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Tag: Voter registration

  • State board investigating allegations of misconduct by voter registration-drive workers

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    The North Carolina State Board of Elections is  investigating allegations of misconduct by voter registration-drive workers. 

    The board said Friday that it received complaints alleging that workers have been impersonating state or county elections officials in Brunswick, Buncombe, Chowan, Haywood, Nash, Scotland, and Wake counties.

    The board said it received complaints of people falsely telling voters that they must re-register to vote to cast a ballot in future elections. Under the law, however, voters who are already registered are not required to re-register unless they have moved to a new county. Voters who move to a new address in the same county or wish to change their name or party affiliation should submit a new voter registration application to update their voter record, elections officials said. 

    Elections officials also received complaints of people going door-to-door, falsely identifying themselves as county or state election workers. Government election workers do not go door-to-door for any reason, the board said. 

    The board is also investigating allegations of voter registration applications turned into county boards of elections with missing or inaccurate voter information, such as a wrong birthdate or a voter identification number different that doesn’t match what’s on file with state elections officials. It is a felony to falsify a voter registration form, officials said. 

    “When workers involved in voter drives falsify or alter information on registration forms, it can cause problems for innocent voters at the polls,” Sam Hayes, the director of the state elections board, said in a statement. “This is unacceptable and hurts voter confidence.”

    The board regularly investigates allegations of fraud or misconduct. In October 2022, the state board investigated complaints from voters who said they were confused by mailers that included inaccurate information about whether they voted in the 2018 or 2020 elections.

    Tips for Voters

    The state board on Friday provided tips and reminders for voters as the March 3 primary election nears: 

    • All voters can check their registration status on the state board’s website to double check if they are registered or see if they need to re-register. 
    • Voters registering to vote at a registration drive don’t have to return the form to the worker at the drive. Voters can deliver the form in person or by mail to their county board of elections.
    • County and state elections officials do not go door-to-door. The board asked voters to report instances of home visits by people identifying themselves as election officials.
    • Voters can always ask voter registration workers for their information to verify their identities to make sure they are actually working for election officials.

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  • Commentary: There’s one state in America with no voter registration. How does that work?

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    When he’s not busy slathering the White House in gold or recklessly sundering foreign alliances, President Trump loves to talk about voter fraud.

    Although the incidence is rare — like, spotting-a-pangolin-in-the-wild rare — Trump persistently emits a gaseous cloud of false claims. About rigged voting machines, dead people casting ballots, mail-in votes being manipulated and other fevered figments of his overripe imagination.

    Voting is the most elemental of democratic exercises, a virtuous act residing right up there alongside motherhood and apple pie. But Trump has treated it as a cudgel, something dark and sinister, fueling a partisan divide that has increasingly undermined faith in the accuracy and integrity of our elections.

    One result is a batch of new laws making it harder to vote.

    Since the 2020 presidential election — the most secure in American history, per the Trump administration’s own watchdogs — at least 30 states have enacted more than 100 restrictive laws, according to New York University’s Brennan Center and the Democracy Policy Lab at UC Berkeley, which keep a running tally.

    Texas passed legislation allowing fewer polling places. Mississippi made it harder for people with disabilities to vote by mail. North Carolina shortened the window to return mail ballots.

    In California, state Sen. Carl DeMaio and allies are working to qualify a November ballot measure that would require a government-issued ID to vote, a solution in desperate search of a problem.

    “We have the lowest level of public trust and confidence in our elections that we have ever seen,” the San Diego Republican said in launching the effort, sounding the way someone would by lamenting the damage a fire has done while ignoring the arsonist spreading paint thinner all around.

    Amid all the manufactured hysteria, there is a place that is unique in America, with no voter registration requirement whatsoever.

    If you’re a U.S. citizen, 18 years or older and have lived in North Dakota for 30 days prior to election day, you’re eligible to vote. It’s been that way for more than 70 years, ever since voter registration was abolished in the state in 1951.

    How’s it working?

    Pretty darn well, according to those who’ve observed the system up close.

    “It works excellent,” said Sandy McMerty, North Dakota’s deputy secretary of state.

    “In general, I think most people are happy with this,” political scientist Mark Jendrysik agreed, “because it lowers the record-keeping burdens and saves money.”

    Jendrysik, who teaches at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, said voter registration was abandoned at a time when the state — now redder than the side of a barn — had vigorous two-party competition and, with it, a bipartisan spirit of prairie populism.

    “There was an idea we should make it easier to vote,” Jendrysik said. “We should open up things.”

    What a concept.

    Walk-up voting hasn’t made North Dakota a standout when it comes to casting ballots. In the last three elections, voter turnout has run close to the national average, which puts it in the middle of the pack among states.

    But there also hasn’t been a high incidence of fraud. In 2022, a study by the state auditor’s office found it “exceptionally” unlikely an election in North Dakota could be fraudulently influenced. (Again, like the country as a whole.)

    In fact, Jendrysik said he can’t recall a single case of election fraud being prosecuted in the 26 years he’s lived in North Dakota and followed its politics.

    It’s not as though just anyone can show up and cast a ballot.

    Voting in North Dakota requires a valid form of identification, such as a state-issued driver’s license, a tribal ID or a long-term care certificate. It must be presented each and every election.

    By contrast, a California voter is not required to show identification at a polling place before casting their ballot — though they may be asked to do so if they are voting for the first time after registering to vote by mail and their application failed to include certain information. That includes a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

    Could North Dakota’s non-registration system be replicated elsewhere?

    Jendrysik is dubious, especially in today’s political environment.

    North Dakota is a sparsely populated state with hundreds of small communities where, seemingly, everyone knows everyone else. There are about 600,000 eligible voters, which is a lot more manageable number than, say, California’s 30 million adult-age residents. (California has more than a dozen counties with north of half a million registered voters.)

    “It’s unique to this state,” Jendrysik said, “and I think if they hadn’t done it decades ago, it would have never happened.”

    (Fun fact: North Dakota also has no parking meters on its public streets, owing to a state law passed in 1948, according to Jendrysik, who has published two academic papers on the subject.)

    McMerty, of the secretary of state’s office, believes others could emulate North Dakota’s example.

    It would require, she suggested, rigorous data-sharing and close coordination among various state agencies. “We’re updating our voter rolls daily — who’s obtained a driver’s license, births, deaths. That kind of thing,” McMerty said.

    Again, that’s a much easier task in a state with the population the size of North Dakota’s. (About 800,000 at last count.)

    And there’s no particular impetus for others to end their systems of voter registration — unless it could be proved to significantly boost turnout.

    We should be doing all we can to get people to vote and invest in our beleaguered political system. Rather than wasting time chasing shadows and phantoms or indulging the delusions of a sore-loser president.

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    Mark Z. Barabak

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  • Dr. Oz wrongly links Medicaid to automatic voting rights

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    With the Trump administration auditing Minnesota’s Medicaid program for fraud, Dr. Mehmet Oz said Medicaid confers voting rights on its enrollees.

    “By federal law, if you sign someone up for Medicaid, you also give them the right to vote,” Oz said in a Jan. 6 interview on Fox News’ “Ingraham Angle.” “It’s true for (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) as well. As you give out social services, you also get them registered to vote. So you’re building up a very partisan group of individuals. This is political patronage at the expense of Medicaid.”

    Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services  is wrong about Medicaid registration being linked to the right to vote. A 1993 law requires most states to offer voter registration at public assistance offices, but the right to vote stems from other laws. And his comment that voter registration tied to Medicaid amounts to “political patronage” is not backed by evidence.

    Oz made the comment after talking about Medicaid fraud in Minnesota.

    Investigators have identified fraud committed by dozens of Minnesotans who they say have misused federal dollars, including Medicaid, for housing, services for people with autism spectrum disorder and money for children’s nutrition. So far, the charges add up to hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, but officials have said the amount could be higher.

    The majority of the defendants are Somalis. President Donald Trump cited the fraud schemes to support his immigration enforcement agenda; most Minnesota Somalis are U.S. citizens. 

    We contacted Oz’s office to ask for his evidence, including that voter registration at Medicaid offices creates a partisan group of people and is political patronage, and did not get a response.

    Federal law requires public assistance agencies to provide voter registration

    Oz was likely referring to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to provide voter registration at multiple government offices, including those that register people for public assistance or provide services to people with disabilities. Voting advocates backed the law in hopes of boosting voting among low-income people. The same law applies to motor vehicle agencies and military recruitment offices. State compliance has varied. 

    What counts as a public assistance office? The list is long, but it includes federal programs that provide food, infant formula and health insurance such as Medicaid. For example, California has about two dozen agencies, including the DMV, that offer voter registration services. 

    Six states including Minnesota are exempt from the National Voter Registration Act because at the time it passed they either had no voter-registration requirements or allowed Election Day voter registration. In Minnesota, voter registration materials may be available at offices, but no one is automatically registered to vote when applying for Medicaid, a Minnesota Secretary of State spokesperson told PolitiFact.

    In practice, few people register to vote while applying for Medicaid.

    About 1% of voter registrations happened at public assistance offices before the 2024 election, according to page 165 of a 300-page June 2025 U.S. Election Assistance Commission report. Most people register to vote elsewhere — for example, at the DMV.

    Despite Oz’s statement, receiving Medicaid doesn’t confer the right to vote — those rights are included in state laws and the U.S. Constitution.

    When people apply for Medicaid, officials collect citizenship data, which is why advocates sought to use that program to expand voter registration. Some immigrants legally in the U.S. may be eligible for Medicaid, but the majority have to wait five years before accessing it. Only U.S. citizens, however, may vote in federal elections. 

    “All Medicaid is required to do under NVRA is to assist someone who wishes to register to vote,” said Dan Meuse, a fellow at the Institute for Responsive Government, an organization that aims to make government more efficient and accessible.

    The Institute for Responsive Government, along with multiple voting rights organizations, urged the Biden administration in 2024 to work with states to implement automatic voter registration systems to make it easier for people applying for Medicaid to register to vote. The administration took no action, Meuse said. 

    Massachusetts, one of the few states with automatic voter registration for Medicaid applicants, allows people to opt out of registering to vote. The state collects citizenship information from applicants and screens them before registration.

    Oz’s statement about political patronage lacks evidence

    Political patronage is when a politician or group offers people something of value in exchange for their vote. The NVRA says no person who provides voter registration services can seek to influence applicants’ political preference.

    June 2025 survey data from KFF, a nonpartisan health policy think tank, showed no dramatic differences in percentages of people from each political party who received Medicaid. Thirty-one percent of Democrats, 29% of independents and 22% of Republicans said they had been on Medicaid.

    Jamila Michener, a Cornell University government professor and Medicaid expert, wrote that Medicaid beneficiaries “have not wielded political power” to insulate the program from political threat. 

    “Enabling people on Medicaid to vote is about strengthening democracy, not about gaining partisan advantage,” Michener told PolitiFact.

    The Pew Research Center found that low-income people are less likely to vote. They may have more obstacles to voting than people with higher incomes, such as less flexible work schedules and lack of reliable transportation.

    Our ruling

    Oz said, “By federal law, if you sign someone up for Medicaid, you also give them the right to vote .…This is political patronage at the expense of Medicaid.”

