I just wanted to get the latest version of Missouri’s voter registration database cleaned up to load into The Accountability Project, a database of 1.9 billion public records. Working on TAP is a part of my job here at the Center for Public Integrity as a data reporter for local initiatives. While I was preparing […]
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Posted inHigh Courts, High Stakes
Public Integrity state court investigation is a Toner Prize finalist
A Center for Public Integrity investigation that revealed an under-the-radar effort pushing state high courts rightward — with far-reaching consequences — is a finalist for a Toner Prize honoring excellence in political reporting. “High Courts, High Stakes” is one of six projects recognized in the journalism contest’s national category. Other finalists include ProPublica’s investigative reporting […]
Posted inWho Counts?
States ditched an election partnership. Voters will feel the consequences.
ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Eric Fey is bracing for Election Day snarls because of a decision his state made last year. This story also appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Missouri pulled out of a collaboration known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which helps states keep voter rolls accurate — such as […]
Posted inWho Counts?
In more places this year, people can vote in their first language
A larger swath of the country will have access to translated ballots this year than in any prior presidential election. Under federal Voting Rights Act requirements, 331 voting areas in 30 states must provide language access to more than 24 million voters with limited English proficiency. That’s a 26% increase in voting areas under the […]
Posted inWho Counts?
More states are pushing for race and ethnicity data equity
Middle Eastern and North African people in Nevada who are often misclassified as white or undercounted by state service providers will have a choice to self-identify for the first time under a new sub-category that more accurately represents them. As of Jan. 1, a new state law requires that all government agencies in Nevada collecting […]
Posted inElections
Resolutions for a free and fair 2024 election
It’s a big election year with an imposing backdrop: swirling misinformation, changing laws around voting and deep concerns about the health of American democracy. On top of a monumental presidential election, U.S. voters will select 11 governors, 34 U.S. Senators and 82 state supreme court justices, decide dozens of statewide ballot measures and choose literally […]
Posted inHigh Courts, High Stakes
Not just the Supreme Court: Ethics troubles plague state high courts, too
This story also appeared in USA TODAY Subscribe on Google | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Since 2015, a North Carolina Supreme Court justice has heard at least six cases involving the massive utility Duke Energy, a company in which he and his wife had a direct financial stake. In each of the cases, Paul Newby — chief justice since 2021 […]
Posted inWho Counts?
See which states are expanding — or restricting — voting rights
While restoration of the federal Voting Rights Act languishes in a split Congress, an already deep divide in Americans’ access to voting has widened over the past year. In part, that’s because blue states aren’t waiting. According to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, more […]
Posted inHigh Courts, High Stakes
America’s state supreme courts don’t look like America
Over the last three-plus decades, America’s state supreme courts have become less — not more — reflective of the nation’s racial and ethnic makeup. This story also appeared in USA TODAY That’s according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Fundraising ‘schemes’ investigated by Public Integrity lead to arrests
Two men investigated by the Center for Public Integrity for a story about groups that fundraise for causes like childhood leukemia but keep virtually all the money have been charged in connection with “schemes to defraud donors,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Richard Zeitlin, 53, and Robert […]
Posted inHigh Courts, High Stakes
‘Lose the courts, lose the war’: The battle over voting in North Carolina
This story also appeared in USA TODAY NEW BERN, N.C. — As the daylight faded on April 12, 2018, a Craven County sheriff’s deputy pulled over a white pickup. Heather French was sitting in the passenger seat. The deputy began tailing the truck on the other side of the Trent River, in a location he […]
Posted inHigh Courts, High Stakes
State high courts get limited attention. Here’s how to change that.
State supreme courts have the final word on interpreting state constitutions. Their decisions have massive implications for abortion access, taxes, LGBTQ+ rights, labor, policing and other issues that affect people’s lives. So why do these courts fly under the radar? That’s partly by design. Justices rarely seek public attention, preferring to let their opinions do […]
Posted inHigh Courts, High Stakes
How Republicans flipped America’s state supreme courts
This story also appeared in USA TODAY In 2018, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution included a right to abortion, finding that “nothing could be more fundamental to the notion of liberty.” Just four years later, the court reversed itself. Iowa’s constitution does not, the justices decided, guarantee a right to abortion […]
Posted inDemocracy
A Gen Z voting activist discusses the ‘war on youth’
Santiago Mayer moved to Southern California from Mexico City in 2017, around the time President Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban” was sparking nationwide protests. “I kept wanting to talk about it with people in my classes and with my friends,” Mayer said recently. “And I realized that many people either didn’t know what was happening, or […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Public Integrity voting inequity investigation wins National Headliner Award
Public Integrity’s investigation into inequality in access to voting and political representation ahead of the 2022 elections has won a National Headliner Award. “Who Counts?” won first place for best beat coverage in the annual awards program, sponsored by the Press Club of Atlantic City. Judges called the project “a detailed report on voting issues, […]
Posted inDemocracy
‘What the court misunderstood is just how fragile our democracy is’
It was a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. For decades, it gave the federal government the power to shut down potentially discriminatory voting changes before they took effect. And on June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted it. The court ruled that the formula behind the […]
Posted inDemocracy
Chicago’s FOIA Fest celebrates open government
Dozens of public records enthusiasts gathered Saturday to kick-off an annual Chicago tradition: FOIA Fest, a public records conference created to celebrate Sunshine Week, which ends today. FOIA — short for Freedom of Information Act — is a federal law that requires the full or partial disclosure of unreleased documents and information controlled by the […]
Posted inWho Counts?
