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Presidential Downballot Losses: An Updated History and a Look Ahead to Trump’s Second Term
Since World War II, presidents have consistently presided over losses for their party in down-ballot offices—in the Senate, the House, governorships and state legislatures.
Planned Parenthood endorses Mills in Maine U.S. Senate race
Mills is in a three-way Democratic primary on the June 9 ballot. She faces Sullivan oyster farmer and veteran Graham Platner and former federal official David Costello of Brunswick.
Gambling companies funnel money into ballot measures to legalize online sports betting – and to individual candidates
As popular online gambling platforms funnel millions into the campaign to legalize online sports betting in Nebraska, some companies are also making significant contributions to individual campaigns.
Postal Service union launches ad campaign promoting mail voting as Trump seeks to limit it
The 30-second message features a variety of voters, among them a busy farmer and a flight attendant, explaining why they cast their ballots by mail.
What happens to the California governor's race after Swalwell's exit?
In a crowded race with no clear leader in the heavily Democratic state, Rep. Eric Swalwell's exit presents an opportunity for his one-time rivals to pick off former supporters just weeks before mail ballots go to voters.
Public hearing set for Tuesday on trans ballot initiative
The measure requires schools to designate all sports teams as male, female or co-ed. It also requires public schools to maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms for girls and boys.
Early voting begins this week. What positions are on the ballot?
Shelby County will effectively have a new set of elected officials after the election; many current representatives are term-limited or seeking other offices.
Polling stations close in pivotal Hungary election that could unseat long-time Prime Minister Orbán
Hungarians cast ballots Sunday in Europe's most consequential election this year, setting a record turnout in a vote that could unseat populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power.
Early results in Hungary's election show opposition party leading and Prime Minister Orbán's trailing
Hungarians cast ballots Sunday in Europe's most consequential election this year, setting a record turnout in a vote that could unseat populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power.
Pastors Scott Bottoms, Victor Marx win spots in Colorado GOP’s gubernatorial primary at party assembly
Two pastors from Colorado Springs qualified Saturday for the Republican gubernatorial primary ballot at the Colorado GOP’s state assembly in Pueblo in a party meeting that dragged late into the night. State Rep. Scott Bottoms, who is known as one of the legislature’s most conservative members, won top line on the June ballot, while missionary […]
Postal Service, Under Pressure, Now Faces Trump’s Mail Ballot Order
President Trump’s executive order, which has been challenged as unconstitutional, would limit the Postal Service to sending only the ballots of voters deemed eligible.
“AI polls” are fake polls
A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.
Maine group asks for changes in ballot language
The ballot question criticism is the latest twist in a controversial effort that began last fall when the group began gathering signatures to call for a public vote on the issue.
Group behind transgender school sports referendum opposes drafted ballot question wording
The group 'Protect Girls Sports in Maine' is taking issue with how ballot question is worded, arguing it is "not dutifully faithful to the proposed legislative text and has departed from the most critical language."
Mariano urges business leaders to make a deal on income tax cut
House Speaker Ron Mariano appealed to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce on Thursday for help in preventing the tax-cut question from reaching the ballot.
Supporters object to trans sports referendum ballot language
The Secretary of State released draft language this week of how the initiative, which seeks to limit participation in school sports and use of spaces like bathrooms to sex assigned at birth, would appear on the November ballot.
No Charges for Wisconsin Mayor Who Removed Ballot Drop Box in 2024
A special prosecutor said a review of the incident found there was not sufficient evidence to charge Doug Diny, the mayor of Wausau.
California Supreme Court orders GOP sheriff to pause election probe and preserve seized ballots
The dispute started earlier this year when Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized 1,000 boxes of election materials to investigate a complaint from a local citizens group about the ballot count from a November 2025 special election on redistricting.
State election dispute on political speech comes to Supreme Court on interim docket
Lawyers for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as well as county election officials, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to let them go ahead with a ballot that does […]
Wausau Mayor Doug Diny won’t face charges over ballot drop box removal case
The review determined that the box didn’t meet the state’s definition of “ballot box” in part because it was sealed and didn’t have any ballots in it.
MAGA’s favorite strongman might be on the brink of defeat
We’re about to find out whether an authoritarian can lose at the ballot box.