    The National Voter Registration Act requires states to provide voter registration services at many agencies, including those that provide Medicaid. That law doesn’t grant Medicaid enrollees the right to vote, nor does it mean people signing up for Medicaid are automatically registered to vote. Other laws, most notably the U.S. Constitution, give U.S. citizens the right to vote.

    Oz said the system promotes political patronage. But survey data shows no dramatic differences in percentages of people from each political party enrolled in Medicaid. 

    We rate this statement False.

    RELATED: Trump officials tout Minnesota fraud charges. Most started before he took office.

     

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  • How could midterm elections change under Trump?

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    President Donald Trump wants to change the way Americans vote and he wants to do it before the 2026 midterms.

    U.S. presidents do not have the authority to overhaul state election laws. The Constitution leaves congressional election management to states and rulemaking to Congress. 

    That hasn’t stopped Trump from taking a top-down approach to altering election practices a year out from the Nov. 3, 2026, elections — contests that will determine whether Trump has congressional support for his agenda, including his immigration enforcement tactics and tax and spending cuts. 

    Here are some of the ways Trump is pressuring states and Congress to change how those elections will go:

    • Trump resumed his attacks on voting by mail, threatening in August to use an executive order to write a legally shaky ban of the practice used by tens of millions of Americans.

    • Trump’s Justice Department asked most states to turn over voter data rolls in its search for ineligible voters, setting up a legal fight and potentially jeopardizing the rights of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. 

    • The Trump administration scaled back efforts to improve voting site security and mail ballot protection. 

    • Trump successfully encouraged Republican governors to redistrict to give his party more House seats. In response, Californians will vote Nov. 4 on whether they want to redistrict to balance out Republican efforts. 

    Trump relied on falsehoods when pushing for voting changes in a speech to governors, repeatedly made the Pants on Fire statement that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and threatened to jail people he said rigged the election. 

    We asked the White House why Trump wants to overhaul elections. He won under 2016 and 2024 laws, and his party won Congress in 2024. The White House referred us to the Justice Department.

    “Clean voter rolls and basic election safeguards are requisites for free, fair, and transparent elections,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, an assistant attorney general, told PolitiFact. “The DOJ Civil Rights Division has a statutory mandate to enforce our federal voting rights laws, and ensuring the public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections is a top priority of this administration.”

    Trump’s actions have alarmed election officials who vow to protect the rights of voters during the midterms.

    “I am confident we will have safe, free and secure elections in 2026, but it is going to be up to state and local election officials because the federal government right now is not being supportive and indeed is targeting election officials,” said Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state and a Democratic gubernatorial candidate. 

    Collecting state voter registration data, searching for noncitizen voters

    Students register to vote for school board elections during a town hall at Bethany Baptist Church, Feb. 1, 2025, in Newark, New Jersey. (AP)

    In its search to identify ineligible voters, the Justice Department has requested voter registration files from most states.

    Voter registration rolls have sensitive personal identifying information. Many states have laws that would prohibit them from disclosing information such as birth dates and driver’s license or Social Security numbers. Election experts have raised privacy concerns about voters’ identifying information being widely shared, pointing to similar concerns involving the Department of Government Efficiency’s use of Social Security data.

    Some states provided only publicly available data to the federal government.

    Maine’s Bellows told Trump’s Justice Department to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”

    Maine was among the states the Justice Department sued in September, accusing them of not turning over certain voter roll information.

    In its lawsuit against Maine, the department demanded Bellows hand over all information on the state’s voter rolls, including Social Security or driver’s license numbers. Maine opposes releasing that information because centralization of voter data increases the possibility of breach, Bellows told PolitiFact. 

    “Voting in a democracy depends on free and fair participation without fear of retribution or punishment from the government,” Bellows said. “If Congress thought it was a good idea to have a national voter registration list they could authorize that, but they have not done so.”

    The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school found that nearly all the states that replied to the requests did not share their full databases. The states omitted Social Security and driver’s license numbers or provided no lists. Only Indiana and Wyoming provided their full statewide voter registration lists.

    Across the country, voter roll maintenance is handled by state and local officials who routinely remove people who have relocated, died or are otherwise ineligible. Federal law, meanwhile, already bans noncitizens from voting in federal elections. But Trump has spread falsehoods about noncitizen voting for a decade.

    Following reports by Reuters and the New York Times, a Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to PolitiFact that it is sharing information with the Justice Department with the goal of identifying noncitizen voters. 

    The Trump administration has taken other steps in an effort to find noncitizen voters, such as overhauling a database that election officials use to verify voters’ citizenship status. Voting rights advocates have cautioned that the data might be outdated if an immigrant later became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

    RELATED TRUMP FACT-CHECK: Trump’s claim that millions of immigrants are signing up to vote illegally is Pants on Fire!

    Threat to end mail-in voting

    A county worker loads mail-in ballots into a scanner that records the votes at a tabulating area at the Clark County Election Department in Las Vegas on Oct. 29, 2020. (AP)

    On Aug. 18, Trump said he will move to “end mail-in ballots” and sign an “executive order to help bring honesty to the 2026 elections.” Any attempt to abolish or overhaul states’ voting by mail programs would face legal challenges, which may explain why the order has not materialized. 

    The following day, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt signaled Trump could pursue a legislative route, saying there “will be many discussions with our friends on Capitol Hill, and also our friends in state legislatures.” 

    Trump has continued his threats against mail-in voting, vowing in September “to fix this system.” 

    “No mail-in or ‘Early’ Voting” he echoed in an Oct. 26 Truth Social post that criticized California for sending millions of mail ballots for the redistricting vote. 

    The state is one of eight that allows all mail elections. In the November 2024 election, about 30% of voters, or about 48 million people, cast ballots by mail, including people who are elderly, can’t drive, live far from a voting site or are overseas. Mail-in voting has been around at least since the Civil War.

    In March, Trump issued an executive order that would cut off Election Assistance Commission funding to states that count mail ballots received after Election Day. The order, which has an exception for military and overseas voters, has led to multiple lawsuits. 

    About 16 states allow officials to count ballots received after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day (or in the case of Ohio, the day before Election Day), according to the National Vote at Home Institute.

    The White House position is that federal laws establish Election Day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November so that should be the mail ballot receipt deadline.

    Nineteen states together sued the administration, arguing that the Constitution gives the states the primary responsibility to regulate elections. (The states of Washington and Oregon filed their own lawsuit.) A U.S. District Court judge preliminarily blocked that provision in Trump’s order.

    Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said voters should pay attention to Trump’s attempts to stretch his legal authority and tangle with states. 

    “I think the next six months or so will be crucial in making sure we remain on course and elections are fair, accurate, honest and secure,” Simon said.

    RELATED TRUMP FACT-CHECK: Trump said the US is the ‘only country’ that uses mail-in voting. That’s wrong.

    Redistricting pressure in GOP-led states

    Trump pushed Republican-led states to undertake unusual mid-decade redistricting to maximize congressional GOP seats. 

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a new map in August that Republicans hope will lead to five additional seats. Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe also signed a new map into law, though voters are collecting signatures in hopes of holding a referendum to overturn that map in 2026. Ohio’s redistricting commission settled on a new map, as did the North Carolina legislature.

    Other Republican-led states, including Florida, Indiana and Louisiana, could follow.

    Some Democratic leaders have floated redistricting their states to wipe out Republican gains. California voters will decide Nov. 4 if they want to redistrict in an effort led by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Democrats have also pushed for redistricting in Virginia, Maryland and Illinois. 

    If Trump’s efforts to create more Republican House seats are successful, it would make it even harder for the Democrats to flip the House.

    Scaled back election security assistance

    A spot that had been reserved for a representative of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency sits vacant at a meeting of the National Association of State Election Directors in Washington, Feb. 2, 2025. (AP)

    Trump created the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during his first term to protect critical infrastructure, including elections, from threats. CISA became a target of Trump after the agency affirmed the security of the 2020 election.

    CISA has provided training, threat information and physical and cybersecurity assessments of election facilities with election officials, improving security for voters.

    It’s unclear what role CISA will play in the 2026 elections. Any reduced federal response to election security could harm voters’ faith in elections and embolden domestic or foreign bad actors.

    A former government official told Axios that about one-third of CISA staff left the agency by early June, a few months after CISA froze its election security work pending a review and did not publicly release the results. The administration also cut funding for an information-sharing collaboration among local, state and federal officials. Trump’s budget proposal for 2026 calls for further cuts. 

    Because of CISA security training, Rhode Island election workers knew how to respond when an envelope containing white powder with the return address: “U.S. Traitor Elimination Army” arrived at the state Board of Elections in September 2024. CISA had already distributed physical security  and cybersecurity checklists with tips about how to respond to such a threat. 

    The substance turned out not to be dangerous, but the quick security alerts and information from CISA helps election officials “know what is happening in real time without having to wait for news reports or word of mouth,” Nick Lima, elections director for the city of Cranston, Rhode Island, told PolitiFact. 

    So far, John C. Ackerman, the county clerk/recorder in Tazewell County, Illinois, said he hasn’t seen fewer services from CISA. He told PolitiFact the agency still sends bulletins about threats and a monthly vulnerability scan of the county’s website.

    When we asked CISA if it still offers security assessments and additional assistance to election officials, we received a statement that did not address our questions. 

    The Trump administration has hired people in election roles who denied Trump’s 2020 loss or spread falsehoods about voting. 

    Heather Honey, a Pennsylvania activist who spread election falsehoods, now works in an election integrity role at Homeland Security. Marci McCarthy, now the CISA spokesperson, chaired the DeKalb County Republican Party, which filed an unsuccessful lawsuit arguing that Georgia voting machines were vulnerable. As FBI director, Kash Patel — who has repeated Trump’s falsehood about a rigged 2020 election — could oversee investigations of election crimes and election-related civil rights violations.

    Michael Moore, the chief information security officer for Arizona’s secretary of state, told PolitiFact in an email that while there are still employees at CISA who want to help, “It seems they have neither the resources nor direction to effectively help.”

    “I strongly believe in the mission of CISA and want a return of our prior relationship and support level,” Moore said. “We’re the United States of America for a reason. In this current landscape it feels more like every state for themselves.”

    RELATED FACT-CHECK: Trump falsely calls 2020 election ‘rigged’ in memo targeting former cybersecurity leader

    RELATED: MAGA-Meter: Trump’s promise to require proof of citizenship at the polls

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  • Voter lookup page on State Board of Elections website down, days ahead of Election Day

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    The North Carolina State Board of Elections’ voter registration search tool appears to be down, days before elections in some cities and towns.

    When searching for voter records, an error appears with a message saying “The web function you were interacting with has encountered an error,” with a message saying to send an email to the SBOE’s help page for assistance.

    The North Carolina Democratic Party said on X that it heard the tool was down in 94 of the state’s 100 counties, adding that it is “impacting poll workers’ ability to quickly identify and register votes.”

    Election day is on Tuesday, Nov. 4, for general elections and runoffs for various municipalities, including Durham and Fayetteville.

    It is unclear how many counties are affected by the outage. While it is unclear what caused the outage, Clayton blamed the state’s Republican Party.

    “When Dave Boliek first took over the Board of Elections he removed career election professionals to fill his leadership with inexperienced, partisan appointees,” said Anderson Clayton, head of the North Carolina Democratic Party, in a statement provided to WRAL News.

    “Now, on the last day of early voting before our municipal elections, the NCSBE Voter Search tool went down in 94 out of 100 counties.”

