Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
Gynecologist doing ultrasound of pregnant woman in hospital.

No Doctor, No Delivery, No Future

A military ship out in the sea.

Reasons to Care about the Sailors Aboard the USS Lincoln

Woman putting savings in a white piggy bank.

Affordability Crisis: From The Great Compression to the Great Divide

People walking to voting booths.

The Democratic Socialists of America Is Not What It Seems

The Sleeping Giant Woke Up. Trump is Asleep.

The Sleeping Giant Woke Up. Trump is Asleep.

Ditching QR codes, Colorado will count votes a more old-fashioned way

The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumSep 17, 2019
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
See More Writings by author

Colorado is dropping the use of QR codes from ballots statewide, saying the ubiquitous square bar codes are susceptible to hacking that could manipulate election results.

This will make Colorado, likely one of the most hotly contested states in the 2020 presidential contest and also home to one of next year's premier Senate races, the first state where all ballots get tabulated "using only human-verifiable information," officials said in an announcement Monday.

"Voters should have the utmost confidence that their vote will count," said the new secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold. "Removing QR codes from ballots will enable voters to see for themselves that their ballots are correct and helps guard against cyber meddling."

Under the current system, the choices made by an in-person voter are turned into a QR code that's embedded on each paper ballot, although the voter cannot "proofread" the code for accuracy. In time for the 2020 election, the state will deploy a system for counting the votes based on the colored-in ovals on each ballot.


Latest news

Children's books on a shelf.
Education

Darius Williams Went Viral. Fixing the Literacy Crisis Won’t.

Silhouetted People with American Flag Neon Sign
Democracy

With Rights Come Responsibilities - That's the American Way

An Independent Just Broke Through in Alaska — As Republicans Try to Kill the System That Made It Possible
Elections

An Independent Just Broke Through in Alaska — As Republicans Try to Kill the System That Made It Possible

Read More

Montanans Urged To Defend Voter Integrity in November Elections

The Trump administration’s Justice Department has filed 30 lawsuits against states refusing to hand over voter rolls, which include personal information including Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

Adobe Stock

Montanans Urged To Defend Voter Integrity in November Elections

Democracy watchdogs warned President Donald Trump is setting the stage to tap emergency powers to ensure Republicans do not lose control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

Since January, the Trump administration has used federal law enforcement to raid election facilities to seize ballots and voting machines in places like Georgia and Puerto Rico. Trump continues to cast doubt on the integrity of elections in Montana and across the nation.

Keep ReadingShow less
Political Corruption Is Often Not a Voting Issue in America

electoral fraud/voter apathy/totalitarism

Getty Images - digitally generated image

Political Corruption Is Often Not a Voting Issue in America

Almost every week, there seems to be another story about the pay-to-play ethos that is dominant in Donald Trump’s Washington, DC. On July 30, the Wall Street Journal added a new one to the list.

The Journal described the president’s fervent interest in fundraising and how he checks almost nightly with his top fundraiser, Meredith O’Rourke, to find out “which companies and donors have cut checks and which haven’t, and for how much.” The story highlighted the way she channels his interest into making her pitch.

Keep ReadingShow less
As Temperatures Rise and Federal Funding Falls, Drowning Risks Grow
a group of kids in a pool
Photo by Kevin Paes on Unsplash

As Temperatures Rise and Federal Funding Falls, Drowning Risks Grow

July 25 marked World Drowning Day. More than 4000 people die from unintentional drowning in the United States each year. This translates into an average of 11 drowning deaths per day. Children ages one to four are at greatest risk, making drowning the leading cause of death for that group and the second leading cause of death for children ages five to 14.

Two emerging trends could make those numbers worse: federal funding cuts that have weakened drowning prevention efforts and hotter summers that are driving more people to water to cool off. Together, these trends threaten to deepen long-standing disparities that already place Black, Indigenous, autistic, and low-income communities at greater risk.

Keep ReadingShow less
U.S. Capitol with a flag waving in front of it.

As Washington stalls, young bipartisan lawmakers in Alaska, Mississippi, and beyond are proving that cross-partisan collaboration still wins.

Douglas Rissing/Getty Images

The Politicians Who Can Fix America's Polarization Problem Will Win

Political predictions are notoriously unreliable, but here is one I am willing to stand behind: the elected officials who figure out how to govern across difference will dominate the next decade of American politics. With dysfunction and paralysis having become the status quo in Washington, elected officials who work together to get things done will turn heads, offering desperate voters a much-needed alternative to a broken system.

Consider what happened in Alaska last year. The state’s lawmaking structure does not encourage political independence. Alaska has the nation's highest veto-override threshold: three-quarters. So when a popular education bill promising smaller class sizes, a cellphone ban, and vocational training funding cleared the legislature, only to be vetoed twice by the governor, it looked dead in the water.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026