Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Minnesota mail voting easements extended through the fall

Minnesota absentee voting

Secretary of State Steve Simon has dropped a requirement that absentee ballots be witnessed and will extend the time for ballots to arrive by mail.

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Voting rights advocates in Minnesota have secured another win, extending and even expanding for the presidential election the eased treatment of mailed ballots they had secured for next week's primary.

The requirement that absentee ballots be signed by a second person will be waived in November, and envelopes postmarked by the time the polls close Nov. 3 will be counted even if they are delayed in the mail as long as a week.

Getting rid of such witness requirements and tight deadlines for accepting mailed ballots are two of the pillars of the Democrats' expansive effort to make voting by mail easier and more reliable through the courthouses of at least 18 states. The Republicans are fighting them in almost every instance.


The Minnesota Alliance for Retired Americans Education Fund and four voters first challenged the regulations in a lawsuit filed in May. A state judge the next month approved an agreement that only applied to next Tuesday's primary, and that only extended by two days the window for tabulating ballots mailed by election day. State law says the envelopes must be at counting centers when the polls close.

The agreement expanding on that deal was announced Monday.

"This is a major victory for voters in Minnesota who will now face fewer unnecessary barriers to the ballot box as we deal with the current health crisis," said Eric Holder, the attorney general during the Obama administration who now runs the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an arm of which sponsored the lawsuit.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The plaintiffs said only one in eight votes — or about half the national average — arrived by mail in the 2018 midterm, when Minnesota again led the nation in overall turnout. The coronavirus pandemic would potentially push many of these voters to cast absentee ballots, creating confusion for thousands of voters who aren't accustomed to the absentee voting system.

The agreement is part of a string of legal victories for good governance groups and Democrats in the state, which President Trump is considering contesting after losing its 10 electoral votes by just 45,000 votes four years ago.

Also this year, one federal judge blocked a state law limiting assistance to voters in completing absentee ballots, while another federal judge blocked the state's ballot order rules, which mandate that major political party candidates be listed in reverse order based on their vote share in recent elections, and declared a lottery system will be used instead.

Read More

Houses with price tags
retrorocket/Getty Images

Are housing costs driving inflation in 2024?

This fact brief was originally published by EconoFact. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Are housing costs driving inflation in 2024?

Yes.

The rise in housing costs has been a major source of overall inflation, which was 2.9% in the 12 months ending in July 2024.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' shelter index, which includes housing costs for renters and homeowners, rose 5.1% in the 12 months ending in July 2024.

Keep ReadingShow less
I Voted stickers
BackyardProduction/Getty Images

Voters cast ballots based on personal perceptions, not policy stances

The Fulcrum and the data analytics firm Fidelum Partners have just completed a nationally representative study assessing the voting intentions of U.S adults and their perceptions toward 18 well-known celebrities and politicians.

Fidelum conducted similar celebrity and politician election studies just prior to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Each of these found that perceptions of warmth, competence and admiration regarding the candidates are highly predictive of voting intentions and election outcomes. Given this, The Fulcrum and Fidelum decided to partner on a 2024 celebrity and politician election study to build upon the findings of prior research.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand waving an American flag

"Freedom, a word that should inspire, has been distorted to justify the unchecked pursuit of individual interests at the expense of collective well-being," writes Johnson.

nicoletaionescu/Getty Images

Redefining America's political lingua franca

Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.

A seismic shift has occurred in America's race, identity and power discourse. Like tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface, long-held assumptions are adjusting and giving way to a reimagined lingua franca for civic engagement. This revived language of liberation redefines the terms of debate. It empowers us to reclaim and reinvigorate words once weaponized principally against marginalized communities.

Keep ReadingShow less
Latino attendees of the Democratic National Convention

People cheer for the Harris-Walz ticket at the Democratic National Convention.

Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Harris’ nomination ‘hit a reset button’ for Latinas supporting Democrats

As the presidential race entered the summer months, President Joe Biden’s level of support among Latinx voters couldn’t match the winning coalition he had built in 2020. Among Latinas, a critical group of voters who tend to back Democrats at higher levels than Latinos, lagging support had begun to worry Stephanie Valencia, who studies voting patterns among Latinx voters across the country for Equis Research, a data analytics and research firm.

Then the big shake-up happened: Biden stepped down and Vice President Kamala Harris took his place at the top of the Democratic ticket fewer than 100 days before the election.

Valencia’s team quickly jumped to action. The goal was to figure out how the move was sitting with Latinx voters in battleground states that will play an outsized role in deciding the election. After surveying more than 2,000 Latinx voters in late July and early August, Equis found a significant jump in support for the Democratic ticket, a shift that the team is referring to as “the Latino Reset.”

Keep ReadingShow less