    Boliek, a Republican, was given authority over the elections board after Republican state lawmakers changed state law following the 2024 elections to shift control of elections from the governor to the auditor. The change came days after Democrat Josh Stein won the race for governor and Boliek won the race for state auditor.

    “It’s clear that Republicans were wrong when they said that making Boliek the only State Auditor in the country that controls elections would not impact voting or the quality of our systems, ” Clayton said.

    WRAL News has asked the NCGOP to confirm if they are aware of the issue, and also reached out to the State Board of Elections to confirm the outage’s severity.

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  • A look at what happened in the US government this week

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    Two federal judges ruled that the Trump administration must use emergency funds to keep SNAP afloat during the shutdown. President Donald Trump visited Asia, striking a trade deal with China. Speculation about a Trump third term heated up again, despite its near impossibility. And judges made consequential rulings regarding federal workers and voter registration.Here are the top stories involving the U.S. government this past week.SNAP crisis as shutdown drags onTwo federal judges ruled nearly simultaneously on Friday that President Donald Trump’s administration must continue to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s biggest food aid program, using contingency funds during the government shutdown.One out of 8 households in the United States receives SNAP benefits. Here’s a closer look at the data.Pop-up food drives and “grocery buddies” are emerging around the country as SNAP hangs in the balance.Instacart, DoorDash, and Gopuff are among the companies offering discounts to SNAP recipients right now.Video below: Wisconsin bakery offers free bread to support locals facing food benefit lossTrump reaches deal with China while visiting AsiaTrump revealed plans to reduce tariffs on China and announced new trade agreements following a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.Here are some takeaways from the agreement.China also said it will work with the U.S. to resolve issues related to TikTok, potentially finalizing a new ownership deal for the app. While in Asia, Trump met with Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, and announced roughly $500 billion in Japanese investments in the U.S.During his visit to Japan, Trump bragged about the state of the U.S. economy. However, experts say the reality for millions of Americans is not as rosy.Trump announced on social media Thursday, after meeting with the South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, that the U.S. will begin sharing nuclear submarine technology with the Asian country.Video below: President Trump delivers remarks at Yokosuka Naval Base aboard the USS George WashingtonIn other newsTrump is urging Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster to reopen the government, but GOP leadership is resisting the move.What is a filibuster and why does Trump want to get rid of it during the shutdown?Could Trump legally run for a third term? Experts say it’s nearly impossible. Here’s why.A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday indefinitely barred the Trump administration from firing federal employees during the government shutdown.A judge in D.C. blocked Trump’s proof-of-citizenship mandate for federal voter registration, calling it unconstitutional.Four Republicans joined Democrats in backing a Senate resolution to undo Trump’s tariffs around the globe.The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate Wednesday for a second time this year as it seeks to shore up economic growth and hiring even as inflation stays elevated.Trump announced plans to begin testing nuclear weapons, raising fears of a new arms race as Russia and China respond with warnings.A Senate hearing for Trump’s surgeon general pick, Casey Means, has been postponed because she went into labor.The federal workforce grew 11% in the past decade. Here are the jobs that had the most and least growth.U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said that U.S. military strikes against boats on boats allegedly carrying illegal drugs from South America are “unacceptable” and must stop.Video below: What is the nuclear option? President Trump demands GOP end filibuster, Republicans say no

    Two federal judges ruled that the Trump administration must use emergency funds to keep SNAP afloat during the shutdown. President Donald Trump visited Asia, striking a trade deal with China. Speculation about a Trump third term heated up again, despite its near impossibility. And judges made consequential rulings regarding federal workers and voter registration.

    Here are the top stories involving the U.S. government this past week.

    SNAP crisis as shutdown drags on

    Video below: Wisconsin bakery offers free bread to support locals facing food benefit loss

    Trump reaches deal with China while visiting Asia

    • Trump revealed plans to reduce tariffs on China and announced new trade agreements following a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
    • Here are some takeaways from the agreement.
    • China also said it will work with the U.S. to resolve issues related to TikTok, potentially finalizing a new ownership deal for the app.
    • While in Asia, Trump met with Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, and announced roughly $500 billion in Japanese investments in the U.S.
    • During his visit to Japan, Trump bragged about the state of the U.S. economy. However, experts say the reality for millions of Americans is not as rosy.
    • Trump announced on social media Thursday, after meeting with the South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, that the U.S. will begin sharing nuclear submarine technology with the Asian country.

    Video below: President Trump delivers remarks at Yokosuka Naval Base aboard the USS George Washington

    In other news

    Video below: What is the nuclear option? President Trump demands GOP end filibuster, Republicans say no

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  • Philly renters will get voter registration information when signing a new lease

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    Upon signing a new lease in Philadelphia, renters soon will receive information explaining how they can register to vote or update their existing voter registrations.

    A new bill unanimously approved by City Council on Thursday updates the city’s handbook on good housing to include a link to the How to Register page on the City Commissioner’s website. Landlords are required to provide new tenants with a copy of this handbook and a certificate stating the property is suitable to live in. The update to the handbook is intended to ensure residents vote at the polling places connected to their new addresses.

    MORE: Philly’s only rape crisis center receives financial relief to stay afloat after layoffs

    Tenants must sign a form saying that they’ve received a copy of the handbook. The How to Register page provides information on how to register, check one’s registration status and register to vote by mail. Residents must have lived in their election districts for at least 30 days prior to Election Day before they can vote using their new addresses. 

    Approximately 47% of housing in Philadelphia is renter-occupied and the city saw a 2.5% increase in renters from 2010 to 2020, the Economy League reported. But Councilmember Nina Ahmad, who introduced the legislation, said renters often move multiple times, neglect to update their addresses and “fall off the voter rolls.”

    “The bill meets people where they are and makes updating registration easy when people move in the city,” Ahmad said during Thursday’s meeting. 

    The legislation takes effect Nov. 16. The city’s handbook will be updated with the new information before that deadline. 

    According to the Philadelphia Commissioner’s Office, 1.062 million of Philadelphia’s 1.6 million residents are registered to vote. However, turnout remains an issue. Only 65% of registered voters took part in the November 2024 election, down 1.3% from the 2020 election, the Inquirer reported. 

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  • 99 stolen special election ballots found in Sacramento County homeless encampment, officials say

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    Dozens of stolen, unvoted ballots for the special election on Proposition 50 were found in a Sacramento County homeless encampment on Wednesday, according to the sheriff’s office. Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a spokesperson for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies were in the area of Elder Creek and Mayhew roads to clean up a camp in the area when they found 99 ballots and other election-related materials among a large amount of other mail.”Obviously saw the urgency, grabbed all those items first, got the ballots and stuff returned to the voter registration,” Gandhi said.He said deputies secured the ballots and election mail and returned them to the Sacramento County Department of Voter Registration and Elections. He confirmed to KCRA 3 that the ballots were voided.”They won’t count for anything,” Gandhi said.The county’s Department of Voter Registration and Elections stated that new ballots will be sent to affected voters on Thursday.The sheriff’s office said the camp was vacant when deputies arrived, and no arrests have been made in connection with the stolen ballots. Investigators are now working to identify those responsible for the theft.”It’s a big deal and it’s an undertaking. So, this is something that will work in conjunction with the post office as well,” Gandhi said. “It’s going to take a lot of backtracking.”Any California voter who has not received their ballot is urged to contact their county elections office to have their ballot reissued.Gandhi said the goal is to protect the integrity of every vote.”Whether it’s mail-in or some other method, make sure you’re taking the steps to track it and making sure your vote counts,” he said.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. —

    Dozens of stolen, unvoted ballots for the special election on Proposition 50 were found in a Sacramento County homeless encampment on Wednesday, according to the sheriff’s office.

    Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a spokesperson for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, said deputies were in the area of Elder Creek and Mayhew roads to clean up a camp in the area when they found 99 ballots and other election-related materials among a large amount of other mail.

    “Obviously saw the urgency, grabbed all those items first, got the ballots and stuff returned to the voter registration,” Gandhi said.

    He said deputies secured the ballots and election mail and returned them to the Sacramento County Department of Voter Registration and Elections.

    He confirmed to KCRA 3 that the ballots were voided.

    “They won’t count for anything,” Gandhi said.

    The county’s Department of Voter Registration and Elections stated that new ballots will be sent to affected voters on Thursday.

    The sheriff’s office said the camp was vacant when deputies arrived, and no arrests have been made in connection with the stolen ballots. Investigators are now working to identify those responsible for the theft.

    “It’s a big deal and it’s an undertaking. So, this is something that will work in conjunction with the post office as well,” Gandhi said. “It’s going to take a lot of backtracking.”

    Any California voter who has not received their ballot is urged to contact their county elections office to have their ballot reissued.

    Gandhi said the goal is to protect the integrity of every vote.

    “Whether it’s mail-in or some other method, make sure you’re taking the steps to track it and making sure your vote counts,” he said.

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • DOJ sues 6 states for private voter data, voting rolls

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    The Department of Justice is suing six additional states to compel them to share their statewide voter registration lists with the federal government, an unusual request that has drawn pushback from election officials in both parties in the past.

    DOJ’s Civil Rights Division filed federal lawsuits Thursday against election officials in California, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Hampshire claiming the states violated federal law by refusing to share voter rolls with the Trump administration.

    Access to voting rolls varies state by state, but the rolls are generally released to the public and government agencies with voters’ private data — like driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers — redacted.

    The DOJ’s lawsuits demand the rolls with that data included. Similar requests have been rebuffed by election officials across the country, both recently and in past years, out of privacy concerns and opposition to federal encroachment in state elections. Some officials have also tied the effort to President Donald Trump’s long history of spreading election misinformation, including falsely accusing states of allowing noncitizen immigrants to vote en masse.

    Last week, the DOJ filed similar lawsuits against election officials in Maine and Oregon, prompting sharp rebukes from each state’s top elections official.

    “This is not normal,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said in a statement last week. “Trump’s DOJ is using its immense federal power to try to intimidate us into turning over protected voter data and changing our voting processes to fit President Trump’s whims.”

    Michigan, Minnesota and California have Democrats as their secretaries of state, while New Hampshire and Pennsylvania have Republican chief election officials. New York has a state board of elections. Spokespeople for all six election authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuits.

    The lawsuits demand states to share highly sensitive information on voters, including Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers, as part of the administration’s effort to create “clean voter rolls.”

    “Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”

    The Trump administration appears to be prioritizing access to the private information of voters. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sanctioned the release of some voter roll data to DOJ after multiple requests but did not include any personally identifying information on voters.

    In March, Trump signed an executive order directing DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security to take measures preventing noncitizens from voting in elections — a baseless claim that Trump has touted for years, including ahead of the 2024 election and in his attempts to delegitimize the results of the 2020 election.

    DOJ has sent requests for voter rolls to over 30 states, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal think tank and advocacy organization.

    Trump explored a similar measure during his first term. He established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017 to examine cases of voter fraud.

    The commission’s request for private voter information was met with opposition from state officials in both parties before it was dissolved the following year, with a then-Republican secretary of state telling the commission to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico” in response to broad requests.

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  • The Five Minute Read

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    Lowell Rotary serves

    Members of Lowell Rotary, along with loved ones, friends and colleagues from the Merrimack Valley Rotary, prepared and served well over 100 hot dinners at St. Paul’s Soup Kitchen at Eliot Church on Sept. 16. The dinner was sponsored in part by Rotary District 7910.

