Member-only story
Beginning in March of 2020, we sought to help American citizens understand how the COVID-19 pandemic would affect their ability to cast votes in the primary and general elections. We were among the first outlets to alert the public that the election results might not be known for several days or weeks. We took allegations of voter fraud and cheating seriously, and looked in depth at the ways that election officials sought to prevent this. We also looked at the history of known fraud cases over the last few decades, and compared what is known about incidents of cheating with the solutions proposed by the Republican party. In so doing we identified a mismatch between their solutions and the known problems, and we provided the public with expert analysis that showed that elections could be made more secure and more accessible at the same time. The two goals were not, and are not, mutually exclusive.
Over the summer, our coverage focused on the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and we raised awareness of the fact that a delay in election results could be avoided by a simple fix. The legislatures needed to give election clerks time before Election Day to open mail-in ballots, sort them, and either count them or prepare them to be counted. As we did this, the leaders in each state legislature were not forthcoming with answers as to why they were not moving quickly to do so. Their inaction set the stage for the attempt by President Trump to claim victory on Election Night before all votes were counted. The delay in counting mail…
