often happens in that situation is people begin to rally around the flag. They begin to rally around the government when the bombs start falling.

But in the last few months, we’ve seen a huge human rights crackdown in Iran. We may never know the number of people the Iranian regime killed in the last few months, but 10,000 to 15,000 protesters seems a minimum.

That’s the excuse Trump can use. You can sell it to the Iranian people and say, “Look, they’re killing you in the streets. Forget about your problems with Israel and the U.S. and everything. They’re real, but you’re getting killed in the streets, and that’s why we’re intervening.” It’s a bit of a fig leaf.

Now, as I said earlier, the problem with this is if your next line is, “You know, we’re going to really soften this regime up with bombs; now it’s your time to go out in the streets and bring the regime down.” I may eat these words, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The regime is just too strong for it to be brought down by bare hands.

Donald Heflin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address on Feb. 24, 2026, doubled down on his false claims that the U.S. elections system is compromised. He asserted that “the cheating is rampant in our elections. It’s rampant.”

These pronouncements follow the January 2026 FBI seizure of 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, and the president’s recent call for the Republican Party to nationalize elections. The Trump administration is also suing 24 states and Washington, D.C., for voter lists to monitor voter registrations.

In his speech, Trump asked Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act. Approved by the House on Feb. 11, 2026, the measure would require that voters provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, effectively ending all online voter registration. “They want to cheat. They have cheated,” he said of Democrats.

These calls spread distrust in the U.S. electoral process, despite extensive evidence showing that voter fraud is rare, especially by noncitizens.

All this has led to speculation about how much further the Trump administration and Republican Party might go to tilt the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections in their favor.

After decades of working internationally on democracy and peace-building, I know that efforts to undermine elections are not uncommon. Citizens of many affected countries have learned various techniques to help protect the integrity of their elections and democracy that may be helpful to Americans today.

International electoral assistance

Leaders, even in established democracies such as India, have used increasingly sophisticated and wide-ranging means to manipulate elections in their favor. Those means vary from legal changes that suppress votes to harassment and prosecution of the opposition, to promoting widespread disinformation campaigns.

These methods have evolved despite international efforts to counter rigged elections and improve election integrity. These countering efforts are called electoral assistance, and they support societies to develop electoral systems that reflect the will of the people and adhere to democratic principles.

Electoral assistance has been shown to strengthen transparency and election administration in countries such as Armenia and Mexico. It has also improved voter registration and education in countries such as Ghana and Colombia.

It’s mostly provided by international nonprofits, such as the National Democratic Institute and The Carter Center in the U.S. Multilateral organizations such as the United Nations also provide electoral assistance.

Five international responses to electoral manipulation

Here are five areas of electoral assistance that have shown some success internationally.

Early warning and community resilience: Early warning efforts track threats of violence and intimidation against election officials, candidates and voters. They seek to mitigate risks and prepare for crises. This happens from the early stages of an election through election day in countries such as Sri Lanka and Liberia.

Law enforcement, civic groups and election officials usually undertake these efforts together. But where such direct cooperation with government authorities is not feasible, civic groups can help by undertaking risk assessments and tracking coercion and threats. They can also raise alarms with officials and the media.

Indicators, or established metrics, can track sophisticated coercion tactics such as the misuse of government funds for campaign purposes. They also can track vote buying, like civic groups in North Macedonia did during 2024 parliamentary and 2025 local elections.

For these efforts to be successful, it’s critical that networks of trusted leaders urge early action to put in place greater safeguards long before election day. Raising alarms and urging action was done successfully by religious leaders in Kenya during general elections in 2022.

Real-time disinformation and local media reaction: Real-time fact-checking and debunking of false or manipulative information has proven critical to election integrity in countries such as Mexico and South Africa.

A highly organized and fast-moving approach involving media, technology companies and authorities successfully countered disinformation to ensure a competitive democratic election in Brazil in 2022. A coalition of Brazilian media outlets, for example, fact-checked political claims and viral rumors during the election period, using innovative tools such as online apps.