    Both the church’s Day Center and the soup kitchen at 273 Summer St. offer food outreach all year long, Monday through Friday, from the Eliot Fellowship Hall. The local rotary club was founded in 1920 and has been serving the Lowell area for 105 years. At the international level the Rotary, whose mission is “Service Above Self,” has 1.2 million members in virtually every country in the world and is known for its work to eradicate polio.

    For more information, email POTRotary@gmail.com.

    Poetry reading

    Enjoy an evening of poetry with Paul Marion, Antonina Palisano and Dan Murphy, Friday, Sept. 19, at 6:30 p.m., at Lala books, 189 Market St.

    Among his many works, Marion is the author of “Union River: Poems and Sketches and Lockdown Letters & Other Poems” and editor of the early writings of Jack Kerouac. For more information about this and the bookstore’s other events, call 978-221-5966 or visit lalabookstore.com.

    Billerica Community Farmers Market

    BILLERICA — The Billerica Community Farmers Market is open Mondays from 3 to 7 p.m. (or dusk), at 793 Boston Road, through Oct. 6. BCFM features farms, prepared foods, artisans and crafters, and entertainment. It was named the No. 1 Farmers Market in Massachusetts by America’s Farmers Market Celebration by American Farmland Trust in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

    The market provides members of the community a place to purchase fresh, local produce and goods directly from farmers and producers. It provides farmers and producers with a direct market for their produce and goods. It also supports local agriculture and producers, educates the community about eating healthfully and supports the importance of sustaining agriculture.

    For more information and the weekly lineup, visit billericacommunityfarmersmarket.org.

    Tewksbury to host voter registration session

    TEWKSBURY — A voter registration session has been scheduled for Friday, Sept. 26, at the Town Clerk’s Office inside Town Hall, 1009 Main St. Town Hall will be open that day from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. to accommodate anyone looking to register in person.

    In a statement, Town Clerk Denise Graffeo said this is the final day to be eligible to vote at the Oct. 7 Special Town Meeting for residents who are not registered to vote.

    People who are U.S. citizens, residents of Tewksbury and who will be at least 18 years old on or before Oct. 7 are eligible to register. Those meeting these qualifications who have a Massachusetts Driver’s License can submit their registration online at sec.state.ma.us/ovr. Mail-in voter registration forms may be obtained at the bit.ly/46K4VO0. Those registering by mail should have their form hand-canceled to ensure it is postmarked before the deadline.

    Residents may also register to vote during regular Town Clerk’s Office hours, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

    For more information, call 978-640-4355, email townclerk@tewksbury-ma,gov or visit tewksbury-ma.gov/315/Town-Clerk.

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  • State’s top election official balks at DOJ request for sensitive voter information

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    The Maryland State Board of Elections office in Annapolis. (File photo Danielle E. Gaines/Maryland Matters.)

    Maryland’s top election official said he is concerned about a Justice Department demand for state elections data including sensitive information for more than 4 million state voters.

    State Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis said his agency has been working with Justice Department investigators under the state’s Public Information Act after they demanded voter information last month. But he said the office balked at a recent demand for an unredacted database that contains protected personal information that could not otherwise be released.

    “Handing over a list of 4.3 million people to find something seems to be an overreach,” DeMarinis said Thursday. “It casts aspersions on all Maryland voters, and tries to sow doubt, or some sort of fear that the lists are inaccurate, and that’s just not the case.”

    The discussion during Thursday’s meeting of the Maryland State Board of Elections highlighted some deep partisan divides.

    Diane Butler, one of two Republican members of the Maryland State Board of Elections. (File photo Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters.)

    Diane Butler, one of two Republicans on the five-member board, said she “absolutely shocked” by DeMarinis’ response to the Justice Department.

    “The response was incomplete, it was unprofessional, and it was actually quite rude,” Butler said. “And I think the Justice Department agreed by the tone of their second letter, and I think that’s where they jumped up and wanted even more.

    “I think fighting the Justice Department instead of working with them was not the way that we need to be behaving,” she said.

    Maryland was one of a number of states that received letters this summer from the Department of Justice seeking voter registration information.

    The July 14 letter requested voter registration data from November 2022 to November 2024. The state was asked to provide “the number of voters identified as ineligible to vote” during that period because they were a “non-citizen … adjudicated incompetent” or had a felony conviction.

    The letter referenced a 2023 state audit that had raised questions about the accuracy of the state’s voter rolls.

    DeMarinis responded to the request by providing investigators with the process and application  that could be used to obtain some of the information.

    Under state law, some voter information is available for electoral purposes only. Democratic and Republican central committees routinely request such information.

    DeMarinis said he offered to work with the department if they had concerns about specific voters.

    What Jstice Department officials wanted went beyond that which DeMarinis said was available under Maryland law.

    Maryland Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis said a Justice Department request for voter records including sensitive information “seems to be an overreach.” (File photo Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters.)

    Maryland Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis said a Justice Department request for voter records including sensitive information “seems to be an overreach.” (File photo Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters.)

    “They filled out the application. I then wanted to inquire as to … how it was related to electoral purpose, electoral process in the state of Maryland,” DeMarinis said. “They’ve responded back by saying, ‘We demand the voter registration list and all fields in it,’ including” personally identifiable information.

    DeMarinis said the agency demanded the information by Aug. 25.

    Yaakov “Jake” Weissmann, one of three Democrats on the board, said it was important to work with law enforcement officials, but to do so within the confines of state and federal election laws. The request made by the federal government this summer “is far outside the scope” of what the agency has requested in the past, he said.

    “This is a new era for the DOJ, it seems,” Weissmann said, adding that the state elections board should not turnover “Marylanders’ personal information, the last four digits of Social Security, their date of birth, their home address, without any sort of rational explanation.”

    Jim Shalleck, a Republican and vice chair of the board, praised DeMarinis for the state’s board’s efforts to maintain accurate voter registration lists.

    “I see you doing everything you can to maintain our lists, which is a very difficult task,” he said to DeMarinis.

    Butler disagreed.

    “I tend to disagree with Jim. We’ve had problems with the list maintenance,” she said. “We failed some of the audit concerning some of these issues, and when I read our response to that, our response was a bunch of excuses as to why we didn’t get it done. We know we’ve had this problem, and then, like I said, we’ve had complaints about it, so I’d like to see solutions instead of excuses.”

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  • Judge orders Virginia to restore 1,600 voter registrations canceled in effort to purge noncitizens – WTOP News

    Judge orders Virginia to restore 1,600 voter registrations canceled in effort to purge noncitizens – WTOP News

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    U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles granted an injunction request brought against Virginia election officials by the Justice Department, which claimed the voter registrations were wrongly canceled during a 90-day quiet period ahead of the November election that restricts states from making large-scale changes to their voter rolls.

    ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A federal judge on Friday ordered Virginia to restore more than 1,600 voter registrations that she said were illegally purged in the last two months in an effort to stop noncitizens from voting.

    U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles granted an injunction request brought against Virginia election officials by the Justice Department, which claimed the voter registrations were wrongly canceled during a 90-day quiet period ahead of the November election that restricts states from making large-scale changes to their voter rolls.

    State officials said they will appeal.

    The Justice Departmen t and private groups, including the League of Women Voters, said many of the 1,600 voters whose registrations were canceled were in fact citizens whose registrations were canceled because of bureaucratic errors or simple mistakes like a mischecked box on a form.

    Justice Department lawyer Sejal Jhaveri said during an all-day injunction hearing Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, that’s precisely why federal law prevents states from implementing systematic changes to the voter rolls in the 90 days before an election, “to prevent the harm of having eligible voters removed in a period where it’s hard to remedy.”

    Giles said Friday that the state is not completely prohibited from removing noncitizens from the voting rolls during the 90-day quiet period, but that it must do so on an individualized basis rather than the automated, systematic program employed by the state.

    State officials argued unsuccessfully that the canceled registrations followed careful procedures that targeted people who explicitly identified themselves as noncitizens to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

    Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the state, said during arguments Thursday that the federal law was never intended to provide protections to noncitizens, who by definition can’t vote in federal elections.

    “Congress couldn’t possibly have intended to prevent the removal … of persons who were never eligible to vote in the first place,” Cooper argued.

    The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit, though, said that many people are wrongly identified as noncitizens by the DMV simply by checking the wrong box on a form. They were unable to identify exactly how many of the 1,600 purged voters are in fact citizens — Virginia only identified this week the names and addresses of the affected individuals in response to a court order — but provided anecdotal evidence of individuals whose registrations were wrongly canceled.

    Cooper acknowledged that some of the 1,600 voters identified by the state as noncitizens may well be citizens, but he said restoring all of them to the rolls means that in all likelihood “there’s going to hundreds of noncitizens back on those rolls. If a noncitizen votes, it cancels out a legal vote. And that is a harm,” he said.

    Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, issued an executive order in August requiring daily checks of DMV data against voter rolls to identify noncitizens.

    State officials said any voter identified as a noncitizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form attesting to their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.

    Prior to Youngkin’s executive order, the state did monthly checks of the voter rolls against DMV data, in accordance with a state law passed in 2006.

    Youngkin said the Justice Department was wrongly targeting him for upholding a law that was followed by his predecessors, including Democrats, even if they didn’t take the extra step of ordering daily checks as he did in his executive order.

    “Let’s be clear about what just happened: only eleven days before a Presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate over 1,500 individuals–who self-identified themselves as noncitizens–back onto the voter rolls.,” Youngkin said in a statement after Friday’s hearing.

    Giles, for her part, questioned the timing of Youngkin’s executive order, which was issued on Aug. 7, the very beginning of the 90-day quiet period required under federal law.

    “It’s not happenstance that this was announced exactly on the 90th day” of the quiet period, she said Friday from the bench.

    Her injunction requires voter registrations be restored for all of those canceled as a result of Youngkin’s executive order, and that letters be sent out within five days informing those voters of their restored status. The letters will also include a note of caution informing those individuals that if they are indeed noncitizens, that they are barred from casting ballots under federal law.

    The plaintiffs had asked the judge to grant those voters an extension of the deadline to request absentee ballots, but Giles denied that request, saying it would result in confusion.

    “We may not be able to achieve everything we would want,” she said.

    Virginia’s Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, issued a statement after Friday’s hearing criticizing the ruling.

    “It should never be illegal to remove an illegal voter,” he said. “Yet, today a Court – urged by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice – ordered Virginia to put the names of non-citizens back on the voter rolls, mere days before a presidential election.”

    U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who had alterted Justice Department officials to the removals. praised the ruling.

    Governor Youngkin’s purges have served only one purpose – to disenfranchise thousands of lawfully voting citizens of the Commonwealth. That stops today,” he said.

    Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.

    A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

    Copyright
    © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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  • More than 1,600 voters have registration revoked under Virginia program targeting noncitizens – WTOP News

    More than 1,600 voters have registration revoked under Virginia program targeting noncitizens – WTOP News

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    More than 1,600 Virginians have had their voter registrations canceled since August under a state program that the Justice Department and advocacy groups contend is illegal.

    Sign up for WTOP’s Election Desk weekly newsletter to stay up-to-date through Election Day 2024 with the latest developments in this historic presidential election cycle.

    ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — More than 1,600 Virginians have had their voter registrations canceled since August under a state program that the Justice Department and advocacy groups contend is illegal.

    The scope of the removals was revealed for the first time this week after a federal magistrate ordered the state to disclose the figure as part of a federal lawsuit.

    The Justice Department alleges in a lawsuit that Virginia is violating federal law by systematically removing alleged noncitizens from the voter rolls during a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of the November election.

    The quiet period is designed to ensure that mistakes don’t accidentally disenfranchise legitimate voters ahead of an election without an opportunity to rectify the error.

    It was been previously known how many voters were purged from the rolls under the program enacted by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin as part of an executive order issued in August.

    On Monday, though, a federal magistrate ordered the state to disclose the names and addresses of those removed from the voter rolls to the plaintiffs’ groups suing the state, which include not only the Justice Department, but also the League of Women Voters.

    A spokesperson for Protect Democracy, one of the legal groups that helped file the lawsuit on behalf of the League of Women Voters, said Wednesday that data provided by the state this week under the magistrate’s order shows that more than 1,600 voters have been removed after the 90-day quiet period was to have taken effect.

    The spokesperson, Aaron Baird, said that lawyers are continuing to review the information but have already found many naturalized citizens who were wrongly purged from the rolls.

    The state contends that the removals are triggered when voters voluntarily disclose their noncitizen status to the Department of Motor Vehicles and that anyone identified for removal is notified and given two weeks to respond if they believe their removal from the voter rolls would be in error.

    A hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Alexandria on a Justice Department request for an injunction that could block the program and restore the registrations of those purged from the rolls.

    In court papers, lawyers for the state contend that an injunction would be an unnecessary intrusion into Virginia election procedures.

    In media interviews, Youngkin has questioned the Justice Department’s motives for filing the lawsuit.

    “How can I as a governor allow noncitizens to be on the voter roll?” Youngkin asked rhetorically during an appearance of Fox News Sunday.

    Nearly 6 million Virginians are registered to vote.

    A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

    Copyright
    © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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  • Sacramento County brings voter registration efforts to unhoused residents

    Sacramento County brings voter registration efforts to unhoused residents

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    As election day nears, efforts to get people to vote across the state are in full gear.In Sacramento, advocates for vulnerable communities such as the unsheltered population ensure they’re not left behind this election season.On Tuesday, Sacramento County officials partnered with the nonprofit organization Loaves & Fishes to host a registration drive, where a dozen unsheltered people took the time to ensure they’re ready to vote in the 2024 General Election.The respite center serves around 1,000 people daily through its 60 programs.”These are folks who don’t necessarily have a platform to be heard anywhere so we try to facilitate that for them here, especially through the vote – everyone’s vote matters,” said Naomi Cabral, the development director at Sacramento Loaves & Fishes. In California, residence is not a requirement to be eligible to vote.”Just because you may be experiencing homelessness, doesn’t mean you are not eligible to vote,” said Sacramento County’s Ken Casparis.While options like mail-in ballots are tricky, Sacramento County sends ballots to people living in shelters if they receive their mail at those shelters. “Some unhoused individuals keep PO boxes and use those to receive their ballots,” said Casparis. Voters cannot use a P.O. Box or business address to register to vote but can use a P.O. Box or business address to receive mail.Unhoused registered voters who do not have an address to receive mail can visit vote centers to receive a ballot or register and vote at any county voting center by submitting a general location such as a shelter, a park, or an intersection where they’re sleeping.Sacramento’s latest Point-in-Time count found that 6,615 people experience homelessness on any given night.Currently, there are 603 active registered unhoused voters in Sacramento County.One of those voters is Carla McClein. She signed up at Loaves & Fishes on Tuesday and is ready to make her voice heard.”I believe I can make a change if I vote and say what I disagree with. It just gives me a right,” said McClein.The 59-year-old’s top concern is the economy, as she spends another day on the street.”I would like in my senior years – because my health is not very good – I would like to at least be in a comfortable apartment where I don’t have rent increases and I’m not forced out because I can’t afford rent,” McClein told KCRA. Sacramento County officials have held similar events at Stanford Settlement Neighborhood Center and Mercy Housing. The next registration drive at Sacramento Loaves & Fishes will take place on Oct. 17 from 8 a.m. to noon. For more information about the November election, including key issues and other races on the ballot, check out the KCRA 3 Voter Guide.Find more political news from our national team here.

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    As election day nears, efforts to get people to vote across the state are in full gear.

    In Sacramento, advocates for vulnerable communities such as the unsheltered population ensure they’re not left behind this election season.

    On Tuesday, Sacramento County officials partnered with the nonprofit organization Loaves & Fishes to host a registration drive, where a dozen unsheltered people took the time to ensure they’re ready to vote in the 2024 General Election.

    The respite center serves around 1,000 people daily through its 60 programs.

    “These are folks who don’t necessarily have a platform to be heard anywhere so we try to facilitate that for them here, especially through the vote – everyone’s vote matters,” said Naomi Cabral, the development director at Sacramento Loaves & Fishes.

    In California, residence is not a requirement to be eligible to vote.

    “Just because you may be experiencing homelessness, doesn’t mean you are not eligible to vote,” said Sacramento County’s Ken Casparis.

    While options like mail-in ballots are tricky, Sacramento County sends ballots to people living in shelters if they receive their mail at those shelters.

    “Some unhoused individuals keep PO boxes and use those to receive their ballots,” said Casparis. Voters cannot use a P.O. Box or business address to register to vote but can use a P.O. Box or business address to receive mail.

    Unhoused registered voters who do not have an address to receive mail can visit vote centers to receive a ballot or register and vote at any county voting center by submitting a general location such as a shelter, a park, or an intersection where they’re sleeping.

    Sacramento’s latest Point-in-Time count found that 6,615 people experience homelessness on any given night.

    Currently, there are 603 active registered unhoused voters in Sacramento County.

    One of those voters is Carla McClein. She signed up at Loaves & Fishes on Tuesday and is ready to make her voice heard.

    “I believe I can make a change if I vote and say what I disagree with. It just gives me a right,” said McClein.

    The 59-year-old’s top concern is the economy, as she spends another day on the street.

    “I would like in my senior years – because my health is not very good – I would like to at least be in a comfortable apartment where I don’t have rent increases and I’m not forced out because I can’t afford rent,” McClein told KCRA.

    Sacramento County officials have held similar events at Stanford Settlement Neighborhood Center and Mercy Housing.

    The next registration drive at Sacramento Loaves & Fishes will take place on Oct. 17 from 8 a.m. to noon.

    For more information about the November election, including key issues and other races on the ballot, check out the KCRA 3 Voter Guide.

    Find more political news from our national team here.

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  • Fairfax Co. students lobby Congress to pass bill aimed at increasing youth voter registration – WTOP News

    Fairfax Co. students lobby Congress to pass bill aimed at increasing youth voter registration – WTOP News

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    Hoping to boost voter registration among their peers, a group of Marshall High School students launched a registration drive at the Northern Virginia school in September 2023.

    Visit WTOP’s Election 2024 page for our comprehensive coverage. 

    Hoping to boost voter registration among their peers, a group of Marshall High School students launched a registration drive at the Northern Virginia school in September 2023.

    It was a unique setup in a school classroom, with a few nonpartisan organizations providing funding. The group brought doughnuts, and had what it described as a great turnout. At least 150 people were registered to vote, senior Vedansh Garg said.

    That drive, now run over a year ago, sparked months of subsequent advocacy. The same group of about 10 students has spent months lobbying Congress to pass the High School Voter Empowerment Act.

    The legislation would require states to designate public high schools as voter registration agencies and tell schools to have voter registration drives for their students. It would also task the secretary of education with creating grants to reimburse schools for the costs associated with those drives.

    “With young people, a lot of times, we care about a lot of issues, and the problem is we don’t see a lot of voter turnout among the youth, and that’s not because of voter apathy,” Garg said. “That’s because there’s a lot of red tape or a lot of steps to take in order to get to the polls and be able to vote.”

    Inspired to help remove those barriers for other potential young voters, the students have spent months leaving the Falls Church campus and heading to Capitol Hill.

    “We would go to school, and then we would go to the bathrooms and change into our business attire for D.C., and then we would head to the Senate office or House of Representatives offices,” said student Nia Gouvis.

    They also used a Fairfax County Public Schools policy that allows students to miss class for a day for civic engagement.

    Marshall High senior Vedansh Garg (center) and his peers are lobbying Congress to pass a bill that would designate public high schools as voter registration agencies and tell schools to have voter registration drives for their students. (Courtesy Fairfax County Public Schools)

    Last November, the group had its first meeting in Vice President Kamala Harris’s office, “where we came together and we brought forward this issue to the federal government, and now this year after that, it seems like we’ve come a really long way,” senior Samad Quraishi said.

    Quraishi reached out to Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson, who helped adjust some of the language in the proposed legislation. Then, the group started scheduling meetings with dozens of lawmakers.

    Sometimes, they’d schedule 30 meetings in a week between the 10 of them. They reached out to 250 congressional offices, 30 of which “decided to hop onto the legislation and sponsor” it, Quraishi said.

    While many staff members agreed with the ideas included in the proposed legislation, the students had some meetings during which, “I was just completely shut down, but it’s a matter of just coming back from that and learning from that experience, or learning what you could do better from that meeting, or how you should pitch it,” Gouvis said.

    “We’ve seen that the younger generations are voting when it matters, or when they think that they need to make a difference, but they’re also taking a step back when they’re like, ‘Well, I don’t think I know what I’m doing, or I don’t think it’ll make a difference,’” senior Apoorva Navale said.

    Rep. Wilson and California Sen. Laphonza Butler introduced the legislation in Congress earlier this year, though it hasn’t been scheduled for a vote in either chamber.

    The Marshall students, meanwhile, are focusing their advocacy on empowering students to register to vote. Virginians are eligible to register when they turn 16.

    “Our main goal is to educate people on how each individual person can make a huge impact, because you can’t do it by any other way,” student Hanna Rohde said. “You can’t force people to vote. You can’t do it by any other means, other than educating them on the specifics of what will happen if they vote.”

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    Scott Gelman

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  • The Election Reform That Could Help Republicans in a Swing State

    The Election Reform That Could Help Republicans in a Swing State

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    When Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania announced in September that the nation’s largest swing state would implement automatic voter registration, Donald Trump threw a conniption. “Pennsylvania is at it again!” the former president posted on Truth Social, his social-media platform. The switch, Trump said, would be “a disaster for the Election of Republicans, including your favorite President, ME!”

    Trump’s panic is consistent with his (baseless) view that any reforms designed to increase voter turnout, such as expanding mail balloting and early voting, are part of a Democratic conspiracy to rig elections in their favor. But he may be wrong to fear automatic voter registration: Although Shapiro is a Democrat, if either party stands to gain from his move, it’s likely to be the GOP. In Pennsylvania, the reform “really has a potential to lean more Republican,” Seo-young Silvia Kim, an elections expert who has studied the system, told me. It’s “not great news for Democrats.”

    First implemented in Oregon in 2016, automatic voter registration is now used in 23 states, including three—Alaska, Georgia, and West Virginia—that are governed by Republicans. Rather than requiring citizens to proactively register to vote, some states that use the system automatically enroll people who meet eligibility requirements and then give them the option to decline or opt out. The shift is subtler in Pennsylvania; the state has simply started prompting people to register to vote when they obtain a new or renewed driver’s license or state ID.

