How one state's story reflects the long, strange journey toward the election
News
New Mexico: How one state's story reflects the long, strange journey toward the election
Usually, the results of a presidential election provide the main drama. Usually, it is not the story of how Americans are going to vote that's packed with twists, conflicts, and a constant litany of first evers and never befores.
Of course, almost nothing about 2020 has been usual. In fact, it may be the most historically significant year leading up to a national election in memory. So the fighting over how to hold a comprehensive, safe and reliable election has often been tough to follow in the shadows of impeachment, pandemic and economic calamity.
There are five weeks to go. But the path traveled so far — by good-government activists, election officials, security watchdogs, political leaders, legions of attorneys and regular citizens — becomes clear through the lens of a single state. We've chosen New Mexico. It's more rural, poor, politically blue and demographically brown than the nation. But its election experience this year nicely reflects the calamity the country's already gone through, even before the fight over the actual count begins.
Voters prepared for delay in election results, poll finds
If the winner of the presidential election is not known on election night, it won't be an alarming surprise to most voters, a new poll shows.
Only 20 percent expect the outcome will be clear the night of Nov. 3, according to polling by Politico and Morning Consult released Monday. Another 19 percent think they'll know the next day if President Trump won re-election or was defeated by former Vice President Joe Biden — with 26 percent anticipating the victor won't be clear for a week and 21 percent thinking the wait will last even longer.
Those numbers are good news for the election officials and good-government groups. They have been working for months to prepare the country for a protracted count if the contest remains close, the totally legitimate consequence of record mail-in voting in battleground states because of the pandemic. Trump says the numbers on election night should be dispositive and that delays mean his baseless predictions of a fraudulent count are coming true.
Judge orders paper-based fix for excessive voting lines in Georgia
An ocean of old-fashioned paper must be deployed across Georgia to assure the lines keep moving at polling places in one of this year's most important battlegrounds, a federal judge says.
A traditional copy of the local poll book, or roster of registered and eligible voters, must be printed and delivered to each precinct in case the brand new but often balky electronic versions malfunction, Judge Amy Totenberg of Atlanta ruled Monday.
It's a narrow, but important and rare, courthouse win this year for voting rights advocates in a state that epitomizes their long battle against government officials willing to hold down turnout in the name of election security. And GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger vowed to appeal.
Sunlight Foundation, a transparency trailblazer, closes after 15 years
The sun has set on one of the earliest and most influential Washington good-government groups: the Sunlight Foundation, which pushed transparency in all levels of government and politics as an essential cure for democracy's problems.
Sunlight's "role is no longer essential to its original central mission," Board Chairman Michael Klein said in announcing the group's shuttering last week. "Virtually all of the activities and staff of Sunlight have been transferred to other engaged institutions, or closed."
Debate
Congress needs to fix plenty of things, but not the Supreme Court
"Let's leave the Supreme Court alone," writes Mark Rush, professor of politics at Washington and Lee University.
Community
How to Make a Voting Plan: A Family Affair
Join JPMorgan Chase & Co. and College to Congress on Oct. 1 for a virtual event on how to make a voting plan, engage your family, and navigate voting during a pandemic.