Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Voting advocates lose a suit in Ga. but file new ones in N.H. and Miss.

Absentee ballot envelope
Bill Oxford/Getty Images

Requiring Georgia voters to provide their own stamps for mail-in ballots and ballot applications does not count as an unconstitutional poll tax, a federal judge ruled.

The decision is a setback for one of the most ambitious causes of voting rights advocates, who have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to ease the rules of absentee voting in order to promote turnout for the pandemic-complicated November election.

But within hours of Tuesday's ruling, lawyers filed two fresh suits — in New Hampshire, which like Georgia is a presidential battleground this fall, and Mississippi, a deeply red state widely identified as the toughest place in the country to cast a ballot this year.

These are the details of the cases in the three states:


Georgia

The suit argued that the state's requirement that voters pay their own postage — which is also the law in 32 other states — effectively imposes a poll tax and is also an unjustifiable burden on the right to vote.

Judge Amy Totenberg of Atlanta kept alive the portion of the litigation questioning whether making voters pay postage imperils their voting rights. In declaring that "stamps are not poll taxes," however, she said that was because voters can cast ballots in person at no cost, so paying 55 cents for getting an absentee ballot and 55 cents more to return it is not unconstitutional.

The judge's ruling was not altogether a surprise. She had already declined to order the state to provide postage-paid envelopes for the June primary and Tuesday's runoffs — but had held off on a decision about the general election while pondering fresh arguments from both sides

The case was filed in April by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a group seeking to empower communities of color, the Black Votes Matter Fund. They argued that in-person voting is not a viable option during the pandemic and nearly impossible for some elderly and disabled voters.

The judge's ruling noted the bevvy of other lawsuits challenging the state's election rules and described her decision as "certainly not likely the final word on absentee balloting issues or the implementation of the absentee ballot process in Georgia."

Mississippi

The ACLU and the progressive Mississippi Center for Justice sued in state court to make absentee voting available to all during the coronavirus pandemic. After a wave of easements around the country, the state is one of just eight where a particular excuse beyond the fear of Covid-19 will be required to get a vote-by-mail ballot.

The law was changed this summer, however, to add "temporary physical disability" as one of the acceptable reasons along with being under a doctor-ordered quarantine or caring for someone quarantined.

The suit wants a judge to declare that all voters, not just those under doctor's orders, can cite the need to stay away from public places during the pandemic as reason enough to obtain an absentee ballot.

The suit says GOP Secretary of State Michael Watson's plan, which is to allow each local election administrator to decide how permissive the new law has made things, will sow confusion and establishes unfairly different rules.

New Hampshire

The lawsuit is the latest brought by Marc Elias, the attorney who has been running the Democrats' wide-ranging and aggressive effort to get the courts to make voting easier. He has now filed lawsuits in 19 states, this time on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers.

The state sent the mail-in ballots for November to all municipalities this week, and anyone can get one because New Hampshire is one of the places that has decided coronavirus precautions are an acceptable reason this year.

But there are plenty of other problems, the lawsuit says, echoing the complaints in most of the other Democratic lawsuits across the country. It challenges as illegally burdensome the process of registering to vote absentee, the postage charged to send in an absentee ballot, the requirement that absentee ballots arrive at election offices by Election Day, and the ban on people and groups collecting and delivering absentee ballots.

Randy Weingarten, president of the teachers' group, said the AFT is "taking this on as defenders of our democracy and to ensure everyone who is eligible to vote can do so in a fair and safe way in November."

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
Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job
woman wearing academic cap and dress selective focus photography
Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job

A college education used to be considered, along with homeownership, one of the key pillars of the American Dream. Is that still the case? Recent experiences of college graduates seeking employment raise questions about whether a university diploma remains the best pathway to pursuing happiness, as it once was.

Consider the case of recent grad Lohanny Santo, whose TikTok video went viral with over 3.6 million “likes” as she broke down in tears and vented her frustration over her inability to find even a minimum wage job. That was despite her dual degrees from Pace University and her ability to speak three languages. John York, a 24-year-old with a master’s degree in math from New York University, writes that “it feels like I am screaming into the void with each application I am filling out.”

Keep ReadingShow less