Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

New local election ordered in N.J. after evidence of fraud

mailbox

The discovery of hundreds of ballots stuffed in a mailbox has prompted a do-over election.

Hill Street Studios/Getty Images

A city council election in New Jersey's third biggest city was so tainted that it requires a do-over, a state judge has decided.

More than 3,000 ballots, or nearly 20 percent of all votes cast in Paterson's entirely vote-by-mail municipal election in May, were thrown out after evidence of tampering. Judge Ernest Caposela said Wednesday that means the contest "was not the fair, free and full expression of the intent of the voters" and must to be held anew in November

President Trump, who has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in elections guarantee election rigging, has seized on the Paterson case — by far the most credible example of cheating this year — to sow further distrust in the way more people than ever will vote this year because of the pandemic. But election officials say that, on the contrary, the case actually shows how rare fraud is and how effectively the system catches the few perpetrators.


Following the state's first exclusively mail-in election in May, postal workers informed law enforcement officials that hundreds of ballots were stuffed inside a Paterson mailbox, prompting an investigation by Democratic state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.

"We will not allow a small number of criminals to undermine the public's confidence in our democratic process," said Grewal, who charged four men, including two candidates, with fraud.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

New Jersey officials also say Trump has mischaracterized what happened. The vast majority of the votes were rejected because they were improperly filled out, not because they were illegally cast.

Local news outlets reported problems with the vote as early as primary day, which election experts said speaks to the capability of the system to spot fraud.

"Even on this small scale, what you see is that having a conspiracy like this to try to affect the outcome of an election is very difficult to do without detection," Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told NPR.

The ruling comes a week after Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy announced that all 6.3 million registered voters would be sent a ballot so the November election can be conducted mainly by mail. The Trump campaign on Tuesday sued in federal court to stop the plan, claiming the governor has unconstitutionally altered election procedures that are the purview of the Legislature. The campaign has also sued Nevada, one of the four other states (plus D.C.) that like New Jersey have decided to switch to vote-by-mail for the first time because of Covid-19.

Murphy quickly fired back on Twitter, arguing that the Trump campaign was trying "to delegitimize our elections and cast doubt on our democratic process."

Read More

Houses with price tags
retrorocket/Getty Images

Are housing costs driving inflation in 2024?

This fact brief was originally published by EconoFact. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Are housing costs driving inflation in 2024?

Yes.

The rise in housing costs has been a major source of overall inflation, which was 2.9% in the 12 months ending in July 2024.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' shelter index, which includes housing costs for renters and homeowners, rose 5.1% in the 12 months ending in July 2024.

Keep ReadingShow less
I Voted stickers
BackyardProduction/Getty Images

Voters cast ballots based on personal perceptions, not policy stances

The Fulcrum and the data analytics firm Fidelum Partners have just completed a nationally representative study assessing the voting intentions of U.S adults and their perceptions toward 18 well-known celebrities and politicians.

Fidelum conducted similar celebrity and politician election studies just prior to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Each of these found that perceptions of warmth, competence and admiration regarding the candidates are highly predictive of voting intentions and election outcomes. Given this, The Fulcrum and Fidelum decided to partner on a 2024 celebrity and politician election study to build upon the findings of prior research.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hand waving an American flag

"Freedom, a word that should inspire, has been distorted to justify the unchecked pursuit of individual interests at the expense of collective well-being," writes Johnson.

nicoletaionescu/Getty Images

Redefining America's political lingua franca

Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.

A seismic shift has occurred in America's race, identity and power discourse. Like tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface, long-held assumptions are adjusting and giving way to a reimagined lingua franca for civic engagement. This revived language of liberation redefines the terms of debate. It empowers us to reclaim and reinvigorate words once weaponized principally against marginalized communities.

Keep ReadingShow less
Latino attendees of the Democratic National Convention

People cheer for the Harris-Walz ticket at the Democratic National Convention.

Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Harris’ nomination ‘hit a reset button’ for Latinas supporting Democrats

As the presidential race entered the summer months, President Joe Biden’s level of support among Latinx voters couldn’t match the winning coalition he had built in 2020. Among Latinas, a critical group of voters who tend to back Democrats at higher levels than Latinos, lagging support had begun to worry Stephanie Valencia, who studies voting patterns among Latinx voters across the country for Equis Research, a data analytics and research firm.

Then the big shake-up happened: Biden stepped down and Vice President Kamala Harris took his place at the top of the Democratic ticket fewer than 100 days before the election.

Valencia’s team quickly jumped to action. The goal was to figure out how the move was sitting with Latinx voters in battleground states that will play an outsized role in deciding the election. After surveying more than 2,000 Latinx voters in late July and early August, Equis found a significant jump in support for the Democratic ticket, a shift that the team is referring to as “the Latino Reset.”

Keep ReadingShow less