Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Georgia's long lines focus of the latest elections lawsuit

Georgia voting

Democrats have filed a lawsuit against Georgia election officials over the long waits voters have had in recent elections, including this scene from the June 9 primary.

Emma Hurt/Twitter

Georgia, which has been sued plenty in recent years for allegedly violating the rights of its electorate, is facing a fresh complaint about voter suppression of the most obvious kind: Making people stand in line for hours to exercise their democratic rights.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court Thursday, is the latest development in the courthouse crusade to make it easier to vote in the presidential election.

In neighboring Alabama, a state judge this week dismissed a lawsuit that sought to ease voting rules for the elderly and disabled. And Friday saw the latest in a series of suits, this time in Pennsylvania, seeking to guarantee a do-over for people who make mistakes on their absentee ballot forms.

These are the latest developments:


Georgia

The new suit will gain particular notice because of the state's evolution into one of the most prominent political battlegrounds of the year. The contest for the state's 16 electoral votes is now a tossup, an array of recent polls shows, and in an unusual twist both Senate seats are on the ballot this fall and have become highly competitive. So Georgia's turnout has taken on extraordinary importance.

The state Democratic Party and the party's Senate campaign arm are convinced their candidates will do best with as many people voting as possible. Their suit says the long lines that forced people to wait upwards of eight hours in stifling heat to vote in the June 9 primary violated the Constitution.

Sara Alami of Fulton County, which takes in much of Atlanta, arrived at her polling place half an hour before the doors opened — and still had to wait six hours. Another resident of the county, 71-year-old Lucille Anderson, gave up trying to vote after confronting the long lines at her polling place three times — in the morning, midafternoon and evening.

Two years ago voters in Georgia waited to vote longer than in any other state, a full 2.5 times the national average, according to the suit.

The Democrats allege the long lines were because of the reductions in the number of polling places, late opening of polling places, not enough voting machines, not enough technicians to fix broken machines and poor training. They asked a judge to order all those problems get fixed before November.

Pennsylvania

The newest litigation in the battleground state mirrors those in several other such presidential tossups, where the rate of absentee ballot rejection could prove decisive in November.

The suit asks a federal judge to require that voters be notified if their ballots get rejected because the signature line on the envelope is blank or the handwriting does not match what's on file at the election office — and be given a chance to remedy the problem.

"Pennsylvania must create a uniform process to let voters fix signature-related issues with their mail-in ballots in order to give people confidence that their vote is being counted," said Paul Smith of the Campaign Legal Center, which sued on behalf of the League of Women Voters, the League of United Latin American Citizens Council and the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh.

Alabama

Civil Court Judge J.R. Gaines of Montgomery on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters and several sick or elderly citizens. It said the health of voters during the pandemic was illegally threatened by the requirement for two witnesses or a notary to countersign an absentee ballot envelope.

The judge said the suit raised political issues that shouldn't be decided in the courts. He also said the plaintiffs had no legal standing to file the suit and that the election officials were protected from being sued.

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025
a group of windmills in the sky above the clouds

We Can Save Our Earth: Environment Opportunities 2025

On May 8th, 2025, the Network for Responsible Public Policy (NFRPP) convened a session to discuss the future of the transition to clean energy in the face of some stiff headwinds caused by the new US administration led by Donald Trump. The panel included Dale Bryk, Director of State and Regional Policy at the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program and a Senior Fellow at the Regional Plan Association, and Dan Sosland, President of the Acadia Center. The discussion was moderated by Richard Eidlin, National Policy Director for Business for America.

 
 


Keep ReadingShow less