Voting and Voters

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Inquiry Finds No Politics Behind Ballot Paper Shortages in 2022 Houston Election

      by

      Republicans accused Democratic officials of trying to sway the results. But prosecutors found that the problem stemmed from an employee whose attention was diverted.During the 2022 general election, scores of polling places in Harris County, the most populous in Texas, reported shortages of ballot paper, resulting in voters’ being turned away.The failure to properly distribute ballot paper on Election Day prompted several lawsuits and challenges as Republicans accused Democratic county officials of shortchanging Republican polling places in an attempt to sway the results.But the actual reason for the problems with ballot paper was much more banal, a Texas Rangers investigation found: An employee with a key role in determining paper distribution neglected his duties because he had been working a second full-time job without approval.“The result is he didn’t do his job for Harris County,” the district attorney, Kim Ogg, said at a news conference on Tuesday.Ms. Ogg, a Democrat who lost her primary in the spring and recently crossed party lines to endorse Republican Senator Ted Cruz for re-election in November, said the investigation had found no political motivation behind the supply problems.Instead, investigators said, the employee had simply done his job without much care, distributing roughly the same amount of ballot paper to the vast majority of polling locations, instead of taking into account voting patterns and sending more paper to higher-turnout locations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      W.N.B.A.’s Nneka Ogwumike Takes Over More Than a Vote From LeBron James

      by

      Nneka Ogwumike, a nine-time All-Star, will lead More Than a Vote, which will focus on women’s reproductive rights this election cycle.More Than a Vote, a nonprofit organization founded by LeBron James in 2020, is rebooting this fall with a new focus on women’s issues and reproductive rights.Nneka Ogwumike, a nine-time W.N.B.A. All-Star with the Seattle Storm and president of the players union, will take over James’s role in leading the organization, and has recruited a group of female athletes to her cause.“It’s more than just abortion,” Ogwumike said in an interview. “It’s all about educating people about all the different roles that exist in society that support and protect the freedoms of women when it comes to family planning, I.V.F., birth control, everything. There’s just a lot that’s at stake.”More Than a Vote was founded when, motivated by nationwide protest movements after the killing by police of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, athletes like James said they were starting to think more deeply about how they could use their platforms.The organization was focused on protecting voting access for Black voters, including collaborating with NAACP Legal Defense Fund on a multimillion-dollar initiative to recruit poll workers. It partnered with teams to open sports arenas and stadiums as polling locations and created television ads and digital content designed to encourage voting. The organization raised about $4.2 million in 2020, twice the amount it expected. However, it has been essentially dormant for the past few years.Ogwumike, who volunteered as a poll worker in 2020, began speaking with James this year. At that point, James and his associates had been discussing the prominence of discussions about reproductive rights, as well as the increased attention around women’s sports. (Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to make abortion rights a focus of her campaign against former President Donald J. Trump.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Tells Christians ‘You Won’t Have to Vote Anymore’ If He’s Elected

      by

      In the closing minutes of his speech to a gathering of religious conservatives on Friday night, former President Donald J. Trump told Christians that if they voted him into office in November, they would never need to vote again.“Christians, get out and vote. Just this time,” he said at The Believers’ Summit, an event hosted by the conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action, in West Palm Beach, Fla. “You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”Mr. Trump, who never made a particular display of religious observance before entering politics, continued: “I love you, Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, you got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”Mr. Trump’s comments came at the end of a nearly hourlong speech in which he appealed to religious conservatives by promising to defend them from perceived threats from the left. Earlier in his remarks, he lamented that conservative Christians do not vote in large numbers, a complaint he had made repeatedly on the trail.“They don’t vote like they should,” Mr. Trump said of Christians. “They’re not big voters.”Mr. Trump’s suggestion that Christians would not have to vote again if he is elected quickly spread across social media. Some argued that it was a threat that the 2024 election could be the nation’s last if he were to win and claimed it was further evidence of an authoritarian, anti-democratic bent he has displayed throughout his political candidacy.The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment to clarify Mr. Trump’s intent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Los venezolanos en el exterior enfrentan dificultades para poder votar

      by

      El gobierno venezolano ha impuesto una serie de normas estrictas que hacen que inscribirse para votar sea complicado para millones de venezolanos que viven en el exterior.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]La fila afuera del consulado de Venezuela en Madrid llegaba hasta el final de la cuadra. Mujeres embarazadas, familias con niños pequeños, personas mayores y con discapacidades llegaron incluso a las 4:00 a. m. —cinco horas antes de que la oficina abriera sus puertas— para intentar inscribirse para votar en las muy esperadas elecciones presidenciales de Venezuela.Adriana Rodríguez, de 47 años, que salió de Venezuela en 2018, llegó a las 8:00 a. m., dos días seguidos. En ambas oportunidades, esperó durante horas antes de llegar al principio de la fila, solo para terminar siendo rechazada, contó, siempre con la misma explicación: “Ya no se podía inscribir más gente”.Con el presidente autoritario de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, detrás en las encuestas por gran margen en vísperas de las elecciones del 28 de julio, el gobierno ha impuesto una serie de normas estrictas que hacen que inscribirse para votar sea casi imposible para millones de venezolanos que viven en el exterior, incluido Estados Unidos, España y otros países de América Latina.Muchos abandonaron su país natal debido a las duras condiciones económicas y políticas.Como resultado, expertos electorales afirman que las tácticas del gobierno equivalen a un fraude electoral generalizado, dado que hasta un 25 por ciento de los votantes elegibles de Venezuela viven fuera del país, y una gran cantidad de ellos muy probablemente no votaría por Maduro.Adriana Rodríguez, de 47 años, quien se fue de Venezuela en 2018, fue al consulado en Madrid dos días seguidos pero no pudo inscribirse para votar.Emilio Parra Doiztua para The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Wisconsin Supreme Court Says Ballot Drop Boxes Can Again Be Used

