Votebeat

Votebeat’s Expert Desk is back for the 2026 midterms. Journalists can sign up now.

2026-08-24T16:38:17+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Election reporting gets complicated fast. A breaking story can suddenly require a working knowledge of an obscure state law, a county’s ballot-handling procedures or a voting system you’ve never encountered before — and the person who knows the answer may not be someone you already know how to reach.

That’s why Votebeat is bringing back the Expert Desk for the 2026 midterms.

The Expert Desk is completely free and entirely on the record. It gives journalists covering elections direct access to roughly 100 vetted experts in election administration, election law, voting technology, misinformation, and related fields. Reporters can ask questions in Slack, get help finding the right source, check their understanding of unfamiliar processes, and pressure-test reporting before publication.

We first tried this in 2024. The Desk ultimately brought together 471 journalists from 56 newsrooms and 93 experts. Reporters asked everything from urgent questions about voting-machine problems to highly specific questions about polling-place rules, mail ballots, and state election procedures. Experts could answer directly, point reporters toward someone better suited to help, or build on one another’s responses.

The return of the Desk comes as a relief for Tory Wegerski, an investigative producer for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. She said the venture was crucial to her election coverage in 2024.

“The Expert Desk kept me from losing my mind and I am deeply glad they’re back,” Wegerski wrote in a text message.

She wrote the Expert Desk was “indispensable” because the 2024 election in Pennsylvania was hectic and constantly changing. The Expert Desk provided access to people who could help her coverage.

“From the former Secretary of State who could answer my questions about the mail-in ballot law because she’d helped write it, to other journalists from Pennsylvania and beyond who provided sanity checks, the Expert Desk connected me with incredible resources for my reporting and I was able to keep my viewers up to date and informed thanks to them,” Wegerski wrote.

Aidan Hughes, a data journalist and faculty member at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism within the University of Maryland, also joined the effort in 2024. He wrote in an email that the Expert Desk was a valuable resource when he covered Maryland’s congressional races for the first time.

“It was a relief to know that if a niche question came up during my reporting that was important to get just right, there was a supportive community of experts and other journalists eager to point me in the right direction,” Hughes wrote.

Hughes wrote that he’ll be turning to the Expert Desk again alongside his students as he teaches a journalism course in the fall that focuses on election data.

A University of Washington study of the 2024 Desk found that participating journalists valued the speed of responses to their questions, access to hard-to-find local and specialized expertise, and the ability to gut-check their reporting.

The researchers found that the Desk increased the “speed and credibility” of journalists during important moments.

“In journalism, particularly in public-interest and misinformation contexts, these findings suggest a promising path toward strengthening the infrastructures that help support a more informed public,” they wrote.

Reporters also learned by watching other journalists ask questions and reading the answers they received. Participants gave the Desk an average recommendation score of 8.8 out of 10. The study has been accepted for publication in “Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction.”

How to use the Desk

Using the Desk is simple: Journalists post questions in Slack, where Votebeat community editor Zack Newman will help route them to the experts best positioned to answer. Responses in the Desk are on the record and visible to all participating journalists, so reporters can benefit not only from their own questions but from conversations happening across the network.

This year, the Desk will also include a separate AI-powered research tool designed to help reporters search election codes and related source material. It will answer questions using a curated library of documents and provide citations so reporters can check the underlying material themselves. The AI tool will remain clearly separate from the human Expert Desk: Its responses are a research aid, not a quotable source, while experts will remain available to interpret the material, answer follow-up questions and provide on-the-record guidance.

We’re also investing more in the human side of the Desk this year. Zack will monitor questions, connect reporters with the right experts, and help keep conversations moving as election coverage intensifies.

You don’t need to be an election specialist to join. You don’t need to know much of anything: In fact, the Desk may be most useful when you suddenly find yourself covering an election question you’ve never encountered before.

If you’re a journalist covering the 2026 elections, sign up for the Expert Desk here. We’d be honored to help make this hectic season a little bit easier.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Zack Newman is the Expert Desk’s community editor and is based in Denver. Contact Zack at znewman@votebeat.org.

You’re invited: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered, Part 2

2026-08-18T09:05:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Will the 2026 midterms happen? Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local laws requiring them to happen — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Got more questions about the midterms? Submit them to Votebeat reporters with your RSVP, and they’ll give you the long answer live on Sept. 15 at 1 p.m EDT.

Votebeat is a nonprofit newsroom specialized in explaining how elections work. Each of our reporters and editors spend every day covering voting rules, election administration, misinformation, election lawsuits, local officials, and the systems that determine how ballots are cast and counted. Ask them anything!

Watch the event recording of our previous Q&A event here.

Live event: Will the midterms happen? Your questions answered | Part 2

Virtual webinar event
Sept. 15 at 1 p.m. ET
RSVP for free on Eventbrite.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s Editorial Director. She runs big initiatives for Votebeat, like our experts desk, and manages our investigations. She was previously the lead elections reporter for ProPublica, and helped manage the Electionland project for three federal election cycles, sharing information and tips with hundreds of newsrooms across the United States.

Alexander Shur is Votebeat’s Wisconsin reporter. He previously covered politics, policy, and the fallout of the 2020 presidential election for the Wisconsin State Journal. Prior to that he covered the criminal justice system for the Jackson Hole News & Guide, where he investigated the impact of voting laws on people with felonies and how the criminal justice system treats people with mental illnesses. He is originally from Michigan, and has degrees from Northern Michigan University and Northwestern University.

Hayley Harding is Votebeat’s Michigan reporter. Hayley Harding is a Detroit-based reporter who has covered government and elections at all levels. Most recently, she was a data journalist on The Detroit News’ investigations team, where she covered population trends, social problems, and more. She has worked for the Idaho Statesman in Boise and for the Salisbury Daily Times in Salisbury, Maryland. A Michigander by birth, Hayley graduated from Ohio University.

Sasha Hupka is Votebeat’s Arizona reporter. She is based in Phoenix and has long covered politics, business, and democracy issues in the Southwest. Most recently, she was a watchdog reporter at The Arizona Republic, where her stories won several awards. She has also worked for The Los Angeles Times, Politifact, and other news outlets. She is originally from New York, and holds degrees from Binghamton University and the University of California, Berkeley.

You’re invited: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered

2026-06-11T19:25:51+00:00

Will the 2026 midterms happen? Short answer: Yes.

Watch the event recording below:

Got more questions about the midterms? Submit them to Votebeat reporters with your RSVP on Eventbrite, and they’ll give you the long answer live on July 13 at 5 p.m EDT.

Live event: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered

Virtual webinar event
July 13 at 5 p.m. ET
RSVP for free on Eventbrite.

Dion Nissenbaum is a senior reporter for Votebeat National. He spent much of his career as a Wall Street Journal foreign and national security correspondent based in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Turkey, Belgium and Washington. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for international reporting. He is also a filmmaker, most recently of “Who Killed Shireen?” about the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

Natalia Contreras is a senior reporter for Votebeat Texas. She has covered a range of topics as a community journalist, including local government, public safety, immigration, and social issues. She previously worked at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Indianapolis Star, and the Austin American-Statesman, where her reporting focused on the impacts of government policies on communities of color.

Carter Walker is a senior reporter for Votebeat Pennsylvania. He was previously a reporter at the LNP in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he covered political extremism, including election misinformation. After working at the Times West Virginian, he returned to Pennsylvania to cover government and politics with a focus on investigative work.

I love elections, but they’re under threat. That’s why I joined Votebeat.

2026-01-02T22:05:56+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat’s free national newsletter here.

If you want to know how I got to be Votebeat’s managing editor, you have to start with a weather map.

If you were alive and consuming print media during the 1990s (back when they used to print out the internet on big pieces of paper), you might remember the big, colorful weather map on the back page of USA Today. This map captivated me as a child. I would make my parents buy it for me whenever we went out. I dreamed of the faraway destinations it introduced me to, like North Platte, Nebraska, and loved seeing the colors — those temperature bands — ebb and flow with the seasons.

I think that, when a young Nathaniel first saw a map of the Electoral College vote after the 2000 presidential election, it probably reminded him of that weather map.

Regardless, I was hooked. It helped that that map lived rent-free in the entire country’s head for 35 days after Election Day as we waited to see what color the last state would turn. I followed every twist and turn from the vote count in Florida as the nation and I learned, together, about the differences between a machine and manual recount and why ballot design matters.

I admit, with some discomfort, that there was a certain sports-like appeal to the 2000 election drama. That contest, with all its lead changes and stressful moments, thrilled me the same way an extra-innings Red Sox game would have. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, in my experience, 80% of election junkies are also either baseball nerds or weather geeks.) But the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq were a sobering lesson that elections deeply and truly matter — and that just a few votes can have massive ramifications. By the time the 2004 presidential race rolled around, I was going to campaign rallies and hanging on every poll. I had fallen in love with elections.

When I graduated from college, I thought at first that I wanted to work on campaigns themselves, but the dogma and subjectivity of partisan politics turned me off. Soon I realized that I wanted to explain elections, not influence them, and promote democracy, not candidates. I started a blog and joined Twitter, where a like-minded community of map-loving election analysts had developed. I became a pollworker for a few cycles in my then-hometown of Somerville, Massachusetts. Eventually, I was hired to analyze elections for outlets like Inside Elections and FiveThirtyEight.

FiveThirtyEight was my home for seven great years — it’s where I did the most impactful work of my career, where I stepped into managing and editing, and where I learned more than I ever expected about the nuts and bolts of our democracy. Although FiveThirtyEight was best known for polling analysis and election forecasts, I was most proud of our coverage of election administration and voting rights. When the COVID-19 pandemic scrambled everything we thought we knew about the way Americans vote, we tracked all of the changes to election law and their effects on voters. When states redrew their congressional maps after the 2020 census, we analyzed the impacts of the new lines. And when President Donald Trump denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, we researched how many Republicans running for Congress and state office agreed.

FiveThirtyEight is also where I learned the importance of rigor and care in journalism. We fact-checked every line we wrote, questioned every assumption, because we knew our reporting would only matter if people trusted it. We held entire meetings about how best to visually communicate our point in charts and interactive features, because we knew that otherwise people might misinterpret them — either out of honest confusion or willfully, because it suited their purposes. In the environment of mistrust in elections that emerged after 2020 in particular, we wanted to be part of the solution, not the problem.

This, of course, is why Votebeat was founded in 2020 as well — and why I was so eager to come work here next. I always viewed Votebeat as the gold standard of reporting on elections, and I’m not just saying that because I work here now. It has pioneered a journalistic model for a newsroom that focuses on changes to election law and their effects on voters, on combating election-related misinformation and conspiracy theories, and on explaining how elections actually work.

That type of work has always been important, but it has become especially so in the last five years, as American democracy has come under acute strain. After the 2020 election, Trump and his allies claimed without evidence that massive voter fraud had cost him the election and attempted to overturn the result, exposing vulnerabilities in the often-overlooked mechanisms between votes being cast and the winner taking office. The episode shone a harsh light on — and encouraged misunderstandings of — aspects of election administration that, frankly, are imperfect, even if they aren’t nefarious.

The ghosts of 2020 continue to haunt our politics. According to Gallup, 43% of Americans were not too confident or not at all confident that votes in the 2024 presidential election would be cast and counted accurately. (They were, just as in 2020.) In its fervent pursuit of evidence of voter fraud, the new Trump administration has tried to exercise an unprecedented amount of power over elections via executive order and lawsuits. In an effort to tilt the midterm playing field in their favor, Republicans and Democrats alike have cast aside norms and redrawn congressional districts to all but guarantee they’ll flip House seats before a single vote is cast. And it remains to be seen what, if any, new obstacles voters themselves may face in going to the polls in 2026 and 2028.

I became a journalist almost by accident, guided by an internal compass toward the subjects that interested me and the type of work I loved to do. Several years ago, that brought me to campaigns, polling, and horse-race coverage, but that no longer feels like the biggest story on the elections beat. Who wins elections matters — but not as much as how well the democratic system itself is working: whether every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot, whether their votes are faithfully counted, and whether the election outcome reflects the true will of the people.

So now, my internal compass is pointing straight at Votebeat. At this point in my career, at this moment in history, I’m more sure than ever what I want to be doing — and it’s working here.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

How ranked choice voting works — illustrated by the election for Votebeat’s pet mascot

2025-10-30T09:00:00+00:00

You may have heard or read a lot about ranked choice voting recently. In New York City this year, voters selected the Democratic candidate for mayor through a ranked choice election. In Michigan, activists are circulating petitions for a proposal to adopt ranked choice voting in elections in the state, while legislators consider forbidding communities from implementing it.

What is ranked choice voting? Read our special feature to find out.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

At the Athens County Board of Elections, they still believe in the great Pumpkin

2025-10-27T09:00:00+00:00

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Hayley Harding here, your intrepid Votebeat Michigan reporter and noted fan of animals with government jobs. I’ve gathered you all here today to discuss what I’m confident we can all agree is the most important issue of our times: pets, and their indispensable contributions to democracy.

You may remember that over the past few weeks, we’ve asked you to take part in our own pet election. We don’t have results quite yet — stay tuned! — but pets are more than Votebeat co-reporters.

I’ve heard of a number of election offices across the country that have an animal or two to serve as an unofficial mascot. I’d like to tell you about one dear to my heart: Pumpkin, the cat who lives, and works (obviously), in the Athens County Board of Elections.

Athens County is in southeastern Ohio, and its county seat, Athens, is home to my alma mater, Ohio University. Athens is a classic college town — campus melds with the surrounding neighborhoods, and many of the city and county offices are just a short walk from the university proper.

That includes the Athens County Board of Elections, and its elderly star, Pumpkin. When I was a student in 2018, Pumpkin would regularly sit in the window of the Board of Elections office, looking out on Court Street. It earned him a lot of affection from students, and a regular spot on the various “Cats with Jobs” social media accounts (with a photo typically used without attribution from a fellow OU alum, reporter Sam Howard).

Pumpkin has become the face of voting in Athens. While he’s largely retired from the front window — preferring instead to supervise from under desks — his visage still appears on T-shirts and posters encouraging people to vote. The university has even used pictures of Pumpkin to encourage students to “take the Bobcat voter pledge.” People regularly stop by the office to ask about him and occasionally make art dedicated to him.

“There’s a lot of people that will ask us to use his likeness and things like that. We don’t limit his likeness or anything,” Tony Brooks, director of the Athens County Board of Elections, said. The board even took a vote against limiting the use of his likeness or seeking to profit from it.

Brooks, director since March, estimates Pumpkin is now about 14½ years old — which is a pretty impressive age for a once flea-ridden cat who had to be rescued from college students by a previous director.

He is, by anyone’s best guess, probably the only cat ~~running~~ living in a Board of Elections office in Ohio. It’s not extra pressure, Brooks said, although people are sometimes disappointed when they come in to meet him during a busy election season and instead have to come back when his caretakers are less occupied with the business of democracy. (He doesn’t have an owner, per se — he’s more of a free agent, cared for by the entire staff.)

I have to know: Do you know of another election office pet? A salamander who keeps an eye on early voting? A dog sniffing out fraud? A chinchilla who doesn’t do a whole lot but looks VERY cute doing it? I need to know. You can reach me at hharding@votebeat.org.

Vote for Votebeat’s new pet mascot

2025-09-04T20:57:59+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Update: As of Oct. 21, voting is closed. View the results and learn more about how ranked choice voting works here.

The Votebeat team is working on a project that explains how ranked choice voting works, so to get some real data to work with, we decided to ask readers to vote in a plurality election and a ranked choice election — with our staff’s pets as candidates.

As part of this election, we have nine candidates. You can peruse their photos and bios below.

If you’d like to vote, you must be a Votebeat newsletter subscriber. You can sign up for any of our newsletters for free here.

If you’re a newsletter subscriber already, watch out for your voting form in tomorrow’s national newsletter, and in subsequent national and local newsletters going out this month.

We’re serious about needing to be a newsletter subscriber to vote. You won’t get the link to the voting form until you sign up for one of our newsletters, and we ask that you please not share that form link around once you do get it. Anyone who votes who is not a newsletter subscriber will not have their vote counted in the final tally. This is to ensure that only real Votebeat readers are voting and not a bunch of spam bots.

And now, the candidates, listed in alphabetical order:

Casper

Casper the cat

Casper was saved from being let out on the street as a kitten where, as a deaf cat, he surely wouldn’t have lasted long. This struggle inspired him to run for public office. Casper is pro naps and anti leaving you alone while you work.

— Carter Walker, Votebeat Pennsylvania reporter

Honey

Honey the bunny

In a previous life, Honey was a human supermodel. She has not forgotten. It’s in your best interest to not forget that, either. The FBI’s file on Honey is deeply redacted and at least 18 inches thick. She’s rumored to have invented gravity, the nuclear bomb, and chocolate chip cookies.

— Hayley Harding, Votebeat Michigan reporter

Luna

Luna the dog

I’m Luna, but my humans call me Lunita, Lulu, Looney Tunes, Puppy Chula, and the list goes on. I’m a confident, 5-year-old miniature pinscher weighing in at 10.5 lbs. You got a problem? I’ll solve it! My humans tell me that I’m at the advanced level of puzzles.

— Elaine Cromie, Civic News Company photo editor

Midnight

Midnight the cat

Midnight is a former pro-athlete and intends to bring the dedication he learned in competitive fetch to serving his community. He takes a strong stance against the Spotted Lantern Fly, and squashes them whenever he can. In his spare time, he enjoys stealing your milk when you’re not looking.

— Carter Walker, Votebeat Pennsylvania reporter

Miklo

Miklo the cat

I survived being stuck inside the motor of a car. I’ve got a scar to show it. I fear nothing. Bring on the water guns. I can fly high, and one day I will get the string hanging from that thing that goes round and round on the ceiling.

— Natalia Contreras, Votebeat Texas reporter

Porfirio

Porfirio the cat

I am named after one of the most influential, feared, and complicated leaders in Latin America. I was rescued from the streets of Corpus Christi last fall. I was my mom’s only baby and we were both very happy together until she — for whatever reason — decided I needed a brother.

— Natalia Contreras, Votebeat Texas reporter

Puff

Puff the bunny

Every single day Puff has is the best day he’s ever had, in no small part because Puff has never had a thought on purpose. His hobbies include sprinting full speed across the floor and then crashing directly into the wall.

— Hayley Harding, Votebeat Michigan reporter

Samson

Samson the cat

Rescued from the streets of Michigan, Samson is a certified velcro cat and a Great Looking Man. He loves tuna and hates his owners leaving. He’s probably a father. He has lived in four states and once escaped into backcountry Wyoming — legend has it he returned holding an eagle’s talon.

— Alexander Shur, Votebeat Wisconsin reporter

Walter

Walter the dog

Walter is an 11-pound rescue dog and part-time pooch, full-time mooch. Known for his sparkly cowboy hat and needy charm, he commands attention despite being almost entirely silent. With an Instagram following and a flair for drama, Walter is living proof that wolves didn’t evolve into whatever this is.

— Jessica Huseman, Votebeat editorial director

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Americans’ trust in local newsrooms is journalism’s greatest asset — if we protect it

2025-05-12T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

I recently had the honor of giving the Hearst Lecture at Columbia Journalism School, where I spoke about something we think about constantly at Votebeat: public trust in the media. I’d love to share what I said — and hear what you think.

Public trust in journalism is at historic lows, threatening democracy, fueling misinformation, and contributing to a dangerous decline in civic engagement. But amid this dismal national picture, one critical detail often gets overlooked: Americans still trust their local newsrooms.

At Votebeat, we believe that the future of journalism lies not in flashier headlines or louder opinions, but in rigorous, transparent local policy reporting. It’s the type of journalism that shows up, week after week, in the places where people live, vote, and engage with their government. It’s the kind of work our reporters do every day in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin — states where democracy is always on the ballot.

Recent data shows 71% of Americans trust local news outlets to report the facts accurately, and that trust holds across political divides. Republicans and Democrats alike report higher levels of confidence in their local media than in national outlets. That trust also extends to another vital institution: local election officials. Despite national rhetoric to the contrary, most Americans still believe their local election administrators are doing their jobs fairly and competently.

This trust is fragile, though, and we must work actively to maintain it. At Votebeat, we do that in three key ways:

1. Consistency. We never drift into horse-race coverage. Our stories don’t fixate on who’s up or down. Instead, we investigate how election systems work (or don’t), and we stick to that mission.

2. Accountability. Our reporters live in the communities they cover. They’re not fly-in correspondents. They’re part of the local fabric, attending canvasses and logic-and-accuracy tests, visiting county clerks’ offices, and building relationships that yield stories that might escape the attention of a national reporter.

3. Impact. We prioritize what matters, not the latest breaking news. Breaking news is important, but at Votebeat, we know that deep reporting on policy and infrastructure often has more lasting consequences.

This model has borne fruit. In Texas, our reporter dove into the root causes of voting-related turmoil in Gillespie County, where all election staff resigned amid pressure from conspiracy theorists. In Arizona, we reported on the complexities of translating ballots for Navajo voters — work that sparked broader conversations about access and equity. And the Experts Desk we assembled for last year’s presidential election connected nearly 100 election specialists with more than 470 journalists, bridging the gap between technical knowledge and public understanding.

We do this because we believe journalism is public infrastructure. And like roads and water systems, it works only when it’s local, well-maintained, and built to serve.

But this vision faces real threats, sometimes from within the journalism industry itself. FOMO (fear of missing out) leads to redundant coverage. The quest for speed leads to errors and contextless stories. And the obsession with scoops can sometimes destroy local trust for little public gain. If we want journalism to survive, and matter, we all need to get over ourselves a little bit.

The path forward is clear.

Newsrooms must invest in expertise. That means more than journalism training. It means teaching reporters the ins and outs of elections, government policy, and the systems they cover.

They should also partner, not parachute. National outlets should work with local reporters, not around them. Local newsrooms have community trust. Respect it, and repay it with resources and support.

Local policy journalism won’t solve every problem facing the media, or our democracy. But it’s a model that’s already working, and it’s worth betting on. At Votebeat, we’re not just covering elections. We’re building a new kind of public-service reporting — one community, one story, one trusted relationship at a time.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

I’ve been going to the polls since I was a baby. It’s no wonder I found my calling at Votebeat.

2025-01-22T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

I don’t remember the first time I ever entered a voting booth, probably because I was about 7 months old.

At least that’s what my mom says, and I trust her memory of the 1996 presidential election more than my own. I’m sure it was a momentous occasion, helping her choose between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. I’m sure I helped a lot, in the way you can only do when you haven’t had a birthday yet.

I was also there four years later when she chose between George W. Bush and Al Gore, and again when she chose between Bush and John Kerry. I was there for the in-between elections too, for city council and state representative and more.

There were two reasons for this, she later told me. The first was that our polling place was in the gymnasium at my school, Wilkerson Elementary in Warren, Michigan, which was typically closed on Election Day. There wasn’t anyone else to look after me when she had to go vote. So with her I went.

The second was that from my very earliest days, she wanted me to know that voting was an important thing you did. You did it because you had to, because it took almost no time, and it made a difference not only for you but for those around you, too.

In my family, voting was treated as something you’re expected to do to make your community better — the bare minimum to help shape the kind of society we want to live in. I didn’t realize how unusual that mentality was until I went to college and cast a vote myself for the first time. Others didn’t vote at all; I was so excited, I voted early.

I grew up in Michigan but moved a lot as a kid. I went to college in Ohio (no, not that college in Ohio). I finally had the opportunity to come back home in 2021 to work for The Detroit News. There, I was a data reporter and wrote the kind of stories I thought would matter to the people I knew when I was that little girl in Warren accompanying my mom to the polling place.

Joining Votebeat last summer gave me a chance to do even more of the work that matters locally, more centered on one of our most important rights as Americans. I’d previously covered basically every level of government in some way, from school board meetings to NASA launching rockets into space. But Votebeat spoke to me in a different way, because the way we do things here is fundamentally different from anywhere I’ve ever worked before.

One thing that drew me to Votebeat was its mission of producing stories that generate tangible impacts aimed at stronger and fairer elections. Where can we improve those systems? What barriers keep voters from casting a ballot? What flaws or failures could keep a ballot from being counted? What requirements do the people who run our elections follow, and what challenges are they up against?

In the coming months and years, those are the kinds of stories I expect to be reporting. I’ll follow up with the legislature, yes, but I will also be talking to local clerks and a whole lot of voters. I promise you that I’ll continue to write stories that provide the context you need to get the whole picture. And if you have a question or a problem when you go to cast your ballot, I’ll do everything I can to figure out what is going on.

I started at Votebeat in July, just a few weeks before the August primary and a few months before the November general election. It was a blustery and fast-moving time, which is probably why it’s taken me so long to reflect in print about why I’m here. I think it will probably go down as one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done for work, which is saying something, because once I moved to Idaho for a job.

I think there’s a very specific kind of romance that comes from voting: not just the idea that democracy provides a mechanism for changing your world but also that you can be part of that force for change.

I don’t take lightly that if I was born in a different generation or a different country, I wouldn’t be able to take part in that kind of romance. So yes, you’ll see me each and every election, casting my vote on local millages and county commissioners and who I’d like to be the next Michigan secretary of state.

I hope to see you there, too.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

What comes next for America: A message to readers

2024-11-12T17:36:52+00:00

I want to say something to our readers and our supporters here at Civic News Company about last week’s presidential election. However you voted, many of us right now are united in a sense that our politics are broken — and that our country may not be able to take on the challenges we face.

I think we can. But to get there, we have to repair something that goes deeper than politics. We have to repair the fabric of our civic life.

Healthy civic exchange across diverse American communities — real-life, non-virtual communities — has been fraying for decades. But that erosion has sparked a counter-force, a fledgling movement for civic renewal. People trading toxic shouting for real conversation. Communities crossing divides. Journalists like us forming outlets like Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and Healthbeat, where people can get trustworthy reporting about issues in their communities, in defiance of polarization and misinformation.

The truth is that when Americans get the tools to work on real issues in their local communities, they solve problems and create healthier politics. They become what we at Civic News Company call “civic catalysts.” They show up to public meetings; they start organizations; they run for office.

We’ve seen this in our work at Civic News Company through both the Trump and Biden years. We’ve seen ordinary people take action to bolster the integrity of their county elections after Votebeat reports on proposed or real changes. We’ve seen parents and students become aware through Chalkbeat of well-intended changes in education laws that went awry and work to overturn them. In many cases, we have seen Republicans and Democrats work together, changing course when Chalkbeat and Votebeat’s reporting showed them that their actions harmed fair voting or local schools.

We need many more civic catalysts. Because whether you find the potential policies of the second Trump administration thrilling or terrifying, you have to see that our country has challenging business in front of us. We’ll have to consider and track Trump’s explosive policies as they shape life in actual communities, from promised deportations to his proposal to eliminate the Department of Education to the possibility of a vaccine skeptic holding the highest public health position in the land.

Trump aside, schools face an “education depression”: student achievement has declined for the first time in decades (a trend that actually preceded COVID). Since Civic News Company has started reporting on public health with the launch of Healthbeat this summer, we’ve learned that many experts see another pandemic as not an if but a when. Meanwhile, our public health system remains unprepared, and on top of that faces a public health skeptic in the incoming president.

Pillars of our democracy that we were fortunate to take for granted now require vigilant attention. The U.S. system for elections was severely tested, and while it actually came out stronger, it is nonetheless plagued by distrust. The January 6 attack and two recent assassination attempts on President-elect Trump show a rising tendency toward political violence. And our media is corrupted by misinformation, magical thinking, foreign interference, and a fourth estate reduced both by diminishing economic prospects and declining credibility.

In the face of these challenges, we cannot throw up our hands. We have to enter the arena. Like you, our readers and supporters, already do.

You support organizations like ours as a vote for a healthier democracy.

And you are yourselves civic catalysts.

You are teachers, young people, and parents who look out not just for your own interest, but ask what’s going on in your community and what you can do to help. You are voters, election officials, and poll workers who monitor democracy’s most precious system, and take action if a law or policy threatens it. You are community leaders who work to improve your neighbors’ health.

You are the reason I know that we can set toxicity aside and start solving the big problems in front of us. And you inspire me to be my own civic catalyst, in the best way I know how — doing everything in my power to keep Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and Healthbeat strong. With your support, we can help you make this country a better place, one local issue at a time.

Elizabeth Green is the founder and CEO of Civic News Company.

America’s election system passed its first test. Here’s what we’re following next.

2024-11-04T18:23:23+00:00

A special message to Votebeat readers from editor-in-chief Chad Lorenz:

As early voting wraps up, America’s election system appears to have passed its first test of the 2024 general election.

More than 77 million Americans have already cast their ballots, not far behind the pandemic-era rate for early voting in 2020. Among the notable setbacks, we’ve seen only scattered ballot mishaps and polling place disruptions. There have been reports of mail ballots not getting delivered, long waits to vote because of crowds at early voting sites in Pennsylvania and Arizona, and tech glitches that have inconvenienced voters in Wisconsin and Nevada — all isolated incidents that did not upend the voting process. An assault on a poll worker in Texas, a machete-wielding young man outside a polling place in Florida, and three drop boxes fires in Oregon and Washington briefly raised alarm. Even in flood-devastated Western North Carolina, voters are adapting to ad hoc voting accommodations.

A blitz of last-minute court decisions have gone both ways — some generally in voters’ favor, and some leading to voter disenfranchisement, such as the Supreme Court decision backing Virginia’s program to remove voters from its rolls.

But judging from news reports and election officials’ updates, we haven’t seen a systemic breakdown of voting or a successful assault on the election infrastructure as some might have feared, even as foreign adversaries are trying. That speaks to the high level of local election officials’ preparation and the resiliency of the system.

“I have incredible confidence that our election infrastructure has never been more secure,” Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said last week. “Election officials have never been better prepared to deliver safe and secure and free and fair elections for the people.”

In the coming days, we’ll see other big tests to our elections and to voters. The last several weeks have given a preview. In Arizona and Pennsylvania, court battles have led to rapid, last-minute shifts in voting rules — like whether Pennsylvania voters whose mail ballots were rejected can try to vote again on Election Day at the polls, or how Pinal County, Arizona, voters who show up at the wrong polling site will be accommodated .

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has fanned unsubstantiated allegations of noncitizens planning to cast ballots en masse for Democrats with his inflated announcement about removing millions of ineligible voters from the state’s voting rolls — including, Abbott claimed, 6,500 noncitizens. The announcements, our Texas reporter Natalia Contreras determined, were a mischaracterization of the routine process of voter roll cleaning, which includes culling the names of people who have moved out of state or died. As for the alleged noncitizen voters, Abbott’s office later amended its press release to add the word “potential” before noncitizens. And in fact, at least 10 U.S. citizens were among the Texans who were improperly removed from the rolls.

Other tests are yet to come. There will be a surge in politically driven legal challenges to voters’ eligibility, as has already started in Pennsylvania. And amid the final processing of mail ballots, many voters will be surprised to learn their ballot has been rejected.

The national media may get important details wrong, because they’re not paying close enough attention to certain states. It already happened when The New York Times, USA Today, and Fox News wrongly reported the start date of early voting in Pennsylvania, as our Carter Walker in Pennsylvania pointed out.

Misinformation will likely proliferate. We’re already seeing it.

At Votebeat, we’ll be following each test closely. And we’ll continue to debunk misunderstandings and misinformation. For example, should you become concerned that people in Michigan could vote twice, it’s useful to know the specific checks in place to detect this — which worked in the primaries, when four voters who allegedly cast two ballots each, one by mail and one in person, were caught. They now face felony charges, as our Hayley Harding in Michigan reported.

Natalia in Texas, Carter in Pennsylvania, and Hayley in Michigan are joined by Jen Fifield in Arizona, Alexander Shur in Wisconsin, and editors Jessica Huseman and Carrie Levine. Our reporters and editors are the most experienced and well-sourced in the business on the voting and elections beat. And we are on the ground in states everyone is going to be watching closely as votes are tallied.

To follow along with us, subscribe to our newsletters, spread the word to your friends — and please, share your questions at community@votebeat.org. We’re here to help.

Chad Lorenz is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Denver. Contact Chad at clorenz@votebeat.org.

Votebeat has a new look — and a public health sister site

2024-08-26T08:14:00+00:00

Welcome to Votebeat’s new website!

If you’re a regular reader, you might have noticed that things are looking a little different here. Nothing about our stories or functionality of the site has changed, but we’ve got a new look that we hope you appreciate: simple, modern, and proudly showcasing the journalism you know and value.

Our new color palette is aimed at bringing visual energy and eye-catching urgency to our pages, wherever readers may see them out in the world. You’ll notice the rebranding on our newsletters, social media accounts, and online news platforms too.

Votebeat’s makeover also brings a consistent visual identity across the news orgs under the Civic News Company brand and coincides with the launch of a new sibling site. Meet Healthbeat, officially launching today to cover public health.

Healthbeat reporters will be digging into issues that shape our collective well-being, from infectious diseases to air and water quality and food safety. And they will be bringing the Votebeat (and Chalkbeat) model of national and local reporting to bear on public health at a time when it’s badly needed. Healthbeat will start with bureaus in New York City and Atlanta as well as national reporting in partnership with the great folks over at KFF Health News.

I hope you will check them out, starting with editor in chief Charlene Pacenti’s introduction to Healthbeat’s work. You can also sign up for Healthbeat’s newsletters here.

— Chad Lorenz

Democracy is in the details. My job is to make them clearer for Wisconsin voters.

2024-07-01T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

It was March 2022, and Wisconsin’s most powerful lawmaker was meeting behind closed doors at the state Capitol with people who were asking him to decertify the state’s 2020 election results.

I was sitting on the floor outside those doors, two months into my new state government reporting job, and trying to write about the meeting on deadline. It was uncomfortable. Not the floor — well, OK, the floor, too.

But it was uncomfortable because an election conspiracy theorist outside those doors was talking to me, making far-reaching claims, and at that point I didn’t know enough about the safeguards built into Wisconsin’s election system to say for sure that his claims were baseless.

I knew they probably were. I knew about the recounts, court reviews, and audits that confirmed the state’s 2020 election results. I knew that claims similar to this man’s had been disproven over and over. But still, I didn’t know enough to refute them myself.

The interaction didn’t seem important. It didn’t figure in any story I was writing that day or any follow-up coverage. Still, I’ve always remembered it. It was a wake-up call for me to recognize that many Wisconsin residents spent a lot of time thinking about elections but that some of those folks didn’t have their facts right. As a reporter, I knew I was supposed to be an authority on the topic, but I understood only the politics of election administration, not the finer details. And in some instances, like that one, the details mattered a lot more.

Mastering the details of Wisconsin elections takes time, and I hadn’t had much of that by March 2022.

I moved to Wisconsin only in late 2021 after working for a newspaper in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I focused on investigative reporting on the criminal justice system. There, I wrote about a man sent to jail for voting because he was unaware of a Wyoming law that prohibits people with repeat felony convictions from voting, unless they get a governor’s pardon. I also covered the inequalities in mental health care for people caught up in the criminal justice system.

Before that, I wasn’t reporting at all. I lived in Guatemala for two years, volunteering in the Peace Corps and for a nonprofit.

The truth is, the inner workings of elections weren’t on my mind for most of my life. But the broader values of free and fair elections and democracy were never lost on me — or my ancestors, who came to know the worth of those values by not having had them in Soviet Russia.

With one-party rule under the Communists, the election results there were predetermined. A single candidate would appear on the ballot, yet turnout for these non-contests neared 100%.

Free and fair elections? Don’t think so. My ancestors could mark a ballot, but their votes had no meaning.

Other opportunities weren’t easy for my family to come by, either. My grandpa’s dreams of a better job or a good law school education were quashed by the label on his internal passport identifying him as Jewish. His hope of a freer life for my Russian-born mother was hobbled for some time by restrictive emigration policies for Jews.

In the early 1970s, my mom’s family made their way out as refugees through Western Europe to Canada, and my parents later moved to the United States, where I was born.

It’s probably easier to embrace the concept of freedom and opportunity when you at some point don’t have it. I certainly have had plenty of fantastic opportunities in my life. I’ve been allowed more freedom than almost all of my ancestors.

But I’ve tried never to lose sight of the fact that our democracy’s existence and stability aren’t guarantees — they’re privileges. It takes work to make it function. And that work often lies in the details, sometimes deep down in the weeds of election administration. For my little part, I think it’s worth focusing on election administration details, because that’s where trust in our system can be built, or lost.

Years after that interaction at the Capitol, there’s still distrust in elections across Wisconsin, often rooted in misinformation and conspiracy theories. Municipal clerks and other election officials deal with this every day.

They’re also dealing with much more. Each year, there are several new lawsuits in Wisconsin over election laws and rules. There are shortcomings in election processes and accessibility that need to be addressed. And there’s the constant hard work to make sure Wisconsin’s decentralized election system — comprising 72 county clerks and about 1,850 municipal clerks — functions reliably.

My goal at Votebeat is to provide a deep, clear-eyed view of all these issues. I’m not here to glorify all the election happenings in Wisconsin, nor am I here to catastrophize. Votebeat excels in its elections reporting because its reporters provide a critical, dispassionate, and nonpartisan look at election administration — both its strengths and weaknesses.

If I do my job right, I’ll do exactly that. I’ll also answer your questions along the way. And hopefully together, we can help Wisconsin’s election system become a little easier to understand, and perform a little better for the voters who rely on it.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Why we think spotlighting flaws in elections actually helps increase voter confidence

2024-04-29T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Today, I want to explain something about Votebeat’s journalism, especially in light of a great story we published.

At Votebeat, we’re reporting the nuanced truth about elections and voting at a time of crisis in America. We aim to help people understand how our democracy works so they can participate in strengthening it.

Why am I telling you this? Because our mission includes telling the public about election mistakes and problems when they do crop up. Transparency and openness about mistakes should shore up voters’ faith in the system, not undercut it.

We all know that democracy is under pressure. Election officials have repeatedly assured the public that our elections are safe and secure, and a parade of court cases, recounts, and audits have affirmed that. But polls have repeatedly found that lies and conspiracy theories are eroding the trust many Americans have in elections.

Of course, elections are also complicated events involving complex logistics, thousands of workers, and millions of voters spread over a patchwork of jurisdictions, and mistakes happen. In such cases, our job is to figure out and explain what went wrong. We hope that our journalism can prevent the next election meltdown.

At Votebeat, we are sometimes asked if spotlighting such mistakes through our coverage — such as the deeply reported investigation into flawed practices in Northampton County that Votebeat Pennsylvania reporter Carter Walker published this month — undermines faith in elections.

We actually believe the opposite — that being upfront about mistakes, and reporting on how and why they happened, will increase voter confidence.

When problems with voting machines first surfaced in Northampton County, in eastern Pennsylvania, last November, local election officials said the issue was a simple programming error. What they didn’t say: Their process for testing voting machines before use, known as logic and accuracy testing, was flawed in ways that went far beyond a simple programming error, and much of their documentation was incomplete or missing.

The only reason the public knows this is that Walker spent nearly 14 hours over six days going through Northampton County’s logic and accuracy testing documentation from October 2023. He wanted to understand what happened, and whether the mistakes that affected voters were preventable. What he found was that the paperwork was a mess, with inspection checklists filled out incorrectly and several dozen test ballots nowhere to be found. The problems with the machines’ programming might have been caught before the election if the county had better processes in place.

In response to Walker’s findings, Northampton election officials are changing the way they do things. “We definitely have to get better on a lot of the things we did,” Northampton Elections Director Christopher Commini told Walker. “These are major changes that need to be done.” And state lawmakers are looking into legislation to make sure other counties have good processes in place.

Votebeat’s journalism has prompted official action to improve elections elsewhere, too. For example, in Pinal County, Arizona, a rapidly growing area outside Phoenix, reporter Jen Fifield found that even though election staff had documented clear errors during and after tabulating ballots, they didn’t fix them or inform the public before certifying the 2022 election. Her work sparked calls for change and outraged editorials; the county has new personnel in place and has made other changes.

Of course, readers choose what to take from our work. One reader from California, Colin Clements, emailed Fifield after a co-worker sent him an article of hers about problems in Maricopa County last year. According to the co-worker, Clements said, that article and others about issues with voting around the country suggested a coordinated effort to rig the election — a contention the article doesn’t support at all.

Conspiracy theorists, in other words, won’t necessarily draw the right conclusions from our work. But people like Clements don’t want us to quit. If nobody explained what went wrong, Clements told me in a separate conversation, “someone like me would say, ‘Why isn’t anyone explaining what happened?’ Explaining what happened and researching what happened satisfies people like me, but it doesn’t matter what you do for conspiracy theorists.”

“Your critical role,” he added, “is to provide information for those in the middle of the spectrum that seek to understand.”

We’re going to keep doing that.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is coming to Wisconsin. Here’s what you can expect.

2024-02-13T22:14:38+00:00

Exciting news! Votebeat will soon be adding Wisconsin to our coverage area, with the hiring of a new local reporter there.

This is a critical time to cover voting in Wisconsin — a pivotal 2024 swing state that conspiracy theorists and hyper-partisans have affixed a target to. Former President Trump and Republicans want to win the state back, and one strategy has been to rewrite the voting rules from the policies of 2020, when Democrats won by a narrow margin. Court decisions and new laws since then have changed many rules, like outlawing drop boxes and tweaking the witness requirement for absentee ballots. Those debates continue in unpredictable ways — and with the Supreme Court’s new liberal majority, many rules may still change in 2024.

That kind of environment calls for Votebeat’s specialized journalism, aimed at helping people understand elections so they can participate in strengthening them. And thanks to generous supporters such as The Joyce Foundation, Moriah Fund, and Square One Foundation, we’re able to launch the coverage we’ve long wanted to bring there.

Much recent coverage in the state has focused on the disputes in the capital between the Republican-majority legislature and the state’s Elections Commission — climaxing most recently with an attempt to oust the state’s chief election official — and on conservatives’ conflict with the state Supreme Court as it revisits key voting decisions.

Votebeat will dive deeper — zooming in on the effect those fights have on the more than 1,800 local clerks and their ability to run elections for their communities of voters. We’ll also help voters stay up to date on what the rules of elections actually are, so they can fully participate.

Votebeat is no stranger to Wisconsin, having mobilized two reporters there in 2020 to cover election issues in partnership with Wisconsin Watch during our pop-up experiment in covering elections in a whole new way.

If this kind of mission-driven journalism sounds exciting to you or a talented journalist you know, you can apply here. Votebeat’s small team, again partnering with Wisconsin Watch, is tight-knit and energized, and we can’t wait to bring another talented journalist into our fold.

Hearing from readers who care about elections in Wisconsin will be crucial to our coverage. We want to start the conversation now. If you have ideas for us, you can reach us here. You can also sign up here to get updates about our launch.

It took me three tries to register to vote — and I’m a voting reporter

2024-02-12T09:35:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

When I started working at Votebeat more than a year ago, I knew little about elections. I wasn’t eligible to vote, and for most of my adult life, the election process was confusing and intimidating. I wanted to learn as much as I could about how elections worked so I would feel empowered to one day participate myself. I wrote an essay about all of this when I started.

After months of writing about election administrators’ jobs, paper ballot security and storage, how primary elections work, election funding (or lack thereof), voting machine logic and accuracy tests, and voter roll maintenance, I now feel like I know more about our elections process than most of those around me.

I love it. And I’m now eligible to cast a ballot.

The process of registering to vote in Texas, however, was harder and more complicated than I expected.

This journey began when I became a naturalized U.S. citizen at a ceremony in May, having lived more than 20 years in the United States. After taking the oath of allegiance with around 50 others, volunteer deputy voter registrars from Bexar, Travis, Hays, and other Central Texas counties were waiting with voter registration applications.

I’m an elections reporter — and I just cast my first vote as a naturalized U.S. citizen

I was 100% ready. I worked very hard for this moment, and I knew exactly what to do. It felt great to fill out that voter registration form.

The volunteer who took my application told me I would receive a voter registration card in the mail. It never arrived. A few months later, I checked my voter registration status on the Texas secretary of state’s website and nothing showed up. When I called the county’s voter registrar, they confirmed I wasn’t in the system.

But I knew I was moving to a different county soon, and decided to wait and register there. I figured I could easily register to vote at the local Texas Department of Public Safety office while also updating my address and driver’s license. I checked all the right boxes and I verified my information to make sure I had selected the option to register to vote. I asked the clerk at the counter to double-check, and he told me that he did.

I wanted to be sure because time was getting tighter. I knew that if I were to arrive at the polls on Election Day and find my information wasn’t in the system, I would need to vote using a provisional ballot and risk it going uncounted.

After a few weeks, I received my new driver’s license in the mail. But I was still not registered to vote. The deadline to register was getting closer. I called my county’s voter registrar’s office. The clerk on the phone said she was not sure what went wrong.

That’s when my journalistic curiosity took over. I started calling my sources to ask why someone’s voter registration applications would be landing in the void.

They told me the first application — the one I filled out right outside of my naturalization ceremony — could have gotten lost on the way. It was possible a deputy voter registrar never turned it into the county —though that’s a criminal offense. There’s also a possibility that my application is still sitting on someone’s desk at the county voter registrars’ office.

In other states, these problems aren’t as common. For example, in states with online voter registration — all except around eight states, though two more are in the process of implementing it — volunteers aren’t as necessary for registration, and no voter applications get lost in the mail or on a messy desk. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, though, has blocked online voter registration for years with no explanation.

And until Texas does implement online voter registration, election officials say that anyone registering via a volunteer deputy registrar should receive a receipt with the date they registered and the volunteer deputy registrar’s ID. It’s important to hold on to that. If you show up to the polls and they tell you you’re not registered to vote, with that receipt in hand, you could still vote provisionally. “If need be we can call that VDR and say, ‘Hey what’s the problem here? Why don’t we have that application?’” Chris Davis, the voter registration division director in Travis County, told me.

I remember getting that receipt when I first registered outside of my naturalization ceremony. But at the time, I did not know how important it was, or that I might need it later. I misplaced it when I moved.

As for my second attempt, there’s a chance the DPS clerk made a mistake. Even when someone selects the option to register to vote on their form, the clerk still must manually select that option in the computer system in order for the data to be sent to the county. There also could have been errors in the process of transferring the data between agencies, or my information might have made it to the county registrar’s office and simply not been entered on time — a risk because the computer systems don’t talk to each other directly.

It was less than a week before the voter registration deadline, and I had to try again.

I filled out my third voter registration application. I went to drop it off in person at the voter registrar’s office.

This time, it worked.

But I am still thinking about how not everyone has the ability, the time, or the resources to ask questions, double-check their registration status, and make multiple attempts.

Being able to participate in democracy should not be this hard.

I want to hear about your experience registering to vote in Texas. Did you have trouble? Did it go smoothly? Email me at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune.

How Votebeat’s reporting impacted elections in our first year

2023-05-26T13:36:16+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.

After experimenting with a new kind of niche election coverage as a “pop-up” newsroom in 2020 — focused on the voting process and the system itself rather than candidates or campaigns — Votebeat officially launched one year ago as a permanent news organization.

Votebeat’s staff of eight ramped up quickly during a time of tension and uncertainty leading up to the midterms. Far-right candidates who rejected the 2020 election outcome and spread conspiracy theories were seeking positions as their state’s chief election officials. Voter fraud activists were still demanding recounts of 2020 and abolishment of voting machines, and some local election systems had been breached by insiders. New voting restrictions were going into effect after 2021’s contentious legislative sessions.

This was the climate in which we set out on our mission: to help voters understand our system of democracy so they can participate in strengthening it. We’re proud that in our first year of producing a new kind of journalism, we’ve helped reshape the debate over voting access and the running of elections.

Reporters never know what they’re going to find when they start exploring their local election landscape, on the lookout for the problems in voting and threats to democracy. The more locally they look, the more the storylines differ from place to place — often revealing surprising opportunities to draw public attention to issues readers can act on.

Here are five examples of Votebeat stories that made a difference in elections during our first year — impact that would have been impossible without the people who support our work.

Texas averts $100 million consequences of law requiring nonexistent election tech

Reporter Natalia Contreras learned that election officials were panicking over a 2021 law requiring all counties to replace their vote-counting machines by 2026 with technology that doesn’t exist.

Her reporting in February found the law, which banned all reusable storage for voting data, would cost the state $116 million and require counties to keep replacing their equipment after every election. Lawmakers had been unaware of the consequences of the provision, which was tucked into a massive election bill and passed on a voice vote with no debate. The law was proposed by a conservative senator to prevent “cheating” and the “manipulation” of vote data stored in USB flash drives — although there’s no evidence any such thing has ever happened.

As one county election official noted, “that article lit a fire under people’s butts,” and legislators in May unanimously voted to roll back the requirement.

Uncovering an Arizona election skeptic’s agenda as he seeks more control over voting

After reporter Jen Fifield closely followed controversial attempts by Cochise County leaders to hand-count their midterm ballots and to resist certifying their election results — both in violation of state laws — she took a close look at one official in particular, County Recorder David Stevens. He had been instrumental to his colleagues’ election-disrupting agenda but had remained behind the scenes.

“He has close connections with GOP state leaders who have worked to upend voting … and a keen willingness to spread doubts about election security, experiment with proven processes, and test the boundaries of state law,” Jen’s story reads.

Shortly after our story ran, the Republican county supervisors pursued a plan to give Stevens more election responsibilities by moving duties from the county election director, who had abruptly resigned citing a hostile work environment. At one pivotal meeting, residents who had read our coverage voiced their objections to giving Stevens more power. Local media cited Jen’s reporting and brought her on the air to explain the conflict. Even state officials told us the reporting kept them up to date as they decried the situation and prepared to step in with legal action.

A project to map Pennsylvania’s unequal voting access generates debate

The most persistent issue in Pennsylvania elections is how ambiguity in the state’s 2019 mail-voting law leads to different voting policies from county to county. Some provide convenient ballot drop boxes while others do not. Some counties allow voters to fix disqualifying mistakes on their mail ballot envelope and even contact voters to alert them to the errors; other counties simply reject those ballots, leaving voters disenfranchised.

Pennsylvania reporter Carter Walker, in a joint project with Spotlight PA, took a deep dive into the state’s patchwork of unequal local voting practices, showing that how easily you can vote depends on where you live.

The project, featuring data-rich interactive maps, inspired spin-off coverage, editorials, and op-eds in local news outlets. In a live panel discussion about the project, voting experts called on the Legislature to bring consistency and clarity to the law and provide more support to county election officials.

Raising concerns about how to expand voting access successfully in Michigan

Oralandar Brand-Williams has been reporting on barriers to voting and the quickly changing landscape in voting access in Michigan, most recently driven by the voters’ approval in November of Proposal 2, a package of constitutional voting reforms. The biggest of those changes will provide Michigan voters with nine days of early in-person voting. Oralandar amplified the concerns of clerks that said administering the new option made them “kind of nervous” because it would heavily depend on costs and logistics, much of which are still up in the air.

Amid election rancor in Texas, one county’s official stands out for keeping the peace

Before she took on the legislative session, Natalia reported last summer about conservative election activists’ effort to find evidence of voter fraud in Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth. After breaking multiple stories about extremists’ grassroots campaigns, she realized there was an even more powerful story to tell — about the county election official who has managed to keep the peace with them. By shadowing Heider Garcia during the November election, Natalia learned he engages these extremists using “tactical patience,” a method that other election officials hold up as an example. We then partnered with This American Life to adapt her portrait of his unique leadership style into a radio segment. The story has been applauded by the Solutions Journalism Network and won Natalia the Election Verification Network’s Pacesetter Journalism Award.

Thank you, readers

It’s an honor to produce this journalism for an audience that appreciates our work and who, increasingly, takes that information out into the world to further our mission of making elections stronger and more accessible.

Support our work today with a donation that will enable us to keep doing this reporting and help strengthen democracy.

Chad Lorenz is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Denver. Contact Chad at clorenz@votebeat.org.

My lifelong curiosity and my reverence for democracy made me a reporter

2023-01-27T20:01:04+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Something piqued my curiosity when I spotted two teachers leaving the school grounds and crossing the street to an empty field.

I was a third-grader out on the playground, and I wanted to know exactly what was going on. I questioned nearby recess aides and took notes on the napkin in my pocket from lunch.

I couldn’t get answers that day, so unfortunately the story never went to print. But I do like to think of this as my first venture into investigative journalism. I later learned the school district was purchasing the field for a new baseball diamond.

This early need to understand what’s happening around me — and why things are the way they are — is what drove me into journalism. Then, as I got older, my experience in Boy Scouts kindled my passion for civic engagement, democracy, and the noble work of building strong communities — the themes Scouting reinforces in all its activities and teachings.

I found myself on a path that eventually led to covering voting and elections.

In my first job covering the government and judicial system of a small town in West Virginia, I was surprised by how much I didn’t know about the mechanics of government, like how a budget goes from proposal to implementation. Covering local government is like a Schoolhouse Rock education on steroids.

One thing that a candidate for local office told me has stuck with me ever since: “Your local government will often have much more of an impact on your day-to-day life than the federal government.”

He was right.

When I returned to my home state five years ago to cover county government and politics in Lancaster County, I saw just how valuable providing accurate, well-researched information can be for a community. Like the time I was able to use data from Audit the Vote PA, a group that promotes conspiracy theories about elections, to retrace their steps on a door-to-door canvassing effort in search of 2020 fraud and found significant flaws in their attempt. That story drew praise from community members on the left and the right.

I also found out that unfortunately, not everyone shared this same commitment to convey factual information about our electoral process.

During my time in Lancaster, I covered several election cycles. I found that since 2020, some partisan actors have become willing to repeat, or unwilling to refute, misleading or outright false information about voting, even when they are warned that it is false.

This was particularly dismaying to me as a local government reporter. I had come to view the county elections staff as among the nicest, most professional, and most dedicated staff in all of county government. These workers have the keys to our democracy in their hands, sometimes literally. I saw that they understood and took that responsibility very seriously, so it was upsetting to me to see the harassment and misinformation they had to face, often with little or no defense.

That is why I was excited to join the Votebeat team. Like nowhere else, this group of passionate individuals is committed to helping people understand the vastly misunderstood but critically important process that is voting and administering our elections. Hopefully, with their help, my reporting can convey to Pennsylvanians what I learned about local government’s impact years ago.

The team here has already proven itself to be an incredibly valuable resource not only to the communities they report for, but to democracy itself, such as with Natalia’s expertly done investigation of one county’s loss of its entire election staff. That not only helped inform that community, but added nuance to the conversation on an issue happening around the country.

I hope I can live up to the standard they have set and do the same for Pennsylvania.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

The midterms ended in optimism, but threats to elections could affect voting in 2023 and beyond

2023-01-02T12:00:00+00:00

2023 is upon us and, per page 10 of the Rulebook for Newsletters, we shall now reflect on 2022. It was a year that concluded on a high note after a peaceful election: Nearly all of the most ardent election conspiracy theorists on the ballot were rejected by voters, and will not take office in the new year. And Congress passed Electoral Count Act reform that would help prevent a future Jan. 6–style attempt at presidential election subversion.

That, in turn, has led to a cluster of cautiously optimistic think pieces wondering whether it may all have just been a passing threat. In fact, one friend at a recent holiday party asked me if I was “worried” about Votebeat’s fundraising prospects, given how emphatically all the people who wanted to undermine elections had lost their races.

At the risk of sounding like a self-serving contrarian, I’m not.

The 2022 midterm dealt a blow to the larger strategy pursued by former President Donald Trump and his followers. It may well have threatened whatever prospects he had to regain his party’s nomination for the presidency. But — as I’ve written and said repeatedly — the threat to local election offices posed by misinformation and entirely fabricated claims of fraudulent activity predated Trump. Those forces remain and have only grown in both their convictions and their financial resources.

In both Maricopa County, Ariz., and Harris County, Texas, solvable but highly visible election administration stumbles have led to extreme local controversy. Bright red counties continue to make strange choices that stand to disenfranchise their own party’s voters, like they did in Cochise County, Ariz. and in Otero County N.M. and are doing now in Lycoming County, Penn..

I said this to the Atlantic last month, when Elaine Godfrey asked me where Votebeat goes from here: “What I’ll be doing over the next two years is looking at these counties that have gone really hard to the right, because there’s no one to push back.”

A recent study by the Voter Study Group found two things: 1) The more rural the voter’s community was, the more likely they were to believe Trump won the 2020 election; 2) The redder their congressional district, the more likely they were to believe Trump won the 2020 election.

Essentially, many voters live in local, ideological echo chambers, where they don’t encounter the powerful facts that would challenge their views.

Votebeat is in a unique position to be able to actually cover that phenomenon and its implications. We didn’t vest all of the authority to cover “Democracy” in a single reporter based in D.C. or New York — we have reporters living and working in the states they cover, talking to local election officials every day and keeping tabs on extremely local policy changes. And because we value local coverage, we’re perfectly positioned to report on the potential interference and threats to elections this year.

Chad Lorenz, our editor in chief, has always said that 2022 was a scrimmage for Votebeat — not the championship. Our reporters covered 2022 with an eye towards the future, because we have known since we opened our (metaphorical) doors that this was a coverage area of durable importance. I think you’ll see our reporters’ depth of local understanding reflected in their 2023 outlooks below. Each is a preview of what they’re watching for and thinking about in their state, some of the big questions they’ll be exploring.

If you think we’ve missed something, or want to be helpful as we do this coverage, I hope you’ll reach out to me (or any of us).

Jen Fifield, Arizona

Arizona’s election system enters 2023 on more solid ground after surviving a year of challenges. But don’t expect tranquility.

Voters rejected Republican candidates for statewide office who made questioning the security and accuracy of our elections a central theme of their campaigns, placing Democrats in the three offices wielding the most power over elections. Governor-elect Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State-elect Adrian Fontes, and Attorney General-elect Kris Mayes (pending recount results) will be sworn in in January.

But the election results were close, and the electorate — along with its representatives — is as divided as ever. Republicans still control the state Legislature and the vast majority of counties, meaning the gulf between state and local leaders has grown.

Hobbs, Fontes, and Mayes will serve as a backstop against any attempts by county officials to disrupt elections and any effort from state lawmakers to dismantle the election system. With far-right Republican lawmakers in powerful positions in the Legislature, expect to see the most extreme proposals from 2022 revived this year, such as getting rid of early voting and eliminating machines used to count votes (especially after Maricopa County’s Election Day printer problems). Hobbs’ veto power is sure to come into play. And Fontes may find himself taking over for Hobbs in responding to challenges from Republican-led counties that tested the waters in 2022.

The question is whether there will be efforts to find a middle ground to introduce common-sense solutions to make elections better. Your guess is as good as ours, but I’ll be reporting on all of it.

Jen’s favorite story she wrote in 2022: Drop box watchers in Arizona connected to national effort from “2000 Mules” creators

Jen’s favorite non-Votebeat story of 2022: The election official who tried to prove “Stop the Steal”

Oralandar Brand-Williams, Michigan

Michigan has been among a handful of swing states whose elections have been under fire by conspiracy theorists. But in November’s election, Michigan residents voted in favor of Proposal 2, a series of measures aimed at adding ballot access guarantees to the state’s constitution.

In 2023, I’ll turn my attention to the ways Prop 2 will usher in changes for Michigan voters. For example, it provides nine days of early in-person voting, allowing voters to insert ballots into tabulators instead of the current option of submitting an absentee ballot at a clerk’s office. Prop 2 also constitutionally solidifies practices that have been around for years, such as being able to cast a ballot without identification.

Prop 2 passed by an overwhelming majority, closing off the possibility of restrictive measures pushed by Republican lawmakers. Now, state legislators and election officials must decide how best to put the changes in place and how to pay for them.

Oralandar’s favorite story she wrote in 2022: After tabulator breaches, here’s how Michigan is trying to ensure security of its voting systems

Oralandar’s favorite non-Votebeat story of 2022: “Prime instigator”: Michigan investigator links Trump-backed GOP AG candidate to voting breach

Carter Walker, Pennsylvania

Now that the midterms are over, I’m wondering what’s next for the movement in Pennsylvania that loudly promoted conspiracy theories about elections. These activists were so vocal throughout the year, but virtually fell off the map once votes were counted and their candidates lost. Their only substantial effort after Election Day, filing requests for recounts in precincts across the state, slowed down certification of the election but otherwise largely failed to achieve its aims.

So where does the movement go from here, if anywhere? I’ll be taking a look at how it all got started, where it is going, and why some extremists are now leaning more heavily into appeals to Christian nationalism — the idea that American identity is inextricably linked to Christianity.

Also, in the new legislative session, I will be watching for any bills that would reshape election laws here, keeping everyone updated on any significant changes ahead of the 2024 presidential election, while also reporting on how municipal and judicial elections are run in 2023.

Carter’s favorite story he wrote in 2022: Rejecting improperly dated ballots disproportionately impacts communities of color in Pennsylvania, data shows

Carter’s favorite non-Votebeat story of 2022: Philly elections officials adopted a last-minute change that will slow down the counting of votes

Natalia Contreras, Texas

This year, I watched election officials in Texas struggle to use limited resources while coping with new legal mandates and increased demands on their labor. It’s already clear 2023 will only bring more of that.

We’re already seeing election-related bills pre-filed ahead of the legislative session. Some of these want more election oversight. One bill prefiled in November would enable candidates, local political party leaders, polling place election workers, and “certain people supporting or opposing ballot measures to trigger investigations, audits, and civil penalties of election officials.” This would require election officials to provide a response to requestors seeking information for an investigation within 20 days. Officials would also have to respond to follow up requests within 10 days. Another pre-filed bill would assign law enforcement officers to investigate election violations and crimes.

But none of these bills yet include more money to help local election departments carry out the new requirements. If the Legislature won’t take steps to help fund elections, will Texas county commissioners —the people who decide how much money the county spends per year — take steps to prioritize funding election departments as much as public safety and first responders?

Election officials are already near their limits, under pressure from two years of questions and allegations from a burgeoning number of election fraud activist groups and some lawmakers who question the security of elections in our state. Local election offices are flooded with public records requests from election skeptics. Some county election departments have had to create new, full-time positions to meet the demand.

SB 1 — a 2021 statute that overhauled voting in Texas by adding new requirements — went into effect this past election year. Among other things, it required counties with more than 100,000 residents to have law enforcement present on election night and to livestream the counting of votes.

Requirements like that cost counties money, and so far, no one is paying the bill. Will it be different in 2023?

Natalia’s favorite story she wrote in 2022: What brought down one Texas county’s entire elections department? It was something in the water.

Natalia’s favorite non-Votebeat story of 2022: Magazona

Carrie Levine, story editor

Since 2020, judge after judge has rejected unfounded election conspiracy theories. Then, in November, it was voters’ turn. Media coverage and watchdogs made it clear democracy was on the ballot, and voters cast most high-profile promoters of baseless accusations to the curb in an election that was thankfully free of violence.

So what am I watching? Where conspiracy theorists’ attempts to manipulate elections goes next, because it almost certainly isn’t over.

Polls show Democrats and independents have more faith in elections after the midterms, but there’s still a significant partisan gap. Candidates who promoted baseless untruths about elections, like gubernatorial candidates Kari Lake in Arizona and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, lost, but millions of people voted for them. And Americans with doubts about the integrity of their elections are still following a carefully crafted playbook, besieging local election officials with requests meant to supercharge research efforts designed to fuel doubts and delays. Where will this movement go between now and the 2024 election? It’s impossible to say for sure, but I’ll be monitoring whether local officials in red counties continue to test the limits of their authority over elections, for one thing.

Chad Lorenz, editor-in-chief, and Lauren Aguirre, engagement editor

As you can see from our staffers’ outlooks, Votebeat’s coverage didn’t end on Election Day. In some ways, that’s when our most important work started.

The most alarming threats to voting may have been averted in 2022, but that doesn’t mean America has resolved its election crisis. The next attacks on elections appear to be more subtle and local — if the last two months of post-election disputes have shown us anything — and will continue to erode trust through baseless criticisms and misinformation. We’ll be monitoring the power and sustainability of those attacks between now and Nov. 5, 2024 (and probably beyond).

We also know the year between federal elections is an important transitional phase for policy. It’s a quiet time for elections only if you think elections just spontaneously happen every other November. All across the country, this year’s debates and decisions about election laws and funding will affect voters and administrators next year. Votebeat will keep pursuing our mission of producing journalism that strengthens elections by identifying problems and driving the conversations toward solutions. Even in an America where elections are not under partisan and extremist attacks, there’s a need for constant reporting about making voting fairer and more accessible.

That work involves you, too. We want to know: What election journalism is most valuable to you now? What questions do you have about voting and election administration? What else would you like Votebeat to cover or focus on this year?

Please reply to this email with your thoughts and feedback — whether you think there’s something else we should pay attention to or you’re very excited about one topic in particular.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessia at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Want to get more involved with Votebeat? Join our Reader Advisory Board.

2022-08-11T12:30:00+00:00

Engaging with and listening to readers are central to executing Votebeat’s mission — reporting on election administration in America. We want to hear from readers all the time.

There are many ways to reach us already, but one sustained route will be through our Reader Advisory Board. This board will include members of the public who are eager to help people understand our system of democracy so they can participate in strengthening it.

Here’s more on what our Reader Advisory Board will do, what to expect as a member, and how to get involved.

What is a reader advisory board and why is Votebeat forming one?

Generally, a reader advisory board is a diverse group of people who offer feedback to a newsroom’s journalists. Different news organizations will have different definitions and functions for their boards.

At Votebeat, we want our Reader Advisory Board to help inform our coverage, deepen our ties with the communities we cover, and keep our readers’ needs at the forefront of our reporting. This group would provide feedback to us and help our journalists hear what matters most to our target audiences — and especially what the average voter is thinking about when it comes to casting a ballot. We want to be able to answer your questions and clear up concerns about the voting process through our reporting, but we can’t do that if we don’t know what’s on your mind.

Who should apply to Votebeat’s Reader Advisory Board?

Our ideal Reader Advisory Board membership would include people living in all of the states where we have bureaus — currently Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. We’re also open to including members from other states.

We also want to hear from people with a diversity of life experiences and voting habits. We value the perspectives of habitual voters, first-time voters, absentee voters, in-person voters, and everyone in between. That is a large task, so we likely won’t have our ideal board makeup initially. But if you’re interested in participating at all, we encourage you to apply.

What can a Reader Advisory Board member expect?

We are planning to meet with Reader Advisory Board members three to four times a year, or about once a quarter. Members are expected to serve at least a one-year term. These meetings will be hosted and run by me, Votebeat’s engagement editor, and other Votebeat staffers will often attend as well.

Each meeting will be a structured discussion designed to provide feedback on Votebeat’s journalism and upcoming projects, as well as to ask questions about elections where you live.

To be clear, this is not a space to advocate for political positions or promote talking points. This is not an arena for political debate or organizing. While the question of how politics drives some of the discussions in voting reforms is likely to come up, Votebeat’s ultimate goal is to learn and report about voting and election administration and move the conversation toward solutions to strengthen our democracy. Our Reader Advisory Board is a collaborative space where people of different backgrounds can come together to work with us on this important mission.

Being a Reader Advisory Board member is a commitment, but one we hope will be rewarding for everyone involved.

Is this the only way to be heard by Votebeat staff?

Definitely not! The Reader Advisory Board is the most direct way to get involved in our journalism and contribute to our goal to help inform the public and strengthen American democracy.

Engaging and listening to readers is at the heart of our journalism at Votebeat. You are always welcome and encouraged to reach out with any questions or feedback you may have.

Feel free to email community@votebeat.org, reach out to any of our tips emails, reply to any of our newsletters, DM Votebeat on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or respond to our new reader survey. If you have a news tip that you want to be sure is confidential, we also have a Signal number (201-430-5217) to ensure privacy.

Another easy way to contact us by responding to callouts. We regularly post surveys and forms on our website that ask for your experiences with voting and questions about election administration.

However you might reach out to us, your thoughts really do help us shape our reporting, and every response is very appreciated.

How to apply to join Votebeat’s Reader Advisory Board

If you’re interested in participating, please fill out the application form on this page or at this link. We are currently accepting applications on a rolling basis. If you’re selected for potential participation, you’ll hear from us soon about next steps.

If you have any questions about the Reader Advisory Board or the application process, please email community@votebeat.org.

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I’m diving into the most crucial issues in voting because I cannot vote (yet)

2022-06-27T19:32:00+00:00

I am 33 years old and I have never voted — in Texas, the United States, or anywhere else.

And the reason isn’t because I don’t want to, or because I don’t trust elections. It’s simply because I can’t vote.

I was born in Mexico. I was 11 years old and did not speak a word of English when my mother and I immigrated to Corpus Christi, Texas.

I have a green card. I have been working, paying taxes, and contributing as a member of my community since I was a teenager.

Still, so many people — myself included — no matter how long they’ve lived in the United States, no matter how hard they work to provide for their families, cannot vote. No matter their “good moral character” or whether or not they made it to the U.S. by “doing it the right way,” they are excluded from the process.

The various consequences of systemic racism have kept immigrants and people of color like me from voting. I’m also conscious that racism contributed to efforts that took land from my ancestors in Texas to defend slavery, to America’s flawed immigration laws and policies, and to suppressive voting laws that continue to keep so many, especially people of color, excluded and far away from the polls.

I’m an elections reporter — and I just cast my first vote as a naturalized U.S. citizen

However, I am privileged. My immigration status puts me on a path to citizenship and hopefully, soon, I’ll get a chance to vote. But I am still so unfamiliar with the voting process that, to be completely honest, it intimidates me. And I know I am not alone.

The process of voting can be hard even for those who have the right but who may not speak the language that appears on ballots; for people living in poverty who may lack access to the internet or who may not have access to transportation or lack a form of identification; for people with disabilities and other historically disenfranchised groups. It shouldn’t be.

That’s why I am here. As a reporter with Votebeat, I want my reporting to help underrepresented communities in Texas understand the nuts and bolts of how elections work. When we are able to understand the nuance around elections and the voting process, our communities are empowered to take action on policies and issues that impact them. I will be asking election officials and administrators a lot of questions because there are so many things I personally still don’t know about voting and elections.

I want to know how polling locations are chosen and who makes those decisions. How do you vote if you don’t have an ID? How do vote-counting machines work and how accurate are they?

And I’ll be asking those questions on your behalf, too. I joined Votebeat because I want to amplify your voice and the voices of disenfranchised communities.

So, I want to hear from you. You can reach me via email, Facebook, Twitter, or you can call or text me at 469-551-3107. I also want to know the type of Texas election coverage you’ve found useful, what you think is missing, and what you think our newsroom can do to make election and voting information more accessible to you.

Everyone should have the information they need — relevant to their local community and in their language — to cast a ballot.

In my career as a community journalist, I’ve had the opportunity to tell the stories of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, including some who fled war and oppressive governments. I told the story of Arwa Ghalawan and her husband, Wasim Almakki, who are from Syria. While visiting family in Indiana, the escalating civil war prevented them from returning home. The couple was approved for asylum in the U.S., became naturalized citizens, and voted for the first time in 2020. Arwa told me how meaningful that moment was because she knew that in Syria today, people are still fighting for basic freedoms.

For some asylum seekers and refugees like Arwa and her husband, getting the chance to vote for the first time in the U.S. –without fear of persecution and retaliation – is almost like a revolutionary act.

With my reporting at Votebeat, I want to help those New Americans – whether they’ve been here a few years or the majority of their lives — feel confident as they get ready to cast their first ballot, just as I hope to be when I do it.

This is a pivotal moment to cover voting access in Texas — a place I love and call home. Distrust and misinformation in elections in the aftermath of 2020 has already led to a law that disenfranchised voters and to partisan threats to elections. That’s why I am proud to be part of a newsroom that is making history as the first in the country to focus solely on this issue. I firmly believe Votebeat’s local coverage of elections and voting access will make an impact, help strengthen our communities, and our democracy.

Voting coverage brings me full circle from my mother’s voting rights activism

2022-06-20T16:11:55+00:00

I remember my mother filling out her last ballot — an absentee ballot — while in a nursing home in November 2016. She did it with pride and a smile. It would be her last opportunity to cast her vote. She passed away five months later at the age of 93.

My mother was a voting rights activist during the 1960s in the Mississippi Delta, where she was a secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She took part in protest rallies and tried to help fellow African Americans register to vote, despite the blanket voter suppression of Blacks at the time. When the situation became more dangerous and my mother’s efforts made her the target of bomb threats, we left Mississippi in March 1963. Under the protection of federal marshals, we boarded a Greyhound bus on the outskirts of our town to join other family members in Michigan, where my mother continued her activism for racial equity and voting rights. My mother felt a great sense of pride and accomplishment, along with millions of others, when the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, followed by the Voting Rights Act in August 1965.

For me and my family, securing the right to vote has been a hard-fought journey. As Black Americans, we were not guaranteed that right our whole lives. The access to the ballot box came about through blood, sweat, and tears from those who dared seek the same promise of democracy that many hold so dear.

My life has truly come full circle as I now set out to cover stories about voting and the barriers that might threaten citizens’ access to the ballot box, as well as fair elections. As a reporter and writer for Votebeat and its partnership with Bridge Michigan, I will delve deep into issues and stories about elections from the voters’ point of view. Does everyone enjoy the same access to the ballot box? Where can elections be improved? How can we restore trust to the system?

Ever since my 18th birthday, I’ve tried my best to vote in every single election. No matter how seemingly insignificant the issue, the referendum, or how small the field of candidates, I have cast my ballot. Whether it’s an election for the City of Southfield’s school board race or the mayor and city council, the act of voting is not one to take for granted.

My own voting experiences have gone smoothly. I’ve voted without incident in Detroit, in Ann Arbor, and in Oakland County. But I realize that is not necessarily true for many voters.

Some citizens cannot vote because they lack money to get official identification. Others are homeless and have no permanent address, and not all municipalities have perfected systems to provide ballots for the homeless population. Literacy remains a problem for some who eschew voting in person because they cannot read the ballot and are embarrassed to admit it.

As a journalist, I was inspired by Walter Cronkite. I attended the University of Michigan for my journalism degree. Before Votebeat, I was a longtime reporter/writer for The Detroit News. I covered education, race relations, religion, and criminal justice. I will bring the same fairness, insightful, detailed, and balanced reporting to Votebeat when I take on stories around voting rights and elections. My dedication to ethical and balanced reporting and writing is a cornerstone of my work as a journalist. I work very hard at capturing the multiple perspectives every story needs.

Recently when a congressional candidate sued to prevent his primary opponent from appearing on the ballot over a complicated campaign-finance issue, I navigated the facts and arguments from each side to provide a balanced story. My coverage of criminal justice issues, as well as court cases, was comprehensive and included quotes from both sides in each case, regardless of where popular opinion lay.

On the issue of voting rights, my reporting will likewise be impartial and nonpartisan. I want to report, investigate, and write stories that skip the politics and cut to the heart of the issue of voting access and trustworthy elections. I also will write pieces aimed at dispelling misinformation around voting and elections.

It is exciting to focus on this work as we head into the August primary and subsequent midterms. Votebeat’s style of journalism means hearing from you. Please send me your questions and ideas about the kind of coverage you need in order to understand elections where you live and to be a more engaged voter. Journalism that serves the public is the best way I know to carry on the legacy I inherited from my mother.

Misinformation is a threat to elections. Votebeat is here to report the truth.

2022-05-24T04:22:56+00:00

I’m not proud of the kind of voter I used to be. I used to think of my local polling place like a fast food restaurant, while simultaneously fearing it would be like a DMV. I didn’t spend much time thinking about why I was routed to different tables, or the volunteers who spent all day in that gymnasium, or what happened to my ballot after I slid it into a box or a machine. But I’d grab a little “I Voted” sticker on my way out and place it on my shirt like a 10-year-old who’d aced a spelling test.

Maybe I hadn’t actually earned that badge of honor. Sure, in the literal sense, I voted. And at the end of the night, I watched the results and reacted predictably to outcomes that did or didn’t go my way. But I had no respect or understanding for the elaborate system that ensured I got to participate.

Sound familiar?

In 2020, I voted by mail in Washington, D.C., for the first time because the Board of Elections made sure to send me a ballot. A few days after the election, I got a text message saying that my signatures didn’t match. It gave me a chance to send in extra identification to “cure” my ballot. Wow, I thought, some election worker really made an effort to make sure my vote got counted.

And that’s the thing about elections. We believe that voting is the core activity of democracy, but most of us invest so little in the action itself, taking it for granted. This out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality is not surprising, especially for a massive apparatus like elections. Easier to be a passive consumer: “I voted.” There, done.

Votebeat editor-in-chief Chad Lorenz now votes in Colorado.

That’s changing. Americans are polarized over the act of voting just as we’ve become polarized over so many other issues that don’t need to be partisan but end up that way. As with other political divisions, in their attempt to engage more deeply, some people seek the truth, and others seek something else they mistake for the truth.

American elections are ripe for misinformation because they are complicated and confusing, especially in the past 10 years, as the rules have rapidly changed nationwide and as new voting methods like early voting and mail voting have spread to more states. This is a big reason why Trump’s big lie of a rigged election caught on so feverishly.

Except that the claim by Trump and his allies is not just one big lie. It’s lots of little lies: the myth of hacked voting machines, of cheating election workers, of mail ballot fraud, of forensic audits, of dead people voting. When this is what people hear about elections, it’s not surprising that only 20 percent of Americans trust our electoral system. You can’t trust what you don’t understand.

The public’s need for the nuanced truth about elections is Votebeat’s call to action. We believe democracy is stronger when voters have the information to engage with elections and trust the results — simply that voting is good, no matter who you vote for.

Our mission is to report the facts about how the system works and about the safeguards that protect the integrity of the vote. And we aim to produce journalism that strengthens elections by identifying real problems and driving the debate toward solutions.

We landed on this mission after experimenting with Votebeat as a pop-up newsroom during the 2020 election, when we hired 15 reporters in eight states for a three-month project focused on local election administration and voting. Through the nearly 200 articles we published with local news partners, we realized a permanent need for a brand of election journalism that avoids campaign reporting and horse-race coverage in favor of stories about the voting experience through the voter’s eyes — not who they voted for or why, but did the system work for them, was it fair.

While U.S. elections are by and large secure, they are not perfect. Inequalities in voting access remain, especially for voters of color, economically disadvantaged Americans, non-English speakers, and disabled voters. Even without partisan agendas interfering, elections can be plagued by dysfunction and short-sighted policy that leaves voters frustrated.

The system certainly doesn’t feel fair to voters like Andres Candelaria, a voter outside of El Paso whose ballot was rejected in the March primary for an ID number error. Or for Spanish-speaking voters in Berks County, Penn., who received translated election materials last year with the wrong date for the election. Or mail-ballot voters in Arizona who are being removed from a permanent early voting list that is no longer permanent.

We want to cover these problems at the local level because that’s where elections are run in America’s decentralized system, with its 10,000-plus election jurisdictions in county, city, and township governments, each running their election differently.

We chose Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas as our first states to cover because we see some of the greatest threats looming over the next elections there: restrictive voting laws, election worker attrition, a far-right movement to take over positions overseeing elections, and legal strategizing to subvert legitimate election results. (We keep a list of other states meeting that criteria, including Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida — places we’re eyeing for expansion.) We are launching with formal partnerships with Bridge Michigan, Spotlight PA, and the Texas Tribune — three nonprofit news organizations that were among Votebeat’s original partners during its 2020 project phase.

Votebeat reports on these stories largely by drawing on the valuable perspective of election administrators, who do this work every day and perhaps best understand the challenges in their work and the potential solutions. We’ve found that most of them are apolitical government workers who largely see themselves as public servants.

And we approach the topic as subject matter experts on election administration. The start of our education is a two-week training program designed and taught by editorial director Jessica Huseman, one of the nation’s foremost reporters on this beat. Among other lessons, our journalists learned the esoteric facts about the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, the reforms embedded in the Help America Vote Act, the market dominance of the three major voting machine companies, and the evolving state of election cybersecurity, each unit featuring expert guest speakers. This is why Votebeat journalists are able to get into the factual nuance of this subject and see through the misinformation and politicized claims about elections.

That expertise gives us the authority to connect with and earn credibility from our readers. Our audiences are the local stakeholders in elections who either have a role in conducting them, setting the rules for them, advocating for improving them, or participating in them. Votebeat reporters are doing listening tours with these stakeholders to hear about their biggest needs and concerns. Our journalism will be urgent both for state lawmakers who are rewriting the election laws and for voters who want to understand how their vote is counted — and whether there’s a better way.

This is why Votebeat’s key indicator of success is our journalistic impact: stories that lead to action and drive change. Instead of chasing virality in service of ad revenue, we can go deep and serve our communities. We learned how to do this from our founders at Chalkbeat, one of the country’s strongest nonprofit local news organizations.

We’re proud of the impact we’ve achieved with our early Votebeat journalism, such as when we reported on a problem that election administrators saw coming in Potter County, Texas, when Republicans there wanted to run their own primary election with risks to election security and voter confusion. Two weeks later, the GOP chair who orchestrated the plan backed down under the pressure generated by our reporting.

If our journalism continues fighting threats to elections and highlighting paths to progress, we stand to play a key role in strengthening democracy. Votebeat is ready.

Chad Lorenz is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Denver. Contact Chad at clorenz@votebeat.org.

I landed in elections by accident. Now, my pursuit of this story is pure passion.

2022-05-24T04:21:00+00:00

One of my clearest memories from childhood — and I’m not making this up — is the morning after the 2000 election. I was finally old enough that a presidential election meant something to me, and I sprung out of the bottom bunk in the room I shared with my sister and asked my mother who’d won. “We don’t know,” she said, matter-of-factly.

This, reader, blew my mind.

It had never occurred to me — admittedly, I was a child — that an election didn’t always conclude with a clear answer. It was so clearly a zero-sum game that weeks before, my younger brother had drawn a picture of two dinosaurs that he’d labeled “Bush” and “Gore,” locked in a battle to the death. I was already fascinated with politics and government, and the indecisiveness of 2000 locked it in. I obsessed over the news for weeks, trying to wrap my brain around a system that I realized now was far less concrete than it had seemed to me before.

I can’t remember not wanting to be deeply enmeshed in this stuff, and I can’t remember not being fascinated with the people who make decisions and how they got to where they are. And while the path to turning that fascination into my career took a series of weird detours and accidental twists, it’s become clear to me that the ultimate building block of government is voting and the people who make it go.

I started adulthood as a high school debate coach and history teacher in Newark, New Jersey. I still remember teaching my debaters about the Electoral College. “So, democracy is an illusion?” one girl asked me. I was 22, and had no meaningful response. It seemed fitting, then, that my first “real job” in journalism was helping ProPublica run Electionland just a few years later — a massive project that shared data with hundreds of local newsrooms about problems at the polls during federal election cycles.

I hadn’t intended to cover election administration. ProPublica hired me after graduate school to cover healthcare and do data analysis on pharmaceutical companies. The internship was seven weeks, then got extended in 2016, but, as it happened, the next opening was in Electionland. And I found myself, unsuspectingly, covering voting during the height of Trump’s campaign, which had taken to calling the entire system “rigged.” I stayed with it, helping run Electionland in 2018 and 2020 during the presidency that most clearly sought to influence election administration. And so, here I am, three federal election cycles and dozens of local elections later, helping build a newsroom about all of that.

When I first started covering this beat, people wanted to know what I meant by “election administration.” “Like, campaigns?” people would ask me at parties. Now, people want to discuss Dominion conspiracy theories and the prevalence of dead voters on the rolls. They want to discuss Stacey Abrams, and whether the new Georgia voting law truly will disenfranchise voters.

It’s been fascinating to watch the focus on voting intensify, in ways that are, in equal parts, inspirational and horrifying. On one hand, it’s amazing to see elections — which are critical to the health of our democracy and have been serially ignored — getting the attention they deserve. On the other hand, there has been a disproportionate rise in the amount of misinformation on the topic, much of it fueled by a candidate who spread lies about elections for months before meaningfully resisting the transfer of power — a series of affronts unprecedented in American history.

Given this unlikely confluence of events, it’s a particularly auspicious time to start a newsroom that covers voting and elections. There is a clear and indisputable hole in most Americans’ understanding of election administration, and it is one the media has so far not been able, or in some cases not bothered, to fill. And this — as the events of 2020 and 2021 demonstrate for us clearly — has been to our collective detriment.

Since I started covering voting in the runup to 2016, I have met hundreds of county, city, and township election administrators who have helped convince me that local journalism has the power to inform and empower voters to cast ballots for the candidates of their choice. We journalists should not only feel responsible for explaining the platforms of the candidates but also the system that allows voters to pick the one they want: How to cast a ballot, how that ballot is counted, the security measures in place to safeguard the process, and the audits and checks to ensure the election was appropriately administered.

I chose to come to Votebeat because I believe strongly in the power of local news. Votebeat is not a national newsroom — we are a collection of local newsrooms with reporters deeply rooted in the states they cover. Given the diffuse nature of American elections, this is among the few ways to cover voting well. And crucially, I believe that this newsroom has — despite the absolute ravaging of newsrooms across the country — landed on a sustainable and replicable model for growth. This is not a short-term Band-aid to patch up the holes in local news. This is a permanent addition to the local news ecosystem, which I am confident will help boost voter engagement and understanding of the process.

If any beat deserves intensive, clear focus, it is voting. This is distinct from the multiple newsrooms that have launched “democracy” beats — a description that’s more of an idea than a narrow focus, which might encompass anything from campaign finance to racist extremism. Instead, Votebeat aims to take a specific look at election administration, voting access, and those who wield control over both. And we hope to help other newsrooms do the same, both by offering our content for free to republish and by partnering with newsrooms who need help covering this thorny, convoluted topic.

I’m proud to be helping shape this newsroom from Texas, where I was born and raised and have returned as an adult. There is a tremendous amount of disruption in Texas’s voting landscape right now, and as it hurtles toward swing-state status, it has become apparent that voting in Texas deserves its own reporter. Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, likewise, deserve a dedicated reporter on voting and elections. We see these four states as representative of so many crucial trends in democracy, both positive and negative. I came back to Texas in order to help this newsroom tell these stories, and we’ve selected reporters with the same drive to cover access to the vote in their own states. We’re excited to get started.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

As Votebeat’s founding engagement editor, I want to help break down barriers and rebuild trust

2022-05-24T04:20:00+00:00

I still get chills thinking about the first time I voted. I grew up in Texas, watching with envy as my parents cast ballots in every election. I was even jealous of the fifth grade’s mock election in 2000 because, as a second grader, I wasn’t allowed to participate. So when the day finally came in 2012, and it was my turn to actually vote, I felt like I finally had made it.

When I stepped up to the voting machine to make my selections, I also crossed the threshold into true adulthood. I had power in American society. My voice mattered and my vote counted. And I knew millions of other Americans were doing the same thing at the same time. That feeling still returns to me every single time I vote, including in smaller state and local elections.

This is a feeling I want to help ensure every other American has the opportunity to experience. And I plan to do this as Votebeat’s founding engagement editor by working to connect the voting public with information they need about how elections are run, and how to make sure their voices are heard.

My deep belief in democracy ultimately led me to journalism. How are Americans supposed to make informed decisions without accurate and reliable information? How are voters supposed to know what’s going on if no one is around to investigate and get their questions answered? To me, fact-based and nuanced journalism in service of the public, especially local journalism, is inseparable from a strong democracy.

In an ideal world, journalists expose problems in our communities and then, the public would take notice and act on it. But in my experience, and especially in the age of the internet, at least half the battle is getting people to see and understand the reporting in the first place. When huge news surfaces on a national level — like the hanging chads and recounts in 2000 — the reaction can be direct and immediate. But most of the time, newsrooms need someone in an audience or engagement role to ensure the reporting reaches people who can do something about the problem at hand.

And another big part of reaching people involves trust. I do have deep faith in democracy, in journalism, and the voice of the people — but there are many, many real and valid reasons from history for people to distrust voting and the news media.