    David A. Graham: Actually good news about voting, for a change

    The seemingly minor change, which voting-rights advocates still place under the umbrella of “automatic” registration, is based on behavioral research showing that people are less likely to opt out of a choice than to opt in. By including voter registration as part of a commonly used process such as obtaining a driver’s license—and by presenting it as the default option rather than a form that citizens have to request—states have found that they can increase both registration and turnout in elections. “Even though the process isn’t that big of a shift, the effects are great,” Greta Bedekovics, the associate director of democracy policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, told me.

    Democrats have led the move toward automatic voter registration, and their 2021 comprehensive voting-rights legislation known as the For the People Act included a requirement that state-elections chiefs implement the policy. (The bill died in the Senate.) But automatic registration does not inherently favor one party or the other, and it has appealed to Republicans in some states because it helps officials clean up voter rolls and safeguard elections. “I don’t know who it will help, and that’s kind of the point,” Sean Morales-Doyle, the director of the voting-rights program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, told me.

    A 2017 study by the Center for American Progress found that the voters who enrolled through Oregon’s automatic-registration system were more likely to be younger, more rural, lower income, and more ethnically diverse than the electorate as a whole—a demographic mix that suggests that Republicans might have benefited as much as Democrats.

    Other research shows a more partisan advantage. While an assistant professor at American University in 2018, Kim, the elections expert, studied the effects of automatic registration in Orange County, California, the site of several hard-fought congressional races that year. She found that among residents who needed to update their registration because they had moved within the county, automatic registration resulted in no meaningful shift for Democrats. But it substantially boosted turnout among Republicans and independents—by 8.1 points and 7.4 points, respectively. “I was actually very surprised,” Kim said, adding that she’d expected that if any party gained, it would be Democrats. She suspects that Democrats may have been unaffected by the change because in 2018, they were already motivated to vote by Trump’s recent election.

    The impact of automatic registration on any one election is likely to be marginal, but even small shifts could be significant in a state such as Pennsylvania, where less than one percentage point separated Trump from Hillary Clinton in 2016 and just more than one point separated Joe Biden from Trump four years later. Several factors suggest that the new system could benefit the GOP in Pennsylvania. Although Democrats have more registered voters in the state, Republicans have been closing the gap during the Trump era as more white working-class and rural voters who stopped voting for Democrats years ago have chosen to join the GOP. Democrats have countered that drift by capturing wealthier suburban voters, a group that helped Shapiro and first-term Democratic Senator John Fetterman win their races during last year’s midterm elections. Because this demographic already goes to the polls pretty reliably, though, automatic registration is more likely to boost turnout among the right-leaning rural working class.

    An early-2020 study also suggested that the GOP stood to gain from higher voter turnout in Pennsylvania. The Knight Foundation surveyed 12,000 “chronic non-voters” nationwide before Democrats had settled on Biden as their nominee. Across the country, nonvoters said that if they cast a ballot, they would support the Democratic candidate over Trump by a slim margin, 33 percent to 30 percent. But in Pennsylvania, nonvoters went strongly in the other direction: By a 36–28 percent margin, they said they’d prefer Trump over the Democrat. The eight-point gap was the second largest (after Arizona) in favor of Trump in any of the 10 swing states that the organization polled.

    Jerusalem Demsas: Americans vote too much

    “Democrats sometimes have the mistaken opinion that anybody that doesn’t show up is going to vote Democrat,” Mike Mikus, a longtime Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania, told me. “It’s been one of the myths in Democratic circles for years. Quite frankly, given the changing of the respective party bases, it makes sense that [automatic registration] may somewhat benefit Republicans.” Other recent polls have suggested that the political realignment of the Trump era has made the GOP more reliant on infrequent voters.

    The place where Democrats could most use stronger turnout—particularly among the party’s base of Black voters—is Philadelphia, which provided about one-sixth of Biden’s statewide vote in 2020. The city had higher turnout than Pennsylvania as a whole in both 2008 and 2012, when Barack Obama led the Democratic ticket, but it has lagged further and further behind in each election since. Last year, turnout in Philadelphia was just 43 percent, compared with 54 percent statewide.

    Yet automatic voter registration might have less impact in Philadelphia than in other parts of the state. Studies have found that the switch drives higher turnout outside urban areas, where Democratic voters are most concentrated. That’s partly because automatic voter registration is operated through the state Department of Motor Vehicles—an agency with which people who rely on public transit are less likely to interact. For that reason, when New York implemented automatic registration in 2020, voting-rights advocates lobbied aggressively for the state to enroll voters through other agencies in addition to the DMV; as of 2018, a majority of the more than 3 million households in New York City did not own a car.

    Pennsylvania has no plans to implement automatic voter registration beyond the state DMV. Democrats have been adamant that in enacting the new system, Shapiro was not trying to benefit his party but merely trying to reach the 1.6 million Keystone State residents who are eligible but not registered to vote. Although Republicans argued that the change should have gone through the state legislature, they have not formally challenged automatic registration in court. Few of them seemed to agree with Trump that the reform would doom the GOP. “Its impact will be somewhere between inconsequential and a nothingburger,” Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in Pennsylvania, told me.

    Democrats say it’s too early to assess the electoral impact of automatic voter registration, but they acknowledged that Republicans might gain more voters as a result. More than 13,500 Pennsylvanians registered to vote through the new system during its first six weeks of implementation, according to numbers provided by the Shapiro administration. Of that total, Republicans added about 100 more voters than Democrats. “Our former president is almost always wrong,” Joanna McClinton, who leads a narrow Democratic majority as the speaker of the Pennsylvania state House, told me. The fact that Trump is so opposed to the reform, she said, “reveals something we’ve always known, which is Republicans want to keep the electorate small, selective, and they don’t want to expand access to voting even if they could be the beneficiaries of it.”

    Whether Trump regains the presidency next year could hinge on the tightest of margins in Pennsylvania. I asked McClinton if she worried that by implementing automatic voter registration, Shapiro had unintentionally bestowed an electoral gift on Republicans ahead of an enormously significant election. McClinton didn’t hesitate. “Not at all,” she replied quickly. “I look forward to seeing the full data, but I definitely am not looking at this from a political perspective but from a big-D democracy perspective.”

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    Russell Berman

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  • The Humiliation of Donald Trump

    The Humiliation of Donald Trump

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    He shuffled quietly into the courtroom and took his seat at the defense table. He looked strangely small sitting there flanked by lawyers—his shoulders slumped, his hands in his lap, his 6-foot-3-inch frame seeming to retreat into itself. When he spoke—“Not guilty”—it came out hoarse, almost a whisper. Pundits and reporters had spent weeks trying to imagine what this moment would look like. How would a former president—especially one who prided himself on showmanship—behave while under arrest? Would he act smug? Defiant? Righteously indignant?

    No one predicted that he would look quite so humiliated.

    Of course, becoming the first ex-president in American history to be charged with a crime is not exactly a coveted résumé line. But Donald Trump’s indictment yesterday marked a low point in another way too: For a man who’s long harbored a distinctive form of class anxiety rooted in his native New York, Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan represented the ultimate comeuppance.

    The island of Manhattan plays an important role in the Donald Trump creation myth. In speeches and interviews over the years, Trump has repeatedly recalled peering across the East River as a young man, yearning to expand the family real-estate business and compete with the city’s biggest developers. For a kid born in Queens—even one who grew up in a rich family—Manhattan seemed like the center of the universe.

    Read: The outer-borough president

    “I started off in a small office with my father in Brooklyn and Queens,” Trump said in the 2015 speech launching his campaign. “And my father said … ‘Donald, don’t go into Manhattan. That’s the big leagues. We don’t know anything about that. Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘I gotta go into Manhattan. I gotta build those big buildings. I gotta do it, Dad. I’ve gotta do it.’”

    In the version of the story Trump likes to tell, he went on to cross the river, conquer the island, and cement his victory by erecting an eponymous skyscraper in the middle of town. His childhood dream came true.

    But Trump was never really accepted by Manhattan’s old-money aristocracy. To the city’s elites, he was just another nouveau riche wannabe with bad manners and a distasteful penchant for self-promotion. They recognized the type—the outer-borough kid who’d made good—and they made sure he knew he wasn’t one of them. With each guest list that omitted his name, with each VIP invitation that didn’t come, Trump’s resentment burned hotter—and his desire for revenge deepened.

    Today, the old hierarchies that defined the New York of Trump’s youth are largely gone, replaced by new ones. (Brooklyn, the middle-class backwater where Trump’s father kept his office, is now home to enough pretentious white people that even the snootiest Manhattanites have to acknowledge the borough.) Trump, meanwhile, isn’t even a New Yorker anymore, having changed his voter registration to Florida in 2019 and retreated to the more hospitable confines of Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House.

    But Trump never forgot the island that rejected him. And this week, he was forced to return to it—not in triumph, but in disgrace. Hundreds of journalists descended on Lower Manhattan to chronicle each indignity: the courthouse door gently shutting on him because nobody bothered to hold it open, the judge sternly instructing him to rein in his social-media rhetoric about the case. At one point, shortly after Trump entered the courtroom, someone in the overflow room, where reporters and others were watching a closed-circuit feed, began to whistle “Hail to the Chief,” drawing stifled laughter.

    John Hendrickson: Inside Manhattan Criminal Court with Donald Trump

    In the past, Trump has succeeded in using his humiliations to his benefit. It’s a big part of why he excels at playing a populist on the campaign trail. When Trump railed against the corrupt ruling class in 2016, he wasn’t just channeling the anger of his supporters; he was expressing something he felt viscerally. Yes, his personal grievances with the “elites”—the ego-wounding snubs—might have been petty, but the anger was real. And for many of his followers, that was enough.

    Now he’s trying to pull off that trick again. In the weeks leading up to his indictment, Trump has sought to cast Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation as an act of political persecution—aimed not just at him, but at the entire MAGA movement. “WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!” he shout-posted on Truth Social last month. “PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!”

    A modest contingent of pro-Trump demonstrators gathered in a park across the street from the courthouse yesterday, separated by police barricade from a larger group of counterprotesters. But the relatively muted MAGA presence, compared with the crowds of onlookers relishing the moment, only underscored how alienated the former president has become from the city with which he was once synonymous. The scene was heavier on performance artists and grifters than outraged true believers. A woman in a QAnon T-shirt strutted and gyrated for reporters as she rambled about Satan and the financial system, periodically punctuating her comments with “Bada bing!” A Trump supporter burned sage to ward off evil spirits, prompting one bystander to ask, “Is someone cooking soup?” The Naked Cowboy made an appearance.

    A handful of Trump’s New York–based supporters tried to convince me that this was still his town. Dion Cini—a MAGA-merch salesman who drew attention for his giant TRUMP OR DEATH flag and his liberal deployment of flagpole-based innuendos—told me he lived in Brooklyn. “Trump country!” he declared.