Robust local media play a particularly important role. In the 2024 presidential election of Maia Sandu in Moldova, a new investigative newspaper uncovered a Russia-backed network that paid people to attend anti-Sandu rallies and to vote against the president. That outlet had received training by an expert nonprofit group. It also received free legal advice and human resource management that were critical to its effectiveness.

Neutrality, transparency and systems reform: Amid efforts to sow doubt in elections, increasing transparency and ethical standards can help build awareness and deepen trust.

Various tools, such as codes of conduct that detail ethical standards, can be formulated for candidates, media and businesses. This has been done in Nigeria and the Philippines.

International groups, including the the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, published model commitments for advancing genuine and credible elections in 2024, which have been used for preelection assessments in Bangladesh.

Additionally, major technology companies such as Google and Meta in 2024 helped draft the international Voluntary Election Guidelines for Technology Companies. Meta also helped target false content and deepfakes during Australia’s 2025 election.

The neutrality of election officials is critical to tackle distrust. In New Zealand, high levels of public trust in elections align with robust neutrality rules for public officials. The key is to develop public awareness of such commitments and how they can be useful to hold election officials, media and businesses accountable.

More profoundly, the design of the electoral system can also be linked to levels of public trust and polarization. New Zealand, South Africa and Northern Ireland, for example, reformed from winner-take-all elections to proportional representation elections to address deep internal divisions and dissatisfaction with unrepresentative results.

Broad-based mobilization and civic campaigns: Significant voter turnout that delivers large winning margins make efforts to manipulate results more difficult.

In Zambia, for example, a landslide victory for the opposition candidate in the 2021 presidential elections was driven by high youth turnout and people switching parties in urban areas.

Mobilization efforts can span from public campaigns to digital tools and voter registration and education. These efforts can motivate key groups, such as youth, minority or overseas voters. Participation of diaspora groups in Poland’s 2023 parliamentary elections was a key factor in the opposition’s win.

Proactively building public awareness of election security measures, called prebunking campaigns, has demonstrated results in increasing trust in elections in Brazil and the U.S. Additionally, civic education has shown to have positive impact on voter choice of pro-democracy candidates over their preferred party.

Strategic coalitions and nonpartisan monitoring: Nonpartisan monitoring and observation of an electoral process is a key tool in the electoral assistance tool kit. Effective monitoring often involves coalitions of nonpartisan civic groups, which Senegal has used, and faith-based organizations, as in the Philippines, to ensure adequate coverage of polling stations and consistent application of standards.

Key tools, such as parallel vote tabulation, or “quick counts,” which provide independent and statistically accurate reports on the quality of voting and counting process, have helped verify official election results in Ukraine, Ghana and Paraguay.

International observation by entities such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe assesses whether elections meet global standards. Where it identifies serious flaws or fraud, such scrutiny can help justify mass protests or mobilization, such as in Serbia’s parliamentary and local elections in 2023, trigger new elections, such as in Bolivia’s general elections in 2019, or support international condemnation, such as in Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary elections. They also make recommendations on reforms, such as changes to elections laws and systems, to strengthen integrity and align with democratic principles.

From May 2023 until July 1, 2025, the author served in the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance at the United States Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.).

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

A majority of Americans say they are “frustrated” or “angry” – or both – with Republicans and Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center. But that rarely translates into support for independent or third-party candidates.

One exception has been in the Northeast. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are the Senate’s only independents. King, along with Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, represent three of the five independent and third-party governors elected nationwide since 1990. And of the 23 current independent or third-party state legislators in the country, excluding technically nonpartisan Nebraska, 14 of them, or 61%, are in New England.

As a political scientist who has taught in Vermont for two decades, I was intrigued by the question of why third-party and independent candidates are so successful, relatively speaking, in the Northeast? And can this region teach us lessons about broadening the choices available to voters?

