Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Good-government groups sue New York over absentee ballot rules

Absentee ballot

New York has one of the highest absentee ballot rejection rates in the country.

Inti St Clair/Getty Images

Good-government groups are suing the New York Board of Elections to secure improvements to what they say is a "flawed" absentee ballot verification system.

New York has consistently had one of the highest absentee ballot rejection rates in the country, and voters aren't given the opportunity to address problems, such as a missing signature. In 2018, state election officials tossed out 34,000 ballots, or 14 percent of the total mail ballots cast.

With many more New Yorkers expected to vote by mail in November due to the Covid-19 pandemic, good-government groups argue the state's current ballot verification process is unconstitutional and could lead to thousands more disenfranchised voters this fall.


The League of Women Voters and the Campaign Legal Center filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit asks the federal court to intervene by establishing a consistent method for voters to fix, or "cure" ballots that have been rejected because of envelope or signature issues.

Carmelina Palmer, a New York resident and individual plaintiff in the case, has a progressive neurological condition that causes her handwriting to be inconsistent. Palmer said she doesn't want to vote in person out of fear of catching the coronavirus, but she's worried her absentee ballot could be rejected due to a signature mismatch. Election officials verify absentee ballots by comparing the signature on the ballot with what they have on file.

"Providing all absentee voters the opportunity to fix signature verification issues before their ballots are thrown away would give me confidence that when I participate in an election, my vote will be counted," Palmer said.

"As more New Yorkers rely on the state's vote by mail system to exercise their right to vote during the pandemic, more face the risk of disenfranchisement due to their signature or other benign errors," said the CLC's Danielle Lang. "The lack of notice to voters and an opportunity to fix errors must be resolved with urgency."

Read More

RFK Jr. Vowed To Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

Erin McCanlies spent almost two decades at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health studying how parents’ exposure to chemicals affects the chance that they will have a child with autism. This spring, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eliminated her entire division.

Nate Smallwood for ProPublica

RFK Jr. Vowed To Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying To Do Just That.

Erin McCanlies was listening to the radio one morning in April when she heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to find the cause of autism by September. The secretary of Health and Human Services said he believed an environmental toxin was responsible for the dramatic increase in the condition and vowed to gather “the most credible scientists from all over the world” to solve the mystery.

Nothing like that has ever been done before, he told an interviewer.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

U.S. President Donald Trump visits the U.S. Park Police Anacostia Operations Facility on August 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker

Trump’s Imperial Presidency: Putting Local Democracy at Risk

Trump says his deployment of federal law enforcement is about restoring order in Washington, D.C. But the real message isn’t about crime—it’s about power. By federalizing the District’s police, activating the National Guard, and bulldozing homeless encampments with just a day’s notice, Trump is flexing a new kind of presidential muscle: the authority to override local governments at will—a move that raises serious constitutional concerns.

And now, he promises that D.C. won’t be the last. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia—cities he derides as “crime-ridden”—could be next. Noticeably absent from his list are red-state cities with higher homicide rates, like New Orleans. The pattern is clear: Trump’s law-and-order agenda is less about public safety and more about partisan punishment.

Keep ReadingShow less