      by

      The decision by the court’s liberal majority, delivered four months before the November election, reverses a ruling by conservative jurists two years ago.The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new liberal majority said on Friday that ballot drop boxes can once again be used widely in the state, reversing a ruling issued two years ago when the court had a conservative majority.On a practical level, the ruling changes how Wisconsin, a closely divided state that could tip the Electoral College, will carry out an election that is just four months away. On a symbolic level, the judicial U-turn is likely to fuel Republican claims that the court has become a nakedly partisan force — claims that Democrats made themselves not long ago, when most of the justices were conservatives.Drop boxes were used in Wisconsin for years as one of several ways, along with early in-person and mail-in voting, for voters to submit ballots before Election Day. The widespread use of drop boxes in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, drew the ire of Republicans and prompted a lawsuit that the court’s previous majority decided by mostly banning their use.“Our decision today does not force or require that any municipal clerks use drop boxes,” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, a liberal, wrote for the four-justice majority on Friday. “It merely acknowledges,” she added, what Wisconsin law “has always meant: that clerks may lawfully utilize secure drop boxes in an exercise of their statutorily conferred discretion.”Her conservative colleague, Justice Rebecca Bradley, disagreed, writing in a dissent that “the majority again forsakes the rule of law in an attempt to advance its political agenda.”The ruling on Friday is part of a broader push by Democrats and progressive groups to have the Wisconsin Supreme Court weigh in on some of the state’s thorniest policy issues. After liberals won a 4-to-3 majority last year, the court ordered the redrawing of state legislative district boundaries, which had long been gerrymandered to benefit Republicans. Earlier this week, the justices announced that they would hear a case that asks them to consider whether the State Constitution includes a right to abortion. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Why More French Youth Are Voting for the Far Right

      by

      Most young people in France usually don’t vote or they back the left. That is still true, but support has surged for the far right, whose openly racist past can feel to them like ancient history.In the 1980s, a French punk rock band coined a rallying cry against the country’s far right that retained its punch over decades. The chant, still shouted at protests by the left, is “La jeunesse emmerde le Front National,” which cannot be translated well without curse words, but essentially tells the far right to get lost.That crude battle cry is emblematic of what had been conventional wisdom not only in France, but also elsewhere — that young people often tilt left in their politics. Now, that notion has been challenged as increasing numbers of young people have joined swaths of the French electorate to support the National Rally, a party once deemed too extreme to govern.The results from Sunday’s parliamentary vote, the first of a two-part election, showed young people across the political spectrum coming out to cast ballots in much greater numbers than in previous years. A majority of them voted for the left. But one of the biggest jumps was in the estimated numbers of 18-to-24-year-olds who cast ballots for the National Rally, in an election that many say could reshape France.A quarter of the age group voted for the party, according to a recent poll by the Ifop polling institute, up from 12 percent just two years ago.There is no one reason for such a significant shift. The National Rally has tried to sanitize its image, kicking out overtly antisemitic people, for instance, who shared the deep-seated prejudice of the movement’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. And the party’s anti-immigrant platform resonates for some who see what they consider uncontrolled migration as a problem.Young people at an anti-far-right gathering in Paris after the results of the first round of the parliamentary elections. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 75 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Jamaal Bowman’s Election Loss: 5 Takeaways

      by

      Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York became the first member of the House’s progressive “squad” to lose a seat in Congress on Tuesday, dealing a stinging defeat to the Democratic left after a brutal intraparty fight.The contest on the outskirts of New York City centered on Democrats’ disagreements over Israel’s war in Gaza. Progressive groups raced to try to save Mr. Bowman, a leading voice against the war. Pro-Israel political groups pumped record-shattering sums into defeating him.But by the end, it devolved into a broader spat over race and class that tested the Democratic coalition. Mr. Bowman’s opponent, the Westchester County executive, George Latimer, also benefited from old-fashioned local alliances and a series of embarrassing missteps by the incumbent.Here are five takeaways from the results.AIPAC notched its first big win.George Latimer capitalized on decades-old political alliances and an alliance with pro-Israel groups that spent more than $15 million on the race.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesAfter the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, political groups aligned with Israel issued a message to its critics like Mr. Bowman: Moderate your views or prepare for stiff political opposition.Tuesday’s result showed that was no idle threat.The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Democratic Majority for Israel and other affiliated organizations ultimately spent more than $16 million to defeat Mr. Bowman, more than any outside group has ever put into a House race.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More