    David A. Graham: He’s back

    I asked Cini if he really believed that New York could still be considered Trump country. Cini responded by launching into an enthusiastic (and exaggerated) recitation of how much of the city had been built by the Trumps. “Sheepshead Bay was built by Trump. All 50,000 homes,” Cini said, claiming that he lives in a Trump-built house there himself. “How many towers were built by Trump? The Javits Center! I mean, you name it—the Wollman Rink, the carousel in Central Park. And they call him a Nazi. I mean, did Hitler ever build a carousel?”

    After Cini wandered away, another Trump supporter named Scott Schultz approached me. Schultz said he also lives in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood, but he disagreed that it was “Trump country.” He can’t even put a Trump sign outside his house, because he knows it will be immediately defaced, Schultz said. He fantasized about a day when New Yorkers could celebrate Trump simply as a product of their city.

    “Most other [places], when someone becomes president, they have pride in that,” Schultz told me. “There was no pride at all … They want to wipe him clean. They rejected him.”

    Trump didn’t linger in the city after his arraignment. There was no impromptu press conference on the courthouse steps or chest-thumping speech to his supporters outside. Instead, his motorcade whisked him away to LaGuardia Airport for a flight back to Florida. He’d been in New York barely 24 hours. For now, at least, he seems intent on waging his battle with the Manhattan haters from a distance. Writing on Truth Social yesterday, Trump proposed moving his trial to Staten Island.

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    McKay Coppins

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

    ___

    False, unfounded claims distort attack on Paul Pelosi

    CLAIM: The attack was a “Domestic Violence Case in a consensual sexual relationship,” and the suspect was found in his underwear when police arrived at the house.

    THE FACTS: No evidence has been presented to support either assertion, both of which contradict what law enforcement officials have said and what court documents describe. In the days since the alleged assailant, identified as David DePape, 42, broke into the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband with a hammer, internet users amplified these false claims that mock the victim and give credence to insidious conspiracy theories. Baseless and homophobic claims suggesting a personal relationship between Paul Pelosi and DePape have been shared by prominent figures including elected officials, conservative pundits and Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, who later deleted his post. But San Francisco’s district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, told reporters on Sunday that there was “nothing to suggest that these two men knew each other prior to this incident.” She said during a press conference Monday the attack appeared to be politically motivated. Authorities have stated that DePape broke a glass door of the home and entered with a hammer, zip ties and other supplies, intending to kidnap the Democratic lawmaker. Jenkins’ office in a court filing Tuesday detailed the contents of a 911 call Pelosi made early on Oct. 28, during which Pelosi confirmed that he did not know DePape. Overhearing the call, DePape said aloud that his name was David and he was a “friend,” the filing said. Likewise, an FBI agent’s affidavit reports that Pelosi in the 911 call “conveyed that he does not know who the male is” and later told a police officer in the ambulance that he had never seen DePape before. DePape told police officers that he went to the home to take Nancy Pelosi hostage, according to the affidavit, and that he viewed her as a “‘leader of the pack’ of lies told by the Democratic Party.” Separately, the affidavit makes clear that DePape was wearing clothing at the time. “Officers removed a cell phone, cash, clipper cards, and an unidentified card from DEPAPE’s right shorts pocket,” the document reads. A local news outlet reported the baseless claim that DePape was in his underwear, but it later corrected its story. Pelosi, meanwhile, was asleep in his bed on the second floor of the home when DePape entered and woke him up, according to officials. “Mr. Pelosi, who was sleeping, was wearing a loose fitting pajama shirt and boxer shorts,” Jenkins, the district attorney, said Monday. DePape is facing multiple charges including attempted murder.

    — Associated Press writers Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia and Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

    ___

    No, Pennsylvania didn’t send 255K ballots to ‘unverified’ voters

    CLAIM: Pennsylvania has sent “255,000 unverified” ballots to voters for the midterm elections.

    THE FACTS: The state didn’t send out that many ballots to unverified voters. This claim misrepresents a figure in a state database, which does not mean that the voters failed to provide correct identification information, nor that their identities weren’t ultimately verified. Social media posts and headlines promoted the false claim that Pennsylvania officials had issued around a quarter-million ballots to people whose identities weren’t confirmed. “CRISIS IN PENNSYLVANIA – 255,000 UNVERIFIED NEW VOTERS SENT BALLOTS – CANDIDATES BETTER CONTACT THEIR LAWYERS,” read an Oct. 26 headline from the website The Gateway Pundit. The story claims that this “is how Democrats cheat.” The story cites an Oct. 25 letter from Republican state lawmakers to the Pennsylvania secretary of state, which claimed the state had issued “over 240,000 unverified ballots.” A day earlier, an elections investigation group called Verity Vote issued a report making similar claims, citing a state database as evidence. But officials in Pennsylvania say the claim flagrantly misrepresents the way that the state classifies applications for mail-in and absentee ballots. “There are not 240,000+ ‘unverified ballots,’ as certain lawmakers are claiming,” Pennsylvania Department of State spokeswoman Amy Gulli said in a statement provided to the AP. In Pennsylvania, those applying for mail-in or absentee ballots must provide proof of identification — such as state driver’s license information or the last four digits of their Social Security Number. In some cases, a voter’s identifying information is automatically verified, including by cross-referencing it with Pennsylvania Department of Transportation data. However, in other cases, the voter’s identifying information must be vetted further. When that happens, the application enters the statewide system under a designation labeled “NV,” or “not verified.” Notably, the “not verified” designation doesn’t mean the voter didn’t provide accurate identification information, nor does it mean their ID wasn’t later verified. “The code does not reflect the results of any identification check but is, in fact, an additional mechanism to ensure that counties are properly verifying ID provided by voters,” acting Secretary of State Leigh Chapman wrote in an Oct. 28 response letter to the Republican lawmakers. Chapman added that the “NV” status can also be applied to applications of voters who request to permanently receive mail-in ballots so that verification occurs for every election in which the ballot is issued. If a voter’s identification can’t be verified at the time they apply for a ballot, state law does require that the voter still be issued a ballot and be provided an opportunity until the sixth day after the election to provide the proper proof of identification. But counties are not to count the ballot unless the voter provides proof of identification. There are currently about 7,600 ballot applications in Pennsylvania that still require identification verification, according to the Department of State. Election officials use high-tech equipment that sorts out ballots that arrive but are still pending verification, said Al Schmidt, president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a nonpartisan group. “That vote won’t be counted unless the voter does what’s required — which is just to verify their ID,” said Schmidt, a former Philadelphia city commissioner. Verity Vote argues all verification should occur before a ballot is issued. “It seems reckless in the modern era, to send a ballot based on an unverified mail ballot application with the intention of verifying later,” the group said in a statement to the AP. The Gateway Pundit on Monday responded to an inquiry by forwarding responses from Verity Vote.

    — Angelo Fichera and Ali Swenson

    ___

    Pre-filled voter registration forms are not proof of fraud

    CLAIM: The campaign of Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is running for Texas governor, engaged in voter fraud by sending pre-filled voter registration forms to dead people.

    THE FACTS: While O’Rourke’s campaign did send out partially filled-out forms to encourage people to register before the Texas deadline, experts and government officials say that sending such forms is permitted under Texas law. Some social media users, however, have falsely claimed that O’Rourke’s campaign was engaging in voter fraud by trying to illegally register dead people to vote. “Beto O’Rourke’s campaign has also been sending pre-filled registration applications to dead voters,” a woman said in a video posted to Twitter that was shared more than 11,000 times. “This is literally right before the November elections and they’re sending this to dead voters. This is voter fraud.” O’Rourke’s campaign did send out application forms with people’s names, birthdays and addresses filled out to remind them to update their voter registration if they’d moved, or needed to register before the Texas deadline on Oct. 11, according to Chris Evans, the campaign’s director of communications. Evans acknowledged that the database the campaign uses for such mailings might contain errors. But he noted that all voter registration applications are reviewed by the state of Texas to make sure people who fill them out are eligible to vote. “An individual who is not eligible would have their application flagged by the state and be unable to successfully register,” he said. Texas election experts and officials concurred that a campaign sending out registration forms with select portions filled out is legally sound, even if a faulty mailing list leads to applications being sent to voters who have died. “Campaigns and third-party organizations that send people blank voter registration applications are allowed to pre-fill certain portions of the application,” Sam Taylor, a spokesperson for the Texas secretary of state’s office, told the AP. Texas election law allows for such pre-filled applications to already include the voter’s name, birthdate and address, Taylor said. He confirmed that all voter registration applications are subject to validation — including a comparison of information to Texas Department of Public Safety and Social Security Administration records. Individuals reported to those agencies as deceased would fail the validation process. D. Theodore Rave, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin, also told the AP that it’s not illegal to fill out information such as a name, address and birthday. It would be against state law to fill out other information, such as “statements that the voter is a U.S. citizen, a resident of the county, not incapacitated, and not a felon,” he wrote in an email.

    — Associated Press writers Angelo Fichera and Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.

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    Phillies fans’ cheers did not register on seismograph during Game 3

    CLAIM: Cheers by Philadelphia Phillies fans were so loud when Bryce Harper and Alec Bohm hit home runs that they registered on a seismograph at Penn State Brandywine.

    THE FACTS: While fans watching Game 3 of the World Series on Tuesday were loud, their cheering was not loud enough to register on the seismograph at Penn State Brandywine, according to geological experts. Fans at Citizens Bank Park were on their feet and roaring after the Phillies hit five home runs against the Houston Astros on Tuesday. Amid the excitement, rumors spread on social media that the fans’ shouts shook the earth hard enough that a seismometer picked them up. “Harper and Bohm homeruns are literally registering on the Penn State University Brandywine seismograph station. The city is physically shaking,” reads one tweet with more than 16,000 likes. The tweet shows a red and blue seismograph readout with two major spikes, one labeled “Harper HR” and the other “Bohm HR.” Another graph shared on Twitter also claimed to show that there was enough noise from the stadium to be measured on the seismometer, with a spike highlighted at 9 p.m. local time. However, these results don’t match the seismic data that the university recorded Tuesday night. Kyle Homman, who is the seismic network manager at Penn State, told the AP that there wasn’t any indication of an increase in seismic activity around the time of Harper’s and Bohm’s home runs. Homman also explained that the two spikes shown in the first chart are only a few minutes apart, which doesn’t match up with those two home runs. The red and blue graph was taken from a seismograph report from Lick Observatory near San Jose, Calif. The graph shows the readout of a magnitude 5.1 earthquake recorded in the San Francisco Bay Area last Tuesday. Both Homman and Laura Guertin, a professor of earth sciences at Penn State Brandywine, confirmed that the second graph was from Penn State. But they noted the timing of the quick spikes did not match the game. For sports events to register, the machines would need to be less than a mile away, Homman said. Citizens Bank Park is about 20 miles away from the Brandywine campus. “We definitely have a Phillies Red Wave going on, but not a seismic wave,” said Guertin. The Phillies’ home runs on Tuesday night tied with a World Series record and gave Philadelphia a 2-1 Series lead. But the lead shifted after the Astros won games on Wednesday and Thursday. Game 6 will be played on Saturday in Houston.

    — Associated Press writer Karena Phan in Los Angeles contributed this report.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    ___

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

    How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

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    How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

    Whether a state requires voters to request an absentee ballot or participates in universal mail-in voting, all ballots cast by mail or dropped off at a drop box are vetted to ensure their legitimacy.

    Election officials log every mail ballot so voters cannot request more than one. Those ballots also are logged when they are returned, checked against registration records and, in many cases, voter signatures are on file to ensure the voter assigned to the ballot is the one who cast it.

