Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Arizona, where mail voting is already big, won’t accommodate postal delays

Voting by mail
filo/Getty Images

Ballots in battleground Arizona won't be counted if they get delayed by the mail this year.

Under the settlement of a federal lawsuit last week, Arizonans will still have to rely on their absentee ballots getting to local election centers by the time polls close.

Because of the coronavirus, which is producing a wave of interest in voting-by-mail at the same time the Postal Service is confronting severe financial hardship, civil rights groups and Democrats have pressed states to relax deadlines for the return of ballot envelopes.


They have succeeded so far in Wisconsin, Minnesota and parts of Pennsylvania, where an Election Day postmark and an arrival several days later is being allowed for primary ballots. A one-day grace period was granted in New York, where a mostly vote-by-mail primary is Tuesday.

But neither those states, nor the 30 others requiring envelopes to get back before the in-person voting is done, have yet changed their rules for the general election.

Two progressive groups, Voto Latino and Priorities USA, sued to extend Arizona's deadline so that ballots postmarked by Election Day, and received within five days, would be counted not only in the Aug. 4 primary but also in November.

While they did not get their way in a settlement announced Friday, Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs did promise to expand voter outreach efforts ahead of both elections. She also agreed to at least consider extending the postmark deadline for elections after this year.

It's very easy to obtain an absentee ballot in Arizona, and they were the method of choice for 78 percent of the state's voters in the 2018 midterm — a higher percentage than all but a handful of states. Counting them all usually takes several days, leaving close statewide contests unresolved.

The Democratic groups sued last November, months before the pandemic's arrival, asserting that many ballots have been received after the Election Day deadline in the past — in part because some voters incorrectly believed they would be counted as long as they were postmarked in time. They also argued that mail delivery is unreliable in rural parts of the state.

In the settlement, Hobbs agreed to increase voter outreach and education efforts and provide election information in English, Spanish, Navajo and Apache. Her website will also add a page explaining the vote-by-mail process and alert voters of upcoming deadlines. And federal funding will be allocated to counties to expand early in-person voting.

"We were able to come to an agreement quickly in this case because our office was already working on many of the initiatives being requested," Hobbs said.

Following the November election, state officials will review data from recent years to discern the share of ballots that got discarded for being tardy. Officials will consider the feasibility of Arizona joining the 15 states that count ballots sealed by election day so long as they arrive within a week.

Recent polling shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a shot at the state's 11 electoral votes, which President Trump won last time by 4 points. Democrats are even more bullish on their Senate challenger, former astronaut Mark Kelly, unseating Republican incumbent Martha McSally.

Read More

U.S. President Barack Obama speaking on the phone in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Barack Obama talks President Barack Obama talks with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan during a phone call from the Oval Office on November 2, 2009 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, The White House

‘Obama, You're 15 Years Too Late!’

The mid-decade redistricting fight continues, while the word “hypocrisy” has become increasingly common in the media.

The origin of mid-decade redistricting dates back to the early history of the United States. However, its resurgence and legal acceptance primarily stem from the Texas redistricting effort in 2003, a controversial move by the Republican Party to redraw the state's congressional districts, and the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. This decision, which confirmed that mid-decade redistricting is not prohibited by federal law, was a significant turning point in the acceptance of this practice.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand of a person casting a ballot at a polling station during voting.

Gerrymandering silences communities and distorts elections. Proportional representation offers a proven path to fairer maps and real democracy.

Getty Images, bizoo_n

Gerrymandering Today, Gerrymandering Tomorrow, Gerrymandering Forever

In 1963, Alabama Governor George Wallace declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." (Watch the video of his speech.) As a politically aware high school senior, I was shocked by the venom and anger in his voice—the open, defiant embrace of systematic disenfranchisement, so different from the quieter racism I knew growing up outside Boston.

Today, watching politicians openly rig elections, I feel that same disbelief—especially seeing Republican leaders embrace that same systematic approach: gerrymandering now, gerrymandering tomorrow, gerrymandering forever.

Keep ReadingShow less
An oversized ballot box surrounded by people.

Young people worldwide form new parties to reshape politics—yet America’s two-party system blocks them.

Getty Images, J Studios

No Country for Young Politicians—and How To Fix That

In democracies around the world, young people have started new political parties whenever the establishment has sidelined their views or excluded them from policymaking. These parties have sometimes reinvigorated political competition, compelled established parties to take previously neglected issues seriously, or encouraged incumbent leaders to find better ways to include and reach out to young voters.

In Europe, a trio in their twenties started Volt in 2017 as a pan-European response to Brexit, and the party has managed to win seats in the European Parliament and in some national legislatures. In Germany, young people concerned about climate change created Klimaliste, a party committed to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as per the Paris Agreement. Although the party hasn’t won seats at the federal level, they have managed to win some municipal elections. In Chile, leaders of the 2011 student protests, who then won seats as independent candidates, created political parties like Revolución Democrática and Convergencia Social to institutionalize their movements. In 2022, one of these former student leaders, Gabriel Boric, became the president of Chile at 36 years old.

Keep ReadingShow less
How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

Demonstrators gather outside of The United States Supreme Court during an oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford to call for an end to partisan gerrymandering on October 3, 2017 in Washington, DC

Getty Images, Olivier Douliery

How To Fix Gerrymandering: A Fair-Share Rule for Congressional Redistricting

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Col. Edward Carrington, Paris, 27 May 1788

The Problem We Face

The U.S. House of Representatives was designed as the chamber of Congress most directly tethered to the people. Article I of the Constitution mandates that seats be apportioned among the states according to population and that members face election every two years—design features meant to keep representatives responsive to shifting public sentiment. Unlike the Senate, which prioritizes state sovereignty and representation, the House translates raw population counts into political voice: each House district is to contain roughly the same number of residents, ensuring that every citizen’s vote carries comparable weight. In principle, then, the House serves as the nation’s demographic mirror, channeling the diverse preferences of the electorate into lawmaking and acting as a safeguard against unresponsive or oligarchic governance.

Nationally, the mismatch between the overall popular vote and the partisan split in House seats is small, with less than a 1% tilt. But state-level results tell a different story. Take Connecticut: Democrats hold all five seats despite Republicans winning over 40% of the statewide vote. In Oklahoma, the inverse occurs—Republicans control every seat even though Democrats consistently earn around 40% of the vote.

Keep ReadingShow less