Market forces

In their classic book “Third Parties in America,” Steven Rosenstone, Roy Behr and Edward Lazarus argue that alternative parties succeed where motivation for third-party voting is high, constraints against doing so are low, or both.

Those may sound like obvious points, but let’s explore them individually. First, motivation. Third parties do better when voters are frustrated with the two major parties and see them as incapable or unwilling to respond to their needs.

In a polarized national political climate, New Englanders might appear to be good candidates for anger. Vermont gave Donald Trump his smallest share of the 2024 presidential vote of any state – less than a third. Massachusetts was not far behind.

This should not necessarily be interpreted as enthusiasm for the Democrats. Pew found that two-thirds of Democrats are frustrated with their own party.

Channeling some of this discontent, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, although a Republican, has frequently criticized Trump and accused the president and other politicians in Washington of creating “chaos.”

Still, the idea that discontent explains New England’s openness to third parties and independents clashes with other pieces of the picture. Other states where most voters are hostile to Trump, such as California, Maryland and Illinois, have few successful third-party or independent candidates.

And the Northeast has been fairly friendly territory for third parties and independents in very different national contexts. New England elected far more third-party and independent legislators than other regions back in 2010 as well, at a point during Barack Obama’s presidency when political discontent was most famously centered within the conservative tea party movement.

Limits on minor parties

That brings us to the second possibility: constraints on third parties, or their absence.

Unlike parliamentary democracies, including Brazil and Spain, that use proportional representation – giving some proportion of the seats even to parties that garner small shares of the overall vote – the U.S. system is stacked against third parties because of its “first-past-the-post” electoral system, under which candidates can win with pluralities of the vote.

This type of voting encourages citizens to consider only the two major parties because other candidates are generally considered not to have any realistic shot of winning. This helps explain why Sanders ran for president as a Democrat in 2016 and 2020.

In presidential voting, the Electoral College sinks third-party chances – even if they have wide support – if their voters are not concentrated enough to win individual states. Running as an independent in 1992, businessman Ross Perot won 19% of the national vote but received exactly zero votes in the Electoral College.

These constraints, while formidable in national politics, play out differently at the state and local levels. Absent the Electoral College, there is less of a guarantee that the Democrat and Republican will always be perceived as the two most viable candidates in local races, especially in regions with lopsided support for one party or the other.

In areas with overwhelming Democratic support, the next most viable option might not be a Republican but a progressive. In areas with overwhelming Republican support, Democrats could be less viable than libertarians.

Access to the ballot

But if this is true, why do we not see just as many third-party and independent victories in red states, such as Alabama and Mississippi, as we do in Vermont and Maine? The answer lies in a seemingly mundane but crucial factor: ballot access laws.

States set the rules governing which candidates quality for the ballot. In almost every state, Democrats and Republicans have advantages over other parties or independents. But in the Northeast it is easier for independents and candidates from other parties to get on the ballot.

In no New England state does an independent candidate for a state legislative seat have to collect more than 150 signatures to secure a ballot spot. In Georgia, by contrast, candidates must collect signatures equal to 5% of the total number of registered voters in the jurisdiction holding an election, which can translate into thousands of signatures.

To see the impact of ballot access rules on candidates outside of the major parties, you only need look at one of the few states outside of New England where such candidates have done as well: Alaska.

Alaska has long had ballot access rules that are among the most open in the nation. Candidates for state House races need only pay a filing fee of US$30 to get a ballot line, and it is nearly as easy for them to file as a recognized party or group.

That helps explain why five independents currently serve in the Alaska House, that the state elected as governor a third-party candidate in 1990 and an independent in 2014, and reelected U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski as a write-in candidate after she lost the Republican primary in 2010.

Ease of ballot access attracts outsider candidates, increases competition, and gives voters an outlet for their frustrations.

To sum up, if people want more choices in elections, they will need to change the rules.

Bert Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation