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ACLU sues Delaware County over voters who had their votes rejected twice
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Delaware County disenfranchised a handful of eligible voters in the May primary by rejecting their provisional ballots based on an allegedly incorrect interpretation of the law, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania argued in a new lawsuit.Following the May 16 primary, Delaware County’s Board of Elections decided not to...
As northern Arizona county makes ballot hand-count plan, Secretary of State steps in
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here. A day after supervisors in a northwestern Arizona county voted to request a plan to hand-count ballots in the 2024 presidential election, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes sent a letter to Mohave County supervisors on Tuesday telling them he is concerned that moving forward would break state and federal laws, potentially be insecure, and would lead to inaccurate results. “Hand counting ballots is incredibly prone to human error, which results in a time-intensive process to arrive at correct,...
Arizona Secretary of State steps in as Mohave County makes plan for hand-counting ballots
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here. A day after supervisors in a northwestern Arizona county voted to request a plan to hand-count ballots in the 2024 presidential election, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes sent a letter to Mohave County supervisors on Tuesday telling them he is concerned that moving forward would break state and...
Maricopa County to replace ballot printers at cost of $8 million
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 relying on retail-grade printers to print hundreds of thousands of ballots on the spot and then experiencing a countywide Election Day breakdown, Maricopa County is planning on spending millions to buy much larger, high-performance printers for each of its 2024 polling places.To replace its faulty $300 OKI printers,...
In Nevada, a bipartisan push yields a new law to protect election workers
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 it delivered to your inbox every Saturday.It’s not often that I get to bring you good news in this newsletter. But today is that day! This week, Nevada’s Republican governor signed a law passed with bipartisan support that will...
New Texas law gives secretary of state the power to intervene in Harris County elections
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Texas Republicans have muscled through legislation allowing unprecedented state interventions into elections in Harris County, the most populous county in Texas, threatening to drastically overhaul elections in the Democratic stronghold.The bills targeting Harris, which would eliminate its chief elections official and allow state officials to intervene and supervise the county’s elections in response to administrative complaints, are headed to the governor’s desk. Lawmakers say they’re responding to repeated election issues in Harris County, which includes the city of Houston. The...
Harris County elections face state intervention under new laws
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Texas Republicans have muscled through legislation allowing unprecedented state interventions into elections in Harris County, the most populous county in Texas, threatening to drastically overhaul elections in the Democratic stronghold.The bills targeting Harris, which would eliminate its chief elections official and allow state officials to intervene and supervise the county’s...
Voter preregistration for 16-year-olds under debate in Michigan Legislature
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Ruth Singleton’s grandmother and great-aunt were in their 80s and 90s when they first registered to vote, motivated by Barack Obama’s campaign. Singleton, of Auburn Hills, was in her mid-20s when she first registered.She hopes her daughter Nya, 16, won’t wait as long.A bill in the Michigan legislature could...
Compromise on Texas’ felony voting bill will raise penalty for ineligible voters
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Texas legislators reached agreement Saturday on a bill to raise the penalty for illegal voting from a misdemeanor to a second-degree felony, finding a compromise that will prevent ineligible voters from being prosecuted for mistakenly casting a ballot. A person convicted of an attempt to vote illegally would be...
18 Pa. candidates who spread election misinformation are poised to oversee local voting in 2024
This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. This article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.Fewer than half of the local candidates identified by Votebeat and Spotlight PA as having alleged fraud in elections or expressed doubts about election security won their primaries last week. But a majority of those who did are now expected to win their races in November, putting them in a position to shape how their counties run the 2024 elections. Out of those 18 county commissioner and county...
18 Pa. county commissioner candidates who spread election misinformation won their primaries
This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. This article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeat’s republishing policy.Fewer than half of the local candidates identified by Votebeat and Spotlight PA as having alleged fraud in elections or expressed doubts about election security won their primaries last week. But a majority of those who did are...
After botching election results, Arizona county wants to try hand-counting ballots
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Update, May 26: Pinal County officials have clarified that the planned trial hand count of ballots will look at unused ballots from 2022, not the results of the midterm election, as a county supervisor originally told Votebeat.After human error in Pinal County’s midterm election caused officials to initially fail to count hundreds of ballots, the county’s supervisors now want to try counting ballots by hand.The county’s midterm mistakes weren’t caused by ballot tabulation machines, but rather because workers...
Pinal County wants to hand-count ballots in response to inaccurate 2022 results
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Update, May 26: Pinal County officials have clarified that the planned trial hand count of ballots will look at unused ballots from 2022, not the results of the midterm election, as a county supervisor originally told Votebeat.After human error in Pinal County’s midterm election caused officials to initially fail...
Texas Legislature averts $100 million consequences of law requiring nonexistent election technology
Texas lawmakers have voted to reverse an expensive state law requiring election officials to replace all their current vote-counting equipment with technology that doesn’t exist.An unprecedented mandate the Legislature passed in 2021, without fully realizing its consequences, would have decertified equipment that counties currently use to count votes, to be replaced by machines on which data “once written, cannot be modified,” at an estimated cost of more than $100 million.The bill amending the requirement is now headed to the governor’s desk. It will allow counties to use the equipment they already have.The initial measure, aimed at preventing the tampering of...
Texas to repeal requirement for WORM devices for voting machines
Texas lawmakers have voted to reverse an expensive state law requiring election officials to replace all their current vote-counting equipment with technology that doesn’t exist.An unprecedented mandate the Legislature passed in 2021, without fully realizing its consequences, would have decertified equipment that counties currently use to count votes, to be replaced by machines on which data “once written, cannot be modified,” at an estimated cost of more than $100 million.The bill...
Five times Votebeat’s journalism impacted elections in our first year
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...
Texas is set to make illegal voting a felony again. This is how some voters could be at risk.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.The Texas Senate on Wednesday got closer to raising the penalty for voting illegally from a misdemeanor to a felony, as well as making it easier to convict a voter without proving they intended to cast an illegal ballot. The legislation is a priority for Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other Republican lawmakers who have pushed for it since the 2021 change lowering the penalty to a misdemeanor, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Texas. Known as...
Texas Senate again approves bill to make illegal voting a felony
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.The Texas Senate on Wednesday got closer to raising the penalty for voting illegally from a misdemeanor to a felony, as well as making it easier to convict a voter without proving they intended to cast an illegal ballot. The legislation is a priority for Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick...
Texas set to withdraw from ERIC after final legislative approval
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Update, June 1, 2023: The Texas House and Senate approved the final version of the bill during the closing days of the legislative session. It is now headed to the governor’s desk to be signed into law. The Texas House of Representatives gave crucial approval on Tuesday to a Republican-backed effort rooted in conspiracy theories that would remove the state from a national coalition that helps prevent voter fraud.Senate Bill 1070, authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, was...
Texas set to withdraw from ERIC after Legislature approves bill
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free newsletters here.Update, June 1, 2023: The Texas House and Senate approved the final version of the bill during the closing days of the legislative session. It is now headed to the governor’s desk to be signed into law. The Texas House of Representatives gave crucial approval on Tuesday to a...
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Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization committed to reporting the nuanced truth about elections and voting at a time of crisis in America. Our mission is to help people understand our system of democracy so they can participate in strengthening it. Our approach is to cover and explain the mechanics of voting — no political polls, candidate platforms, or Election Day results; instead we will focus on how elections are run, from early and mail-in voting to voter registration and election security. Because we believe that elections are fundamentally a local issue, our coverage is rooted in local communities. Votebeat’s stories are available at no cost to readers, as well as to all local and national news outlets.
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