Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Voters challenge newly ordered election equipment in Georgia

Georgia voters

Voters in Atlanta cast ballots in the 2018 election. A new voting system ordered by the state has prompted legal challenges from voters who claim it has numerous deficiencies.

Jessica McGowan/Getty Images

Georgia voters are challenging a new $107 million voting system ordered by state officials last month, claiming it does not provide the kind of paper record that will ensure their votes are being cast properly.

The petition, sent earlier this week to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, is filed under a provision of state law that allows voters to request a reexamination of voting devices approved by the state. It claims that the system doesn't meet the state's certification requirements but does not say whether it should just be fixed or replaced with a different system.

The challenge is just the latest development in a battle over election procedures and security that dates back to before the 2018 gubernatorial race in which Democrat Stacey Abrams lost a tight race to Republican Brian Kemp amid claims of voting irregularities.


The close race signaled that Georgia, a traditionally Republican state, may be turning into a political tossup heading into the 2020 presidential election.

The petition, signed by 1,450 voters, claims the printed barcode generated by the voting system is not readable by a voter and therefore not an acceptable method of validating votes. The system was purchased from Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems.

"Requiring a voter to cast votes recorded in the form of a barcode that she cannot read, interpret or verify directly undermines the state's decision to adopt a voting system that includes a verifiable ballot," the petition states.

In the wake of foreign attempts to hack into voting systems in the 2016 election, most experts and advocates have called for all election systems to create a paper record that can be used to verify and audit voting results.

In a related development, some of the people who had filed a lawsuit challenging the state's old voting system have amended their suit to challenge the new Dominion system.

Raffensperger responded by accusing those challenging the new system of hoping it would fail and calling on Georgians to "reject these ridiculous tactics."

Last week, the federal judge hearing the court challenge to the state's old election system ordered the state to stop using it after the end of this year, calling it "antiquated, seriously flawed, and vulnerable to failure, breach, contamination, and attack."

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