Update, safeguard Colorado’s mail ballot with voter ID
By Chuck Broerman and Suzanne Taheri Coloradans often refer to our state as a leader for accessible and secure elections. We have led on all-mail ballots, automatic voter registration, and same-day registration, turning Colorado into a model for modern elections while also increasing turnout and lowering costs. But leadership also means staying ahead of the […]
‘A blatant political ploy’: California sheriff’s seizure of referendum ballots sets off alarm bells
Chad Bianco of Riverside county obtained warrants to seize ballots cast for state’s successful redistricting referendum
Public comment open on wording of Maine transgender sports referendum question
The question will appear on the November ballot unless the bill is enacted by the Legislature as written.
Gov. DeSantis signs measure shifting Naples Airport Authority control to voters
All 5 seats will appear on the ballot beginning with the 2026 General Election.
This GOP candidate seized a half-million ballots and says he may do it again
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running for California governor as a Republican, tried to review ballots despite election officials reaffirming the results.
Voters may see unfamiliar names on their primary ballots. Here's why
As early voting starts, some voters may find themselves in a new congressional district.
Ballots cast Tuesday, counted later: Surfside mayoral runoff results pushed to April 28, Judge rules
A Judge’s ruling creates a three-week window for additional mail-in ballots, allowing voters to request and submit them well beyond Election Day.
Emily Gregory to be sworn in for HD 87 seat Tuesday at Palm Beach Gardens City Hall
It caps a first-time-this-century victory in a traditionally Republican district that will be back on the ballot in November.
Column: Trump's cries of cheating on mail-in ballots defy logic
President Trump and MAGA Republicans are hallucinating or outright lying about widespread election fraud.
Voters in Georgia have moved on from Marjorie Taylor Greene. On Tuesday, they finally fill her seat
Three months after Marjorie Taylor Greene abruptly left Washington in the midst of a remarkably bitter feud with President Donald Trump, voters in northwest Georgia on Tuesday are poised to cast their ballots – again – in a runoff election to replace her.
Is it time for both parties to bail on Colorado’s political nominating system?
Cracks are beginning to appear in Colorado’s political nominating system. Recently, Mario Nicolais, a formerly Republican-leaning pundit, and Doug Friednash, former Democratic legislator, have opined regarding the imminent demise of the caucus/assembly framework which controls partisan candidate selection. There has always been a legal detour around this process whereby candidates petition directly onto the ballot. […]
Why the controversy with mail-in ballots?
Most Coloradans enjoy the right to vote “by mail” at election time. Most Americans favor this process. But U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to federalize (nationalize) this practice and shift the supervision of voting from county clerks to the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Postal Service. He issued an executive order to […]
St. John's Health 'likely' to ask voters for property tax bump
As St. John’s Health navigates turbulent financial waters and a potential Wyoming property tax cut at the ballot in November, the hospital may ask Teton County voters to double its
N.Y. attorney general, other AGs sue over Trump mail-in voting executive order
It calls for the Social Security Administration to prepare a list of verified eligible voters and requires absentee ballots to only be sent to each state's approved list.
Colorado sues Trump administration, calling new election order ‘unconstitutional’
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has joined a multistate coalition suing President Donald Trump over a new executive order on elections, arguing the directive unlawfully intrudes on states’ authority to run their own voting systems and threatens access to mail ballots for millions of voters. The lawsuit argues that Trump’s executive order is unconstitutional because […]
Democratic-led states sue to stop Trump's mail-in ballots executive order
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to create a national list of eligible voters and limit mail-in ballots
Poll: Dems on statewide ballot lead in Palm Beach, buoyed by disdain for Donald Trump
Republicans easily carried HD 87 in 2024, but the pendulum appears to have swung
Democrats sue to block Trump's executive order targeting mail ballots
Democrats sued Wednesday to block President Donald Trump's latest executive order restricting mail voting, arguing that the U.S. Constitution empowers states and Congress, not the president, to determine who is eligible to vote by mail. The lawsuit marks the second round of battles over the president's power to control elections. Trump's opponents handily won the first round last year, blocking his initial executive order intended to reshape election procedures by convincing multiple federal judges that
Maine high court hears ranked choice voting arguments
In 2017, the justices “concluded that ranked-choice voting was inconsistent with the constitutional requirement that the winners of those elections must be determined by ‘a plurality of’ all votes returned,” according to the AG’s office.
Democrats sue to block Trump's executive order targeting mail ballots
Democrats have sued to block President Donald Trump’s latest executive order restricting mail voting
Cannabis businesses sue to block Mass. anti-pot ballot question
Four cannabis business owners allege the ballot question would unconstitutionally end state programs that help to fund and support enterprises like theirs.
