Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Never mind: Georgians can still email their absentee ballot applications

email alert on laptop
Nipitphon Na Chiangmai/Getty Images

Email is once again an acceptable way for voters in Atlanta to request an absentee ballot.

It wasn't for two days. On Monday and through most of Tuesday, election officials in Fulton County, which takes in much of the city, rejected emailed applications to vote by mail in next month's primary runoffs — telling people they needed to apply by letter, fax or in person. The county reversed itself by the end of the day, after the state warned it was flatly violating Georgia law.

The flare-up, although limited and short lived, was still a fresh reminder of the long and multifaceted history of voter suppression in the Deep South's biggest state — which is under especially vigilant watch this year, when it's become both a presidential and two-seat Senate battleground.


Before the state's chaotic primary last month, Fulton election officials struggled to keep up with the flood of emailed requests from state's most populous county. Many residents didn't receive their absentee ballot in time, forcing them to wait for several hours in line at polling places across Atlanta and risk Covid-19 exposure to vote in person.

While lifting the short moratorium on emailed requests, the county is telling voters to help make the application process smoother: Send only one ballot request in each email, make sure it's legible and send either a PDF or JPG file smaller than 5 megabytes.

To offer voters another option, the state says it will create a website for absentee ballot requests for the November election.

It's unclear how many such requests from Fulton voters were overlooked or not processed in time for the primary. Despite these problems, more than 93,000 voters cast ballots by mail — the third most in the state behind two other Metro Atlanta counties, Cobb and DeKalb.

The voting rights group Fair Fight Action called on Republcian Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to make clear that all counties have to process emailed requests. He "must step up and immediately do his job to ensure that Georgians do not have different access to democracy depending on their ZIP code," said CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo.

There's no evidence that any other county has done what Fulton did, Raffensperger's office said.

Overall, 49 percent of the 2.4 million votes cast in the primary were by mail — eight times the share in most recent elections, after Raffensperger infuriated many of his fellow GOP officeholders by sending applications to every registered voter in the state.

Read More

Connecticut: Democracy, Innovation, and Economic Resilience

The 50: Connecticut

Credit: Hugo Balta

Connecticut: Democracy, Innovation, and Economic Resilience

The 50 is a four-year multimedia project in which the Fulcrum visits different communities across all 50 states to learn what motivated them to vote in the 2024 presidential election and see how the Donald Trump administration is meeting those concerns and hopes.

Hartford, Connecticut, stands as a living testament to American democracy, ingenuity, and resilience. As the state’s capital, it’s home to cultural landmarks like the Mark Twain House & Museum, where Twain penned The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, embodying the spirit of self-governance and creative daring that defines the region.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand blocking someone speaking

The Third Way has recently released a memo stating that the “stampede away from the Democratic Party” is partly a result of the language and rhetoric it uses.

Westend61/Getty Images

To Protect Democracy, Democrats Should Pay Attention to the Third Way’s List of ‘Offensive’ Words

More than fifty years ago, comedian George Carlin delivered a monologue entitled Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” It was a tribute to the legendary Lenny Bruce, whose “nine dirty words” performance led to his arrest and his banning from many places.

His seven words were “p—, f—, c—, c———, m———–, and t—.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Fox News’ Selective Silence: How Trump’s Worst Moments Vanish From Coverage
Why Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is good news for all media outlets
Getty Images

Fox News’ Selective Silence: How Trump’s Worst Moments Vanish From Coverage

Last week, the ultraconservative news outlet, NewsMax, reached a $73 million settlement with the voting machine company, Dominion, in essence, admitting that they lied in their reporting about the use of their voting machines to “rig” or distort the 2020 presidential election. Not exactly shocking news, since five years later, there is no credible evidence to suggest any malfeasance regarding the 2020 election. To viewers of conservative media, such as Fox News, this might have shaken a fully embraced conspiracy theory. Except it didn’t, because those viewers haven’t seen it.

Many people have a hard time understanding why Trump enjoys so much support, given his outrageous statements and damaging public policy pursuits. Part of the answer is due to Fox News’ apparent censoring of stories that might be deemed negative to Trump. During the past five years, I’ve tracked dozens of examples of news stories that cast Donald Trump in a negative light, including statements by Trump himself, which would make a rational person cringe. Yet, Fox News has methodically censored these stories, only conveying rosy news that draws its top ratings.

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. Flag / artificial intelligence / technology / congress / ai

The age of AI warrants asking if the means still further the ends—specifically, individual liberty and collective prosperity.

Getty Images, Douglas Rissing

Liberty and the General Welfare in the Age of AI

If the means justify the ends, we’d still be operating under the Articles of Confederation. The Founders understood that the means—the governmental structure itself—must always serve the ends of liberty and prosperity. When the means no longer served those ends, they experimented with yet another design for their government—they did expect it to be the last.

The age of AI warrants asking if the means still further the ends—specifically, individual liberty and collective prosperity. Both of those goals were top of mind for early Americans. They demanded the Bill of Rights to protect the former, and they identified the latter—namely, the general welfare—as the animating purpose for the government. Both of those goals are being challenged by constitutional doctrines that do not align with AI development or even undermine it. A full review of those doctrines could fill a book (and perhaps one day it will). For now, however, I’m just going to raise two.

Keep ReadingShow less