Lawmakers Grill Voting Machine Vendors on Paperless Machines
Reading Time: 4 minutes Congress on Thursday heard contradicting testimony from voting machine vendors and election security experts about the safety of paperless voting machines.
Fair Maps Advocates Spend Big Bucks to End Gerrymandering
Reading Time: 4 minutes Following a decisive victory for Democrats in the 2018 elections, advocates of fair redistricting are doubling down on their efforts to get like-minded candidates elected and end gerrymandering.
Black Votes Matter — Especially in Florida
Reading Time: 11 minutes How to prevent over half a million nonviolent ex-felons, most of whom are black, from voting? Let us count the ways.
Trump, McConnell, Roberts — Who Will Be Russia’s Favorite Pawn?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is doing everything in his power to make sure that US elections remain vulnerable. He is just the latest Republican to play into Russia’s hands — and he likely won’t be the last.
FEC Dealings With Trump Campaign Shows Dysfunction on Both Sides
Reading Time: 3 minutes President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign failed to return excess contributions to donors. New reports suggest that the campaign has no problem spending the money — at Trump’s own properties.
Memo to Candidates: Show Us the Money
Reading Time: 2 minutes So here comes the 2020 campaign season. Actually, it’s here already. How many Dems are running now? I’ve lost count, but I think it’s up in the high teens. And we can add candidates from both parties running for Congress.All I want this election cycle is fewer highfalutin promises and more facts … you remember Read More
Democracy Reform Advocates Hail HR 1 as First Step in a Winnable Battle
Reading Time: 3 minutes Restoring government of the people — or not — will define the nation’s future, activists say.
WhoWhatWhy’s Top Election Integrity Stories of 2018
Reading Time: 5 minutes This year WhoWhatWhy spent considerable resources shining a light on election vulnerabilities, and how bad actors both foreign and domestic are trying to undermine our most precious resource, democracy. We think some of these outstanding pieces deserve a second look.
It’s Time to Start Punishing Election Officials for Security and Privacy Violations
Reading Time: 4 minutes Opinion: Millions of Americans are voting on hackable machines with no paper trail. Cyber systems are wide open to attack. It’s time for election officials to take their security and privacy responsibilities seriously.
Whistleblower Gets Long Sentence for Leaking Evidence of Russian Election Interference
Reading Time: 3 minutes Whistleblower and former NSA contractor Reality Winner exposed attempts by Russian military officers to hack US elections. This week she was sentenced to over five years in federal prison.
A Reminder That Elections Matter and Every Vote Does Count
Reading Time: 5 minutes With the midterms now less than 100 days away, here is a reminder of why elections are important and why every vote matters.
Dems Are Once Again Poised to Fumble Away a Must Win Election
Reading Time: 4 minutes If the Democrats want to win control of the House in the fall, they need to have a plan, a positive vision, and a focus on issues that directly affect Americans. Not surprisingly, they are failing on all fronts.
A Case Study in How the GOP Hijacks Democracy
Reading Time: 5 minutes Voters should be able to choose their lawmakers. Yet, in North Carolina, a crucial swing state, lawmakers have repeatedly made calculated efforts to choose their voters.
Why Recounts Matter
Reading Time: 2 minutes Forget Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein. This recount isn’t about them, it’s about you. It’s about shedding a little light on a process that is needlessly and absurdly opaque. A Gallup poll released in November shows that 69% of Americans lack confidence in the “honesty of the election.” That’s up 30% from 2009. Read More
In a 50/50 Country, the Democrats Are Shut Out From All Levels of Government
Reading Time: 11 minutes Republicans control 25 out of 50 Attorneys General, 31 out of 50 Secretaries of State, and 69 out of 99 State Legislative bodies. This shaped the election — and it might be shaping the recount.
Gerrymandering: A Source of What Is Wrong with US Politics
Reading Time: < 1 minute Manipulating the boundaries of an electoral constituency is a canker at the heart of the political system.
Political Dirty Tricks for the Digital Age
Reading Time: 8 minutes New ultra-precise mapping software is taking the practice of gerrymandering to levels never before imagined and, in so doing, is making elections irrelevant.
Witty Quotations on Elections, Politicians, Voters — and You
Reading Time: 4 minutes Funny and frightfully true observations on elections, politicians, and voters, by such characters as George Carlin, Jon Stewart, Woody Allen, P.J. O’Rourke, and even Joseph Stalin. (A slightly shorter version was published by WhoWhatWhy last August.)
Legal Election Theft — How Gerrymandering Stifles Democracy
Reading Time: < 1 minute Gerrymandering is undermining democracy in America. Find out how both parties use this tactic to cling to power and take away the right of voters to choose their leaders.
The Birth of Modern Presidential Campaigning
Reading Time: < 1 minute JFK was the first politician to recognize that the media image of a candidate, not his platform, determines who wins and who loses. Now candidates everywhere rely on that playbook.