Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Just 17 states can get a head start on counting mailed-in ballots

map of states that start counting ballots before Election Day
The Fulcrum

CORRECTION: The previous version of the story and accompanying map incorrectly omitted Florida, Iowa, Maryland, New Jersey and Texas from the states allowing early tabulation. It wrongly included Connecticut, Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.

The coming flood of absentee ballots is headed for a bottleneck on Election Day.

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, half or maybe more of all votes for president this year are expected to be cast remotely, then deposited in drop boxes or sent in the mail. Good-government groups, partisan operatives and the Postal Service are all urging people who choose to vote this way to complete their civic responsibility as soon as they can as a way to assure their envelope arrives in plenty of time to be counted.

But in two-thirds of the states — including most of the battlegrounds — the rush of voting early will not translate in any way into a rush of early returns the night of Nov. 3. That's because election officials can't start tabulating mailed ballots until Election Day, or in some cases until after the polls close. This means those millions of votes won't get counted as soon as the millions of votes cast in person — and Election Day will stretch into Election Week, or longer, if contests are too close to call.


Some of the 33 states may relax their rules in the final weeks before the election.

But for now, just 17 states allow for officials to begin counting ballots before Election Day. Among them, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska's 2nd District, North Carolina and Texas now look to be competitive between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. (There are also highly competitive Senate races on the ballot in several of those states.)

Because counting votes before the polls close is allowed in seven of the states where the election is being held almost entirely by mail, look for some of the fastest returns in the country to come from Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah and Vermont.

Louisiana and Texas are the only states out of the 17 where an excuse other than fear of Covid-19 infection is required before voting absentee.

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