How one city ended prison gerrymandering
This story is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and Bolts. The Howard R. Young Correctional Institution sits between a creek and Interstate 495 in Wilmington, Delaware. For the last ten years, the prison’s 1,281 residents were counted as constituents of Wilmington’s third city council district. But when local officials sat down to […]
Posted inWho Counts?
This year’s ballot measures will change how many Americans vote
Voting itself was on the ballot in the 2022 midterm elections, with initiatives seeking to revamp election laws in states across the country. Measures that promoted early voting and increased access to the ballot box saw wins in multiple states, but so did restrictive proposals that tightened voter ID laws or barred non-citizens from voting […]
Posted inWho Counts?
How a Jim Crow-era strategy blocked 4.6 million people from voting in 2022
A type of law first created after the end of slavery to prohibit Black men from voting prevented more than 4.6 million Americans from participating in the 2022 midterm elections. Forty-eight states strip voting rights from people convicted of felonies, no small decision in the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. A […]
Posted inWho Counts?
Cities want noncitizens to vote on local matters. GOP sees a target
WASHINGTON – Abel Amene was born in Ethiopia and came to the U.S. when he was 13 years old. Amene, who is a green card holder, has lived in the D.C.-area for the past 23 years, where he helps seniors sign up for vaccine appointments and volunteers in political campaigns. In 2021, he wrote a […]
Posted inDemocracy
What voter turnout shows, and hides, about elections
The voter turnout in 2020 was a stunning 67%, according to one source. Another had it at 94%. A third fixed 2020 voter turnout at 63%. All three are correct — because they do the math differently. They’re comparing actual voters with the number of eligible voters, registered voters and Americans of voting age, respectively. […]
Posted inWho Counts?
Thousands of votes won’t count this year over minor absentee ballot errors
Thousands of Americans will lose their right to vote in this year’s midterm elections over mistakes like forgetting a signature or putting down the wrong date on paperwork for mail voting. Most states don’t offer voters an opportunity to correct — or “cure” — absentee ballots after submission. And a surge in mail voting in […]
Posted inElections
Anti-immigrant rhetoric spiked in this election. Here’s why it’s dangerous.
It was 100 years ago that Alexander Terrell, a former Confederate officer and Texas representative, claimed that “Mexicans are induced on election day to swim across the Rio Grande and are voted before their hair is dry.” The Terrell Election Law of 1903, fueled by false claims that non-citizens from Mexico were voting in Texas […]
Posted inWho Counts?
It’s already too late for thousands of would-be voters: Why that matters
In more than half the country, if you’re not already registered to vote, it’s already too late to cast a ballot in midterm elections that will decide control of Congress, state legislatures and numerous state and local offices on Nov. 8. Included in a slew of new restrictions on voting rights in 26 states controlled […]
Posted inWho Counts?
Costs to vote considered modern “poll taxes”
Under a new law, thousands of Missouri voters could have to pay $15 to acquire the documents needed to get an ID to vote. Wyoming voters also face their state’s new ID law, passed last year, which requires a government or student identification card to cast a ballot. Voters without one must present certain proof […]
Posted inWho Counts?
‘Chaos and confusion’: The campaign to stamp out ballot drop boxes
This story also appeared in South Florida Sun Sentinel and Stateline In 2020, ballot drop boxes were a sturdy, metallic symbol of increased voter access amid a pandemic. Absentee and mail voting surged across the country, and voters used drop boxes to return 41% of those ballots. Two years later, they’ve become a symbol of […]
Posted inWho Counts?
A headlong rush by states to attack voting access — or expand it
Iowa eliminated nine days of early voting. New Hampshire took away ballot drop boxes. And Georgia made providing water to voters waiting in line a crime. In many states, nearly all controlled by Republicans, it will be more difficult to vote than it was two years ago. That’s especially true for lower-income Americans and people […]
Posted inWho Counts?
Who Counts?
Our investigation found that 26 states — all controlled by Republicans — have made access to voting and political representation less equal since the 2020 election. We found Jim Crow-era laws that disproportionately keep Black people from voting and other inequities in election and political systems in all 50 states.
Posted inWho Counts?
How we documented inequity in access to voting
In one state, a ballot will be mailed to every registered voter this fall. It can be returned by mail, or in one of numerous drop boxes. You can also cast a ballot in person, during a lengthy early voting period or on Election Day, with an average wait time of just 3 minutes. If […]
