Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Fight over purging vs. accuracy of voter rolls arrives in battleground Pa.

Pennsylvania
bubaone/Getty Images

Two prominent voting rights groups are attempting to formally intervene so they can fight a Pennsylvania lawsuit that threatens thousands of names on the voter rolls in that marquee battleground state.

The suit filed two weeks ago by Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group, maintains the state and three bellwether counties are not following federal law requiring regular maintenance to cull registration rosters of people who have moved, died or are no longer eligible to vote for some other reason.

It is the latest skirmish over voter rolls that could alter the course of the 2020 election. Republicans argue that properly maintaining the lists is not only a federal mandate but also helps prevent election fraud. Democrats generally oppose these efforts, which they say are too often partisan crusades to suppress the vote and end up improperly disenfranchising eligible voters.


The suit claims the three suburban Philadelphia counties — Bucks, Chester and Delaware, with a combined 1.2 million registered voters — are not following the federal cleanup requirements and are refusing to turn over documents describing their maintenance efforts.

On Monday, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters asked a state judge to allow them to become defendants, because their members are among the people whose names might be removed from the rolls. (The current defendants are Democratic Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and election officials in the three counties.)

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

The law allows names to be removed from the registration rolls in Pennsylvania using a two-step process. Letters are sent to people thought to be no longer eligible. Those who do not respond can stay on the rolls by voting in one of the next two federal elections, but if they don't their names are dropped — at least until the register anew.

The state's 20 electoral votes will be one of the most hotly contested prizes in the fall. Last time President Trump carried Pennsylvania by 7 tenths of a point, a scant 44,000 votes, breaking a Democratic winning streak for the Democrats that started in 1992.

Polling currently shows former Vice President Joe Biden with a narrow edge in the state, where the result almost always hinges on turnout in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and their close-in suburbs like the places targeted by Judicial Watch.

Trump's victory was even narrower four years ago in Wisconsin, fewer than 23,000 votes, and it has become the site of the nation's most intense legal fight over the registration rolls — with the fate of more than 200,000 names in the balance.

The dispute is now before the state Supreme Court, which has not decided whether to reconsider a lower appeals court's unanimous ruling in February that the voters should remain on the rolls at least until the state addresses what it has conceded are flaws in its own record-keeping. Most of the disputed names are on the rolls of Democrat-leaning Milwaukee and Madison.

Read More

The Fragile Ceasefire in Gaza

A view of destruction as Palestinians, who returned to the city following the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, struggle to survive among ruins of destroyed buildings during cold weather in Jabalia, Gaza on January 23, 2025.

Getty Images / Anadolu

The Fragile Ceasefire in Gaza

Ceasefire agreements are like modern constitutions. They are fragile, loaded with idealistic promises, and too easily ignored. Both are also crucial to the realization of long-term regional peace. Indeed, ceasefires prevent the violence that is frequently the fuel for instability, while constitutions provide the structure and the guardrails that are equally vital to regional harmony.

More than ever, we need both right now in the Middle East.

Keep ReadingShow less
Money Makes the World Go Round Roundtable

The Committee on House Administration meets on the 15th anniversary of the SCOTUS decision on Citizens United v. FEC.

Medill News Service / Samanta Habashy

Money Makes the World Go Round Roundtable

WASHINGTON – On the 15th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and one day after President Trump’s inauguration, House Democrats made one thing certain: money determines politics, not the other way around.

“One of the terrible things about Citizens United is people feel that they're powerless, that they have no hope,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Ma.).

Keep ReadingShow less
Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

The United States Supreme Court.

Getty Images / Rudy Sulgan

Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

Fourteen years ago, after the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the popular blanket primary system, Californians voted to replace the deeply unpopular closed primary that replaced it with a top-two system. Since then, Democratic Party insiders, Republican Party insiders, minor political parties, and many national reform and good government groups, have tried (and failed) to deep-six the system because the public overwhelmingly supports it (over 60% every year it’s polled).

Now, three minor political parties, who opposed the reform from the start and have unsuccessfully sued previously, are once again trying to overturn it. The Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party have teamed up to file a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Their brief repeats the same argument that the courts have previously rejected—that the top-two system discriminates against parties and deprives voters of choice by not guaranteeing every party a place on the November ballot.

Keep ReadingShow less
Independents as peacemakers

Group of people waving small American flags at sunset.

Getty Images//Simpleimages

Independents as peacemakers

In the years ahead, independents, as candidates and as citizens, should emerge as peacemakers. Even with a new administration in Washington, independents must work on a long-term strategy for themselves and for the country.

The peacemaker model stands in stark contrast to what might be called the marriage counselor model. Independent voters, on the marriage counselor model, could elect independent candidates for office or convince elected politicians to become independents in order to secure the leverage needed to force the parties to compromise with each other. On this model, independents, say six in the Senate, would be like marriage counselors because their chief function would be to put pressure on both parties to make deals, especially when it comes to major policy bills that require 60 votes in the Senate.

Keep ReadingShow less