American democracy as we know it today has really only been around for 52 years in terms of voter access. So many historical events lined up in order for me to walk into that Texas precinct for the first time in 2012 and cast my vote. Before 1970, for example, I would have needed to wait until I turned 21 to vote. Before 1920, I wouldn’t have been allowed to vote at all because of my gender. But those weren’t the only barriers that have existed for voting in this country. Before 1965, Black Texans were much more likely to have to pay a poll tax or take a literacy test in order to vote.

I’ve seen the hurdles that exist for voting and election information firsthand in multiple states. In Texas, I had to register to vote by mailing a form to the right office. And I wound up doing that twice because you not only need to be 18 on Election Day, but at least 17 ½ to register at all. I was just under that requirement the first time I tried to register to vote in Texas, forcing me to do it all over again. When I moved to Arizona, I had to go to my county office in person to have my voter registration changed because my last name was misspelled due to a manual entry error. In both cases, someone without my time or dedication might have just given up. To go even further, someone who wasn’t a trained journalist might not have known where to look for the right information to be able to register at all.

Sometimes, the barrier is simply a lack of trust. In each state I’ve lived in, there has been a population of people who don’t believe their votes matter. Because of that, those people often don’t even try to participate in elections. Whether it was younger people, Black voters, Latinos, Natives, or any other underrepresented group, the same ideas persisted. They’ve consistently seen the people who represent them make decisions that do not help, or even actively hurt them. And they’ve seen this dynamic of being ignored or misunderstood played out again in news outlets. They’ve consistently been ignored or not valued. After a lifetime of this treatment, it’s hard to imagine American society working any other way.

This is reflected in turnout data. In 2020, voter turnout set records. That was celebrated as a win, and should be. But still, about one-third of eligible voters didn’t cast a ballot. And for the voters who did show up, there’s no telling whether they’ll keep turning out. A third of the country didn’t have their voice heard. A third of the country didn’t feel the chills that I do every time I vote.

This is why I wanted to be a journalist and why I want to work in audience engagement. My entire career has been spent working to break down barriers and help rebuild trust in local news. I’m looking forward to breaking down even more barriers at Votebeat.

The same way that quality journalism is a key but less-talked-about component for a thriving democracy, audience and engagement work is an important part of journalism that can be overlooked and underappreciated. That isn’t true at Votebeat, where engagement is built into everything we do.

As engagement editor, this is my specialty. My role is to be a conduit between the newsroom and the public and to stand in as the voice of our readers in the newsroom. Half of my focus is making our fact-based and heavily researched reporting accessible to, and digestible by, the general public. The other half is listening to readers, and bringing feedback to reporters so they can answer questions and debunk misinformation.

I quite literally can’t do my job without readers like you. If you’ve made it this far, please take a few minutes to fill out our new reader survey. Your answers will help give me insight into how you get information about voting and how the Votebeat newsroom can answer your questions and fill in the gaps.

Also be sure to stay connected with us: sign up for our newsletters and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Feel free to send emails to community@votebeat.org too.

I’m excited to hear from you and help connect you with vital information you need about voting in America.

Lauren Aguirre is Votebeat’s engagement editor, focused on connecting people to information they need about voting in their state. She is based in Philadelphia. Contact Lauren at laguirre@votebeat.org.

I want to ensure all Pennsylvanians, including people of color, know their votes count

2022-05-24T04:19:00+00:00

The most exciting thing about working at Votebeat is looking at the political process from another angle. For most of the last 30 years, I’ve looked at elections from the candidate’s end, meaning that I’ve seen all of the pomp, circumstance, and politics involved with running for office. I also hit my limit of hearing Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” during the Clinton campaigns.

Peeking inside the election system — to see the good and the bad of how the process actually works and what it means for voters — has proven interesting so far. From understanding how the right to vote, and who has it, has changed over time, to understanding the technology behind voting machines, I came into this job with a pretty extensive learning curve.

I enjoy being able to use journalism as a means to pass on accurate information. The outrageous lies about voting systems over the last two election cycles have made our elections seem like a cartoonish farce. Democracy depends on clearing out the clutter and helping people understand that this isn’t the case.

But probably the biggest reason that I’m glad to be working with Votebeat is because this gives me a chance to help Pennsylvanians in general, and communities of color in particular, understand that their vote does count.

Here’s what I mean by that.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

Under this act, election officials in the South could no longer keep Black people from voting through poll taxes, literacy tests, or, and this is my favorite, by penalizing them for not knowing how many marbles or jelly beans were in a jar.

While that wasn’t big news to me at the time — I was a year old, and the only things that tend to be a big deal for 1-year-olds are toys and animal crackers — it was a big deal for my parents.

You see, Dad was in the military. He and Mom moved from their native Kentucky to New Jersey shortly before my twin brother and I were born. While he didn’t talk much about the racism and other issues he and Mom faced as Black people in the South, he took his right to vote very seriously. He also made sure that we took it seriously too. When we turned 18, he made sure we were registered to vote and that we made it to the polls to make our voices heard.

When I covered the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, I interviewed people who gave me reasons for not participating in the electoral process that had no basis in fact. There was the man who called into a radio show I was guest-hosting on Philadelphia’s WURD who had been told that his felony conviction meant he could never again exercise his right to vote. I explained to him that if he was done serving time, he could make his voice heard in Pennsylvania. I had to reassure another man on the same show that the police would not be waiting to arrest him for an unpaid traffic ticket when he came to the polls to vote.

When I explained why what they had heard wasn’t true, I’d sometimes get through.

But sometimes, I wouldn’t. And that would break my heart because I felt that by not helping this person who misunderstood their voting rights, I’d let my community down. I didn’t communicate well enough.

I’m hoping that the journalism I contribute to Votebeat will help Pennsylvanians understand the systems that help them speak through their ballots.

Or at the very least, I hope to make my father proud.

Denise Clay-Murray is a reporter for Votebeat Pennsylvania based in Wilmington, Delaware. Contact Denise at dclay-murray@votebeat.org.

Reporting on campaign finance and lobbying led me to elections. Here’s why.

2022-05-24T04:18:00+00:00

My road to Votebeat has been a circuitous one.

After starting my career at local newspapers, I was a relatively green Washington reporter during the 2008 presidential primaries, covering lobbying amidst the backlash to congressional scandals that had prompted Congress to pass new ethics restrictions.

On the campaign trail, presidential candidates from both parties — including Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, the eventual presidential nominees — were taking pains to distance themselves from the much-reviled K Street. But behind the scenes, it was easy to see the influence industry was intertwined with campaigns and elections. I wrote about watching lobbyists door-knock and set up middle-school gyms for stump speeches after they used their own time and money to travel to towns like Salem, N.H., and volunteer for the campaigns.

In 2010, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC ushered in a new age for money in politics. I spent years following the money, tracking it through obscure corporate filings and byzantine disclosures, piecing together shreds of documentation and tips from sources to expose under-the-radar efforts to influence voters. An investigative reporter at the Center for Public Integrity from 2014 on, I also investigated ethics and accountability, sometimes editing as well as reporting.

In 2018, things started to shift for me, mostly because of a series of stories I wrote on barriers to the ballot box for Native American voters in North Dakota.

All of a sudden, I wasn’t writing about the influential and the wealthy. That work brought me back to earlier in my career, covering local communities for local papers — the work that taught me politics and government affected real people’s lives, and it wasn’t a game.

As I dug into the ways in which the rules of voting could keep people from casting ballots, I realized this was, in some important ways, the flip side of political money and influence investigations.

Every interest group knew that in order to get its preferred policies and laws on the books, their preferred candidates had to win elections. And the rules governing voting, after all, were set by politicians. Powerful interests were lobbying them in hopes of shaping access to the franchise in ways that would benefit one side or the other. In many cases, political parties and outside interest groups, hardly disinterested parties, were bringing lawsuits over voting access.

A story I’d written a million times was revealing a new facet.

I realized there was a through line connecting all of it — lobbying, campaign finance and elections. Just like lobbying and campaign finance, elections are governed by a patchwork of rules and regulations that don’t necessarily make intuitive sense, and that differ from state to state. The laws and procedures are complicated, and most people don’t understand them as well as they think they do. But boy, do they matter.

Clearly, this — explaining complicated things understandably and watchdogging special interests trying to work the ref — was my journalistic sweet spot.

A few years earlier, the Supreme Court had struck down part of the landmark Voting Rights Act, reshaping the legal landscape. Former President Donald Trump was regularly leveling unsupported accusations of voter fraud and rigged elections. And election administrators were stuck in the middle of a food fight, trying to run smooth elections during a pandemic while they wrestled with the need to shore up public trust.

But I also started thinking a lot about the value of covering voting access and elections from a national perspective versus a local one.

In the U.S., the rules and laws governing elections are different from state to state. And over and over again, I found myself drawn to stories that, yes, had national resonance — but were also deeply rooted in specific places. In some cases, I partnered with local reporters, but in others, I worried about missing something important that a local reporter would more easily see.

And then came Votebeat, a chance to help launch a news outlet focused on better coverage of elections and voter access. I chose to join Votebeat because I think it’s a local news model that can succeed, as well as an idea that speaks to the moment.

Votebeat’s journalistic values — reporting the truth about elections and voting at a time of crisis in America, with reporting rooted in local communities — align with my own.

We’re assembling a talented and committed staff to report with expertise, vigor, and nuance. We’re going to shed new light on a complicated system so people have information they can trust. We’ll contribute to informed debate and healthier public discourse.

And you’d better believe we’re going to hold powerful actors accountable to the public.

So watch this space. Because there’s more coming soon, and you’re going to want to read it.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s story editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Arizona voters are worried about our elections. That’s why I’m here.

2022-05-24T04:17:00+00:00

It wasn’t until I was inside Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, pulling an oversize orange T-shirt over my blouse and looking out onto the coliseum floor as workers in colored T-shirts wandered along cages filled with boxes of ballots stacked as tall as our shoulders, that I fully understood the peculiar spot I was in.

I was the only journalist in the room. As a reporter for the Arizona Republic at the time, I had agreed to volunteer as an observer for the day in order to get inside, the only way reporters were permitted inside. I wasn’t allowed to have my phone, take notes, or record. There were no county or state election officials.

It was just me along with a tech guy from Florida who had been working with former President Donald Trump’s allies for months in an effort to prove that the 2020 election was stolen and dozens of people interested in helping him recount 2.1 million ballots and take apart voting machines.

I was still in shock that a judge allowed a cadre of Republican state senators access to our ballots and the million-dollar machines, and that the senators turned all that authority over to people without elections or auditing experience, and without any oversight.

In that moment, as I looked around, I realized it was completely up to me to let everyone outside the coliseum know what was happening, and to get it exactly right.

It was the very first day of the partisan review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election, a process that would ultimately sprawl for months longer than anyone predicted. I would spend my spring and summer in the coliseum stands, asking questions. For the election doubters, I asked about the way votes had initially been counted, the way vote-counting machines had been kept secure, and the way the county verified voters were eligible to cast ballots.

For those who believed the election was sound, I asked questions to uncover the partisan nature of the review, to figure out how Trump allies and supporters were involved, and to ensure our private voter information and ballots were being kept secure.

Along the way, I learned a lot about how voting works. I became fascinated by the complexity and fragility of our country’s election system. While I was able to help knock down the craziest of conspiracies about the 2020 election, the experience clued me into the myriad of ways that elections can and sometimes do go wrong and the myriad of ways local election officials try to prevent that from happening. It raised many questions in my mind about whether the election system is strong enough in all counties across the United States to block future attempts at election subversion.

This skepticism in me checks out. It’s inherent. Since childhood, I’ve been asking questions about why things happen the way they do. I didn’t just think the contrails behind a jet were cool — I wanted to know why they showed up in the sky. I had a hard time accepting religion, especially with the whole Noah’s Ark thing and Moses splitting the sea. I wrote a full essay in elementary school about why we dream. As a reporter, I’ve often been the contrarian in the room, pitching stories that challenge the popular narrative.

Covering elections and voting fits me. I’ve never been a political person, but growing up in an independent-minded state like Arizona taught me to appreciate American freedoms and representative government. As a journalist, I’m most proud of the times I have been able to hold government institutions and elected officials accountable, no matter which side of the aisle they were on. In Phoenix, I wrote about an independent mayoral candidate’s unexplainable campaign finances. Covering the small city of El Mirage, Arizona, I found that the city had illegally issued hundreds of speeding tickets and hadn’t paid all drivers back. In the Democratic city of Frederick, Maryland, I pushed city officials to explain why they didn’t properly vet a government contractor who left dozens of homeowners high and dry after promising to build the first net-zero neighborhood in the country.

I see elections as the government role with the highest stakes. That means there are plenty of people to hold accountable for ensuring that eligible voters can easily vote, and that ineligible voters can’t.

Covering the fallout of the 2020 election has been the most important work I’ve done in my career. And the work continues.

Arizonans remain heavily concerned about elections at the same time local news outlets may lack the resources to cover them year-round. The coverage ebbs and flows with the election cycles and the need to cover other news.

That’s why Votebeat exists.

I want to be there for voters, and especially Arizonans, full-time, to answer their questions about our elections and voting rights. I want voters to be prepared to dismiss the next fake conspiracy, whether it emerges this year or in 2024. I want to give local election officials a voice to tell voters what they do year-round to protect the sanctity and secrecy of our votes.

Voters of all stripes, for different reasons, are viewing elections through a prism of fear and worry. I want to try to unite the community through the truth. Even if it means that sometimes I’ll be the only one in the room.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

What do you want to know about voting where you live?

2022-05-24T02:55:50+00:00

As Votebeat builds its newsroom in key states — Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas — we want to hear from you.

I mean it. It’s literally my job. Hi, I’m Lauren Aguirre, Votebeat’s engagement editor. I focus on connecting our readers’ questions and thoughts with our reporters to help shape their work.

We want to serve voters and the people who work to make elections fair and secure. A big part of that is making sure that you have the information you need about how voting works where you live.

Are you concerned about election security? Are you confused about mail-in voting rules in your state? Redistricting? Something else? Please ask away.

Take a few minutes to fill out our new reader survey here.

What stories should Votebeat cover?

2022-03-14T16:35:17+00:00

Readers, we want to hear directly from you.

At Votebeat, we aim to serve voters and the people who work to make elections fair and secure. Whether you’re a new reader (Hello!) or a longtime supporter (Thank you!), your input is important to us and the work we do.

Votebeat’s relaunch in multiple states this year gives us an opportunity to design a kind of journalism that meets your needs. A crucial part of that is understanding who our readers are and what matters to them.

Please help by taking our short survey below, or open it separately at this page.

Thank you for offering your valuable opinion and for being a Votebeat reader!

How the 2020 election sparked a new kind of journalism

2021-10-21T14:08:24+00:00

This content was co-published with Poynter.