    Still, mail ballots are one of the most frequent targets of misinformation around voting, despite fraud being rare.

    Different states have different ballot verification protocols. All states require a voter’s signature, while some states have additional precautions, like having bipartisan teams compare that signature to a signature on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign.

    In Arkansas, you must return proof of voter registration or a copy of your ID with the ballot. In states including Georgia, Minnesota and Ohio, you have to submit your driver’s license number or state ID card number, which will be compared with voter registration records before your vote is counted.

    In states that require voters to submit applications to receive absentee ballots, the application typically includes several pieces of identifying information to ensure you are who you say you are. In some cases, that includes a copy of your photo ID.

    In almost every state, mailed ballots can be tracked online through a unique bar code on the envelope, allowing voters to watch the movement of their ballot until it is counted. Ballot security features and ballot sorting at election offices help weed out any counterfeits, though election officials say fake ballots have not been a problem in U.S. elections. A Georgia investigation into allegations of counterfeit ballots in the 2020 election found no evidence to back up the claims.

    Secure ballot drop boxes are placed in public locations and emptied only by trained election staff, to prevent anyone else from tampering with the votes inside.

    As with other forms of election fraud, harsh penalties for voter fraud by mailed ballot act as another deterrent. Depending on the circumstance, voter fraud charges can result in a fine, prison time or both.

    Despite widespread claims of mail-in and absentee ballot fraud, the reality is it’s exceedingly rare. The Brennan Center for Justice in 2017 ranked the risk of ballot fraud at 0.00004% to 0.0009%, based on studies of past elections.

    Meanwhile, a May 2022 Associated Press survey of states that allowed the use of drop boxes in the 2020 presidential election found no cases of fraud, vandalism or theft involving drop boxes that could have affected the results.

    ___

    The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at FactCheck@AP.org.

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

    ___

    Trump did not sign an order to deploy 20,000 troops on Jan. 6

    CLAIM: Former President Donald Trump signed an order to deploy 20,000 National Guard troops before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but was stopped by the House sergeant at arms, at the behest of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    THE FACTS: While Trump was involved in discussions in the days prior to Jan. 6 about the National Guard response, he issued no such order before or during the rioting. New footage released last week of House lawmakers on Jan. 6 has sparked a resurgence of false claims and conspiracy theories about the insurrection. The videos, recorded by Pelosi’s daughter, showed the congresswoman negotiating with governors and defense officials in an effort to get Guard troops to the Capitol. Some on social media used the occasion to revive baseless claims that Pelosi had stopped a Trump order for tens of thousands of National Guard troops before the event. “Trump signed an order to deploy 20,000 Guardsmen on J6. It was refused by the House sergeant at arms, who reports to Nancy Pelosi,” said one post that spread on Gettr, Instagram and Twitter. As the AP has previously reported, Trump was not involved in decision-making related to the National Guard on Jan. 6, and Pelosi did not stand in their way. Trump did say during a 30-second call on Jan. 5 with then Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller that “they” were going to need 10,000 troops on Jan. 6, according to a statement Miller provided to a House committee in May 2021. But Miller added that there was “no elaboration,” and he took the comment to mean “a large force would be required to maintain order the following day.” There is no evidence that Trump actually signed any order requesting 10,000 Guard troops, let alone 20,000, for Jan. 6. Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense provided a timeline of the agency’s involvement in preparing for and responding to the attack on the Capitol. The timeline shows no such order, and notes only that on Jan. 3, the president concurred with activating the D.C. National Guard to support law enforcement at the behest of Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser. When the rioting started, Bowser requested more Guard help, on behalf of the Capitol Police. That request was made to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who then went to Miller, who approved it. Neither Pelosi nor the House sergeant at arms could have stopped an ordered deployment of National Guard troops because Congress doesn’t control the National Guard, legal experts say. Guard troops are generally controlled by governors, though they can be federalized, said William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University. The online claims “make no sense at all,” Banks said, adding, “The House sergeant at arms, he or she is not in the chain of command. Nor is Nancy Pelosi.” As the newly released footage showed, she and Mitch McConnell, then Senate majority leader, called for military assistance, including the National Guard. The House sergeant at arms does sit on the Capitol Police Board, which also includes the Senate sergeant at arms and the architect of the Capitol. That board opted not to request the Guard ahead of the insurrection, but did eventually request assistance after the rioting had already begun. There is no evidence that either Pelosi or McConnell directed the security officials not to call the guard beforehand, and Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, said after the insurrection that Pelosi was never informed of such a request.

    — Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

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    Immigrants not auto enrolled to vote under new driver’s license law

    CLAIM: A new Massachusetts law providing driver’s licenses for immigrants in the country illegally will also automatically register them to vote in elections.

    THE FACTS: The law passed by Massachusetts state lawmakers this summer prohibits immigrants without legal permission to reside in the U.S. from being automatically registered to vote. Social media users have been reviving fears that the new Massachusetts law would give those living in the country illegally the right to vote since the state has automatic voter registration. The concerns come as residents weigh a ballot referendum on the law in next month’s election. The law, which takes effect July 1, 2023, would allow Massachusetts residents who cannot provide proof of lawful presence in the U.S. to obtain a driver’s license or permit if they meet all other requirements, such as passing a road test and providing proof of identity. “Giving Driver’s licenses to illegals gives them the right to vote,” the Massachusetts Republican Party said in a Facebook post. Republican gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl repeated the claim during a televised debate against Democratic rival Maura Healey. He noted that Republican Governor Charlie Baker vetoed the legislation in part over election concerns. Massachusetts’ Democratic-led legislature ultimately overrode the veto. But state Sen. Brendan Crighton, a Democrat who was a lead sponsor of the bill, told the AP that the voting concerns have “long been debunked.” He argued that green card holders, student visa holders and other types of noncitizens can already seek Massachusetts driver’s licenses, and there’s a system in place to ensure they’re not automatically registered to vote. The state in 2020 enacted an automatic voter registration law in which every eligible citizen who interacts with state agencies like the RMV is automatically registered to vote, unless they specifically opt out. The state’s current driver’s license form asks if the applicant is a U.S. citizen and a Massachusetts resident under a section for voter registration. If the applicant can’t answer “yes” to all the questions, they are then instructed to check a box that says, “Do not use my information for voter registration.” “The term ‘automatic voter registration’ is a misnomer in the sense that the individual is not registered to vote unless they are a citizen and over 18 years old,” Crighton said. “It is not actually automatic.” Amanda Orlando, Diehl’s campaign manager, didn’t dispute that Massachusetts’ new law specifically prohibits automatic voter registration for those seeking driver’s licenses. But she maintained the law, as constructed, “places the burden” of reviewing voting eligibility on the already overburdened and understaffed RMV. “What is written in the law, and what will happen in reality are different,” Orlando wrote in an email. “As noted by Governor Baker, they are not able to handle the volume they currently have, let alone increase it substantially with giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.” The RMV declined to comment, but Secretary of State William Galvin’s office, which oversees Massachusetts elections, said the two agencies have been in communication ahead of the law taking effect next year. Under the current process, the RMV provides the secretary of state’s office with all the relevant information for voter registration — such as an applicant’s name, date of birth and address — and can provide additional information to further verify voting eligibility, said Debra O’Malley, Galvin’s spokesperson. “The RMV has a record of what evidence of lawful presence has been provided and removes from those batches anyone who hasn’t provided them with a U.S. birth certificate, U.S. passport, or U.S. naturalization papers,” she said by email.

    — Associated Press writer Phillip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.

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    CNBC report on climate research didn’t confirm ‘chemtrails’ theory

    CLAIM: A CNBC story on research into technology to combat climate change admitted that “chemtrails” are real.

    THE FACTS: The story reported on a federal plan to research technology that could place materials in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from Earth, but experts say the idea is being investigated and is not currently in use. A TikTok video also shared on Instagram is distorting the facts around a recent CNBC story to advance a long-running conspiracy theory that the condensation trails, or contrails, left in the air by planes are actually dangerous “chemtrails.” “Chemtrails are real,” text shown in the video reads. The theory posits that aircrafts are spewing toxic chemicals as part of a nefarious and secret plot. The video, viewed more than 9,000 times on TikTok, shows screenshots of an Oct. 13 CNBC story headlined, “White House is pushing ahead research to cool Earth by reflecting back sunlight.” The person in the video then proceeds to show footage of vapor trails in the sky. But the CNBC story wasn’t “admitting” that chemtrails are real, and experts say the aerosol injection technology it discussed is not currently in use. The CNBC report looked at a White House plan to study ways to reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth, in an effort to combat global warming. In passing a federal appropriations bill earlier this year, Congress directed federal agencies to coordinate with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a five-year plan assessing the use of such solar and climate interventions. One possibility is the use of stratospheric aerosol injection, an idea taken from the climate effects of large volcanic eruptions. These eruptions emit sulfur into the atmosphere, where it turns into “highly reflective microscopic droplets,” said Ben Kravitz, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University. Those sulfur droplets “reflect some sunlight back to space, and it cools the planet a little bit,” he said in an email. “Stratospheric aerosol injection is built on that idea — if nature can cool the planet, maybe we can do it on purpose.” The idea is not without risks, Kravitz added, and the point of research is so that decision makers can weigh whether to use such technology. “Currently nobody is doing this,” he said. David Keith, a Harvard University professor who researches this field, likewise told the AP that this is “a discussion about a technology that is possible but is not now used.” Keith said in an email that aerosol injection would not leave contrails like those left by planes. “If someone were doing climate-altering stratospheric aerosol injections – the sky would probably look a little whiter and hazier, much like it looks in a big city,” Kravitz said.

    — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

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    No suspected serial killer in Seattle, despite online rumor

    CLAIM: King County detectives have been notifying locals about a serial killer in Seattle after several women in a southern section of the city and the nearby city of Burien were found dead with their bodies posed in the same way.

    THE FACTS: The King County Sheriff’s Office and Seattle Police Department both said they are not investigating a suspected serial killer. The claims erupted on social media last weekend as Seattle residents warned each other about the alleged criminal. “King County Detectives have been notifying locals about a serial killer in Seattle right now,” read a tweet that was shared to Instagram, where it amassed nearly 40,000 likes. “Multiple women’s bodies have been discovered recently in the Burien and SODO area, apparently posed in the same way,” the post continued, referring to a district of downtown Seattle. “Serial killer warning in Seattle!” read another tweet, which included a screenshot of an email attributed to a local bar manager. The email claimed a killer had been targeting women in their 30s between 12 a.m. and 7 a.m. in the south Seattle area. The Seattle Police Department refuted the claims on Twitter and in an emailed statement, saying it did not have any serial homicide cases. The King County Sheriff’s Office, which is the main law enforcement agency for unincorporated areas of the county and 12 cities including Burien, also denied the claims on Twitter and by email. “The King County Sheriff’s Office is aware of unsubstantiated on-line social media reports that select death investigations, in the vicinity of South Park / SR509, may share similar characteristics,” the statement read. “At this time, the Sheriff’s Office has identified no evidence affirming this for any cases under our jurisdiction.” It’s unclear where the baseless rumors originated, though unsupported claims related to serial killers occasionally spread in cities across the country. The bar manager cited as the author of an email spreading the claims did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

    — Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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