Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Floridian aligned with Trump's campaign charged with faking registrations

Voter fraud warning
JimVallee/Getty Images

At least 119 forged voter registration applications have recently been filed in one central Florida county, and an employee of an organization promoting President Trump's re-election has been charged for allegedly submitting 10 of them.

The case is a rare instance of readily apparent voter fraud, a problem that Republicans across the country maintain is widespread but that Democrats disregard as vastly overstated.

Officials in Lake County, a reliably Republicans suburb west of Orlando, said that Cheryl Hall had been charged with 10 felonies — at least six alleging she switched Democratic and independent voters to be registered Republicans without their consent — but that sheriff's investigators had linked her to all 119 of the falsified forms.


Hall was a part-time employee of Florida First, a voter registration group funded mainly by the pro-Trump America First Policies, which has vowed to spend $20 million signing up conservatives to vote in Florida, the nation's most populous purple state, and three other potential November battlegrounds: Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

The fraud came to the county's attention last month when voters started complaining they had been notified their party affiliation had changed — even though they had never made such a switch. Several were Democrats planning to vote early in the presidential primary.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Many of the larger group of forms, which were all stamped with Florida First's return address, had incorrect addresses, birth dates, and Social Security and drivers' license numbers that were flagged as wrong by the county election database.

"It has absolutely nothing to do with party politics," Alan Hays, a Republican who is the county supervisor of elections, said in announcing the charges Thursday. "If you're misbehaving, I'm going to call you on it."

Meanwhile, in the Southwest

The Republican-led Arizona Senate, meanwhile, is expected to clear legislation this week to create an election fraud hotline, allow police into polling places and give GOP Attorney General Mark Brnovich more authority to investigate alleged election crimes. The measure could become law before the state presidential primary, which like Florida's is March 17, but if not by the time the state's 11 electoral votes are hard fought this fall. Democrats say there's no evidence of fraud in the state and that police in polling places will scare voters away.

And in Texas, Republicans are arching their eyebrows at a report from a conservative news site, The Texan: Hervis Johnson, the Houston man who gained global notoriety for waiting six hours to vote on Super Tuesday, was not supposed to have a registration card for another four months, when his probation ends for a 25-year-old second-degree burglary conviction.

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