Jen reports on threats to democracy in states across the country. She previously covered elections and local government at the Houston Chronicle and at Houston’s NPR station. She loves voting early on Halloween.
Florida lawmakers passed the final version of the state’s SAVE America Act, an anti-voting law pushed by President Donald Trump nationally, after House and Senate leaders Thursday reconciled differences between their versions of the bill.
A circuit court judge ruled Thursday to uphold the Missouri GOP’s gerrymandered congressional map in a case challenging its legality — but it remains unclear whether the map will actually be used in the 2026 midterm elections.
Florida lawmakers are poised to approve sweeping new restrictions that would require voters to prove their citizenship status, as well as remove student ID as an acceptable form of voter identification.
A Republican-aligned political group is targeting Black voters in Virginia with a manipulative mailer that compares the state’s upcoming redistricting special election to the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow-era voting restrictions.
In an eleventh-hour maneuver, Utah Republicans closed out the state legislative session by passing a measure aimed at making it more difficult for voters to remove their signatures from a petition supporting a ballot initiative to legalize partisan gerrymanders.
A Republican attorney who played a key role in President Donald Trump’s unprecedented mid-decade Texas gerrymander last year is now the GOP nominee to represent one of the very congressional districts he helped redraw.
“Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, but right now they are under threat,” Obama said.
Baffled Texans in two counties struggled to find their polling locations for primary voting Tuesday after a GOP-driven change. The secretary of state’s office failed to provide accurate information. Texas’ Republican attorney general sued to oppose extended voting hours for those confused voters. And the GOP-controlled state Supreme Court quickly ruled in its favor.
Utah Republicans working to repeal the state’s ban on partisan gerrymandering have ostensibly gathered enough signatures to put their measure on the November ballot, but it’s still too soon to know whether that will actually happen.
Kansans are fighting back in court to block a new state law that invalidated transgender residents’ driver’s licenses and birth certificates, depriving them of their required voter ID just a few months before the state’s 2026 primary election.