One year ago this week, Americans’ anxiety and uncertainty about the 2020 election was already inching upward when Donald Trump propagated the lie that mail-ballot fraud could cost him his victory and as far-right media began a movement called Stop the Steal.

Also one year ago, a group of 15 reporters around the country got a crash course in a new kind of journalism and started jobs with Votebeat.

Votebeat began as a three-month project of Chalkbeat. The hope of its founders — Chalkbeat’s Elizabeth Green and Alison Go — was to counter the misinformation and confusion about voting during a once-in-a-century pandemic while a norm-breaking president made unfounded claims of voting fraud. The plan was to quickly hire local reporters in eight states, train them on the technical aspects of voting and election administration, and base them at independent media outlets where their work would reach a crucial audience of local policymakers, voting advocates, and voters themselves. No campaign coverage, no polls, no horse race journalism.

To chronicle the intrigue and importance of covering elections in this brand new way, Votebeat reporter Michael Falero talked directly to his fellow journalists who made up the first cohort of Votebeat reporters, to find out what they learned, the stories they uncovered, and what it was like to report on an election like no other. Falero, as an audio journalist based at NPR member station WFAE in Charlotte, North Carolina, recorded the conversations and produced this oral history into a podcast, which you can download via SoundCloud or listen using the player below. A transcript, lightly edited for style and clarity, follows.

It’s October 2020, and 15 Votebeat reporters are gearing up to cover the election across the country. For reporter Marie Albiges, that meant moving from Virginia back to her home state of Pennsylvania to cover what was clearly the pivotal swing state of the election. Albiges said she arrived to find a massive misinformation campaign underway.

“So much of it was directed to Pennsylvania. There were all these new voting laws in Pennsylvania as well,” she said. “And so the idea of helping local communities really get past the misinformation, and make it as easy as possible for them to vote and for them to understand what was happening, was really appealing to me.”

Across the border in New Jersey, Jeff Pillets was calling every election official he could. Pillets was a veteran investigative and statehouse reporter, but election administration was a new beat for him. He found officials scrambling to put in place vague procedures for a mostly by-mail election, a first for New Jersey.

“I just started calling everybody I could on the front lines, all the election workers,” Pillets said. “And that’s when I started to get an education into what this thing is really about, and what the stresses are that these people face on a daily basis.”

Votebeat’s reporters included those with years of experience like Pillets, as well as those new to journalism. But almost all of the reporters had to learn the nuances of local election administration, and fast, with less than a month before Election Day. That meant learning while doing.

Madeline Halpert reported for Bridge Michigan. She felt she brought fresh eyes to her beat.

“Things stuck out to me that might not have stuck out to a veteran elections reporter,” Halpert said. “As I was learning the process, I got to explain the process to the public. So I attended a poll worker training — that was all new information to me. And so I conveyed some of that information to the public so that they could also learn as I was learning.”

The Votebeat reporters had a complex, but important task ahead of them: Tell a nuanced story about how voting was playing out in their communities. 2020 was proving to be a remarkable year for election administration. As the country prepared to run an election during a pandemic, with local officials and voters turning to vote by mail, what did those changes look like on the ground? One common theme reporters saw during the pre- and post-election periods was election staff burning out and quitting in high numbers.

Albiges, at Spotlight PA, heard of officials leaving many county election offices. She documented their stories.

“We knew that we were going to hear this, but it was just listening to them tell us stories about how they would watch staffers sit in the corner and cry because they had voters screaming at them,” she said, “or how these election officials spent hours going through ballots applications in a warehouse somewhere.”

The election administrators had an almost impossible job to do after Pennsylvania legislators passed a law expanding vote by mail, Albiges said. An administrator in a rural county told her they were effectively running two elections at once — one by mail and one in person — but with the same number of staff. All of this, in a year with the highest voter turnout in the state’s history.

“It spoke to the enormity of what they were trying to do under all of this pressure to get a lot done in time or on the deadline that was predetermined for them,” Albiges said. “And it just wasn’t possible.”

Pillets was hearing similar stories from election administrators in New Jersey.

“And everyone seemed to have these stories to tell, about being yelled at, screamed at, doubted. One lady told me she was spit at,” Pillets said. “That was the thing that told me immediately that there were stories here, just among these frontline workers.”

Reporters also fanned out into their communities, talking with organizers, voting groups, and voters themselves. Sojourner Ahebee reported for WURD Radio, which serves Philadelphia’s African American community. She says police killed a Black man in West Philadelphia days before Election Day. She talked to a woman who witnessed it and the fresh round of protests that followed.

“Philly had been protesting since the summer,” Ahebee said. “But usually it was in reaction to other acts of police violence that happened elsewhere, like George Floyd. And now it was here and it was literally outside of her door.”

Ahebee said it was important to bring the pain of the woman and her neighborhood to the airwaves. But she was also able to frame it as a story about voting. Philadelphians were voting on a ballot question about police oversight.

“You know a moment like that can make a Philadelphian feel like they don’t have any control, they don’t have any autonomy,” she said. “But then there was like this very real thing on the ballot that you could literally do a few days later, that might save someone else’s life down the line.”

Election Day arrived fast. Votebeat reporters started early on Nov. 3. They called election officials, ran down hotline tips about possible voter intimidation, and visited polling sites. Halpert said she drove through cities like Flint, Michigan, and more rural towns to talk to voters.

“I had stopped in this kind of very conservative area in the middle of nowhere to talk to some of the last voters as they cast their ballots,” she said. “There was a man I remember who was standing on the top of his truck, screaming ‘God Bless America’ and ‘I love Trump’ into a megaphone. And he told me he had been there all day doing that. So he kind of got the last of it.”

Halpert said reporting that day wasn’t glamorous. As people watched election returns on TV, she was working in a small town parking lot.

“I wrote up everything that I had seen that day in my car, in that parking lot,” she said. “So it was kind of funny, everybody around me was sitting there waiting for the results, and here I was writing in my car. But we also knew that we weren’t going to have the results that night.”

Halpert and other Votebeat reporters saw that after weeks of early voting and people voting by mail, Election Day itself was eerily quiet. The next few days proved more interesting.

Officials continued to process ballots after record-high turnout. And President Donald Trump began claiming the election had been stolen, starting on the night of the election with those now-historic words. “This is a fraud on the American public,” he said to a room of supporters and press at the White House. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election.”

Ahebee witnessed a protest by Trump supporters, who were then confronted by liberal voters and activists outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia on Nov. 6. She said the energy of the protest became lighter as people started to celebrate Joe Biden’s impending victory.

“There was music and a DJ, like it was part rave, part protest. All these international news media were there, folks from the BBC, from all over the world,” she said. “It was just like this really wild moment of all of these sort contested things coming to abut, and just erupting outside of where our election was essentially taking place.”

Votebeat reporters weren’t done after the presidential race was called. There were election certifications in November, and state and local races had recounts. Reporters faced a new challenge. With many unfounded conspiracies about election fraud taking root, including from the president himself, how should reporters confront misinformation? Halpert wrote a comprehensive story in December that debunked 13 voting fraud myths.

“I was talking to a county clerk and he said, ‘You know, I’ve saved it on my bookmarks bar in my computer, and then when a voter calls me about fraud, I can just go to that article and figure out what the truth is,’” she recalled.

Christopher Alston covered Georgia for WABE, the NPR station in Atlanta. He stayed busy after Election Day, given Georgia’s two Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5. The state became the center of a heated campaign and Republican infighting, not to mention misinformation about voting fraud, for months.

“The trouble we ran into over and over again was, how do we talk about these conspiracy theories without giving credibility to them,” Alston said, “when they’ve clearly been debunked?”

Alston said his approach was to stick to the facts. In many of his stories after Nov. 3, he talked to voting experts and companies like Dominion, whose machines were used in Georgia in 2020, to check the fraud claims he was hearing from Republican officials and many voters.

“And that’s, I think, when it really became clear that a lot of the claims didn’t even suggest an understanding of how the elections worked,” he said, “how the machines functioned or how the process goes.”

Ahebee was looking at data for her post-election stories. She had difficulty getting race-specific voter data focused on Philadelphia from the government.

“It wasn’t available,” she recalled. “And then I was like, OK, is it that they’re not giving it to me? Or is it that they’re actually not collecting it? And then it became really clear that they’re not even collecting it.”

The discovery led Ahebee to write an article about how a lack of data on voter demographics hinders election reform. She said data became essential to telling stories about Pennsylvania voters, because the state had a close election where small changes in voting trends could have a big impact.

“And of course, data becomes a story and data feeds into all of our other narratives and cultural attitudes about certain groups of people,” Ahebee said. “And so it was really important for me to make sure what I was saying was true, and that was reflective of what actually happened.”

Then, on Jan. 6, right-wing extremists and supporters of President Trump stunned the nation by rioting at the U.S. Capitol to protest the certification of the election. In Michigan, Halpert was saddened by the violence she saw, but she wasn’t surprised. She was in the middle of writing a story about the increasingly violent threats local election administrators received in the aftermath of the November election.

“I re-evaluated my article about threats on election officials,” Halpert said, “and was able to kind of show this broader story of, ‘What happened yesterday was shocking, but not to election and public officials in Michigan who have been fearing for their safety for months.’”

At the start of Votebeat, Pillets admitted he thought voting and election administration might not require a full-time reporter. But by the end, Pillets had more stories than he had time to write them. He also felt he got closer to the heart of New Jersey’s election story by December.

“And it was only by the end,” Pillets said, “that I came to realize that in New Jersey, aside from the problem with the workers, that had been the story. But the real ongoing issue in New Jersey is the poor administration with the lack of expertise in the voting administration, specifically with a few individuals.”

Pillets says this was the genius of Votebeat: to place local reporters at the level where voting and elections happen, to report on what’s working and uncover what isn’t.

“Reporters have a lot of power,” he said. “You know, a good local report has the power to ask questions, and to change things and to just shed light on stuff. And it reminded me of that.”

Alston in Atlanta agreed that Votebeat’s value came from its local focus.

“It served an incredibly important role in terms of highlighting local election issues that are widely different across the country but have very tangible effects on who and how people are able to vote,” he said.

For Albiges, Votebeat was in local communities at the exact moment when they needed a trusted source to explain voting to them.

“Election administration itself is very complicated, and very nuanced and very local,” she said, “and Votebeat understood that. And that’s why they dedicated these reporters to cover this topic that really goes down to the local level.”

Votebeat was created with the belief that fact-based, local news about voting would be critical to addressing misinformation about and mistrust in the 2020 election. After the attack on the U.S. Capitol, we understood that conspiracy theories and pushes for voter disenfranchisement continue to be powerful trends in American politics. Local news is urgently needed to remedy them.

With the lessons of 2020 in mind, we are now fundraising and preparing to relaunch Votebeat to cover the 2022 midterm elections, with a focus on many states’ new restrictions on voting, the spread of misinformation, and the subversive threats to election integrity.

I Tried to Understand Exactly How Ballots Are Counted in Several States. It Was Crazy-Making.

2020-11-04T00:47:00+00:00

When I heard my assignment for Votebeat would be to write several so-called explainers about how votes are counted in selected states, I thought, “OK, this will probably require a good amount of digging, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.” I’ve written many an “explainer,” I’ve covered elections, I’ve done investigative reporting. The editor said it would probably take about 20-30 hours, and would become easier as I went along, since I’d be seeking the same kind of information across different states.

Boy, were we wrong. It turned into one crazy week, with several 16-hour days, nerve-racking phone interviews, many unanswered emails and voicemails, at least 530 browser tabs opened (not an exaggeration), and one North Carolina county official getting very, very mad at me.

Again: I was merely trying to find out how local governments count their citizens’ ballots.

You might think voters could find this information on local government websites. Those sites do provide voters the most common and useful details of the process: how to register to vote, how to send in their mail-in ballots, or how to vote in person. Many will even give detailed instructions on how to use the shiny new voting machines they just purchased. But once you find out how to cast your ballot, it’s quite difficult to understand what happens to it next.

For example, are the ballots counted on the precinct level or at county headquarters? Even within the same state, this might work differently depending on the county or municipality where you live. In Texas, not even the Secretary of State’s office, which oversees elections, was able to tell me where the votes are tabulated in most counties. The system is incredibly decentralized and the processes vastly inconsistent.

How do the ballots or data on vote totals get transmitted from the polling place to the county, and then to the state? Simple question, right? Nope! Some officials were cagey about this (one spokesperson in Pennsylvania outright said he was “uncomfortable” sharing a detail about the process), presumably to prevent bad actors from any sort of meddling or tampering. Still, I was only seeking general information: Do poll workers have to pack up all the paper ballots or record totals on USB drives to physically transport them to a central counting location? Or do they submit the data electronically? How often do county officials submit results to the state on election night? Straight answers were often elusive.

This process, of communicating results from the local level to the central level, was where I uncovered some fun facts. It always involves a mix of electronic methods and analog ones, because tabulating devices cannot be connected to the internet, in order to prevent any tampering. One expert joked that counties might be using fax to submit results. But, no kidding, Sacramento County in California sends its results to the state as an electronic file and via fax. Elsewhere in California, in Orange County, the vDrives containing all the votes from a polling place must be taken by a team of two election workers—one tailing the other in a separate car—to a collection point, where they hand off the vDrives to election officials, the chain of custody meticulously recorded at each point. When they arrive at the office of the registrar of voters, the vDrives travel down to a secure tabulating room via old-fashioned chutes.

Finding all of this out involved many, many phone calls. I had a lengthy discussion with one official who got very impatient with me as I was trying to understand how the process in her county worked. We got into several back-and-forths about the meaning of the words “tabulating” and “inputting,” “importing” and “uploading.” She was so irked that I wanted to understand these basic technical details that, as I was thanking her for her time, she hung up on me.

A spokesperson in Georgia was very patient, using an extended metaphor about score-keeping in baseball: In his telling, the difference between unofficial election results and official ones is akin to the umpire keeping track of the score versus what appears on the scoreboard. Often, I found that officials or spokespeople had to check back with others on what I thought were simple questions. This is not a criticism of these individuals, who’ve been working incredibly hard to make this chaotic election go smoothly. It simply goes to show how complex the voting system can be in each state, in each county, and how little transparency there is about the process.

To gather all the information I needed, I had to cross-check multiple sources — often on the same government websites—because there were many inconsistencies. The ballot-counting process is often explained in PDFs—memos, guides for election officials, state laws. The latter are changed, and the information isn’t always updated elsewhere in governmental resources. And because so much of the counting process was being litigated this year, with federal courts and even the US Supreme Court deciding when exactly do individual states have to stop accepting mail-in ballots, I had to make sure the process wasn’t changing right even as I was writing.

I’m a reporter who has worked on major national investigations. My job and skill set involves combing through documents and pressing officials to get complete answers. If it was this time-consuming and crazy-making for me to get clear information about how ballots are counted, how could the average citizen possibly be expected to learn how this important function of democracy works?