Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Efforts to grow turnout may delay election results

Efforts to grow turnout may delay election results
Alex Edelman/Getty Images

While some states are making it easier for people to vote by absentee ballot, officials are concerned the time required to count such ballots will delay election results — and cause the public to question their authenticity.

The latest concerns have been raised in a pair of swing states that may determine the winner of the 2020 presidential election.


Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson took her concerns to the Detroit City Council on Tuesday, explaining that statewide reforms may lead to a doubling of absentee balloting this year.

In 2018 voters approved a voting rights ballot initiative that amended the state's Constitution to allow no-reason absentee voting and registration on Election Day, among other provisions.

To prepare for the expected increase in absentee voting, Benson is pushing for a change in Michigan law that will allow local clerks to begin counting ballots prior to Election Day.

Benson, a Democrat, pitched the proposal last year to a GOP-controlled state legislative committee. But the concept did not move forward, in part because Michigan voters have the right to change their absentee ballots up to the day before the election.

President Trump won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is preparing for its own surge.

Reform legislation signed into law in October allows citizens to vote using absentee ballots up to 50 days before the election. State officials believe that will mean more mailed-in ballots to count. Plus, the state is changing the counting system from a precinct-based process to one in which all absentee ballots are tallied in a central location in each county.

With so many changes at one time, state officials expect that not all absentee ballots will be counted on Election Day this fall.

On top of all that, the state is rolling out new voting machines in response to concerns about election security.

Trump won Pennsylvania by a little over 44,000 votes. Both Michigan and Pennsylvania are expected to be close again this fall.

Nationwide, election officials are worried that delays in reporting of the results either because of an increase in absentee ballots or changes in voting will undermine public confidence in the election.

Read More

Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

Capitol building, Washington, DC

Unsplash/Getty Images

Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

There may be no greater indication that voters are not being listened to in the escalating redistricting war between the Republican and Democratic Parties than a new poll from NBC News that shows 8-in-10 Americans want the parties to stop.

It’s what they call an "80-20 issue," and yet neither party is standing up for the 80% as they prioritize control of Congress.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

The White House and money

AI generated image

Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

In the United States, where the free market has long been exalted as the supreme engine of prosperity, a peculiar irony is taking shape. On August 22, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the federal government had acquired a stake of just under 10% in Intel, instantly making itself the company’s largest shareholder. The stake - roughly 433 million shares, valued at about $8.9 billion, purchased at $20.47 each - was carved out of the Biden-era CHIPS Act subsidies and repackaged as equity. Formally, it is a passive, non-voting stake, with no board seat or governance rights. Yet symbolism matters: Washington now sits, however discreetly, in Intel’s shareholder register. Soon afterward, reports emerged that Samsung, South Korea’s industrial giant, had also been considered for similar treatment. What once would have been denounced as creeping socialism in Washington is now unfolding under Donald Trump, a president who boasts of his devotion to private enterprise but increasingly embraces tactics that blur the line between capitalism and state control.

The word “nationalization,” for decades associated with postwar Britain, Latin American populists, or Arab strongmen, is suddenly back in circulation - but this time applied to the citadel of capitalism itself. Trump justifies the intervention as a matter of national security and economic patriotism. Subsidies, he argues, are wasteful. Tariffs, in his view, are a stronger tool for forcing corporations to relocate factories to U.S. soil. Yet the CHIPS Act, that bipartisan legacy of the Biden years, remains in force and politically untouchable, funneling billions of dollars into domestic semiconductor projects. Rather than scrap it, Trump has chosen to alter the terms: companies that benefit from taxpayer largesse must now cede equity to the state. Intel, heavily reliant on those funds, has become the test case for this new model of American industrial policy.

Keep ReadingShow less