Colorado leaders say Trump’s executive order targeting mail voting violates state election authority
Colorado leaders swiftly condemned President Donald Trump’s new executive order issued Tuesday, arguing that its creation of a national voter‑eligibility list and new limits on mail voting violate states’ constitutional authority to run their own elections. Jefferson County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez called the order another attack on Americans’ access to the ballot but was confident […]
‘It’s not showing up at the ballot box’: Dem Rep. dismisses poll that just 25% of voters say Dems have the right priorities
Trump signs executive order limiting mail-in ballots; California leaders say they'll fight
President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday purporting to place new federal controls on voting by mail in states such as California.
Trump signs order asserting federal control of mail-in ballots
Trump has suggested for months that the federal government could nationalize the voting process, generating bipartisan pushback.
Trump signs order on mail ballots, escalating election overhaul push
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday aimed at tightening mail-in voting rules nationwide that would direct his administration to create a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state.
Transgender sports participation initiative challenged
Challengers say if the errors are corrected, the petitioners would fall below the 67,682 signatures need to qualify for the November ballot.
How local GOP officials are embracing Trump’s tactics to hunt for voter fraud
Local Republican officials across the country are taking aggressive steps to probe prior elections — from seizing ballots to making sweeping claims of non-citizens on the voter rolls — that mimic actions from the Trump administration’s hunt for 2020 voter fraud.
New factories and supersized Obamacare premiums: North Carolina considers what Trump has wrought
The president’s health care policies are on the ballot in a crucial Senate race.
Overpaid Executive Tax fight divisive, costly
Billionaires spend to battle labor's ballot measure.
On Massachusetts income tax cut, business community is split
While some support the ballot measure that would lower the state income tax, others worry about the impact it could have on the state budget
Phil Weiser wins top spot in Colorado’s Democratic gubernatorial primary at party’s state assembly
Attorney General Phil Weiser’s name will appear first on Colorado’s Democratic gubernatorial primary ballot after his overwhelming win Saturday at the party’s state assembly in Pueblo. Weiser joins U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet in the June 30 primary for the office held by term-limited Gov. Jared Polis. Bennet, who successfully petitioned onto the ballot, didn’t participate […]
Democrats are trying to connect the dots on Trump’s 2026 plan
The next election is always the most important for politicians on the ballot, which in this year’s midterms will be every member of the US House and about a third of the Senate.
'Families Not Politics' launches campaign against anti-trans Colorado ballot measures
Colorado LGBTQ advocates launched a campaign Friday to encourage “no” votes on two anti-trans measures on the 2026 ballot.
Planned Parenthood, groups launch campaign against transgender ballot measures in Colorado
Planned Parenthood and other groups have launched a coalition to oppose two ballot measures that would ban transgender surgeries among children and require student athletes to only join sports teams that correspond to their biological sex. The two measures will appear in this year’s November ballot, setting the stage for a statewide debate over sports, […]
‘Families not Politics’ coalition launches to oppose Colorado ballot measures targeting transgender minors
Advocacy organizations in Colorado have launched a campaign opposing two November ballot measures that would regulate transgender minors’ participation in school sports and access to certain medical procedures, setting the stage for a statewide debate over youth policy and parental decision‑making. Dubbed “Families Not Politics,” the coalition was established to “defend the freedoms, privacy, and […]
California and a voting rights group filed legal challenges to stop GOP sheriff's ballot seizure
The California attorney general and a voting right groups have launched two legal challenges to halt a ballot seizure by a Republican sheriff in Riverside County
Georgia's Fulton County heads to court to argue for return of 2020 ballots seized by FBI
Fulton County said the seizure of ballots was improper and unconstitutional, while the FBI says it's investigating possible violations of the law.
Fulton County heads to court to seek return of 2020 ballots seized by FBI
The Jan. 28 seizure from a warehouse near Atlanta targeted the elections hub in Georgia's most populous county
Trump Justice Department’s probe of the 2020 election gets first public test in court
The Justice Department on Friday faces the first public court test of its effort to investigate President Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat, as it fends off a lawsuit seeking a return of 2020 Atlanta-area ballots the FBI seized in an unprecedented move earlier this year.
Judge rejects Green Party candidate’s bid to appear on California governor ballots
California Green Party candidate Butch Ware failed to submit correct tax returns in time to appear on the June ballot for governor, a judge ruled Thursday.
Democratic US Sen. John Hickenlooper qualifies for Colorado primary by petition, will skip assembly
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper has qualified for Colorado’s Democratic primary after the first-term incumbent submitted enough valid petition signatures to make the ballot, state officials said. Hickenlooper is facing primary challenges from state Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, and university professor Karen Breslin, who are both vying for spots in the June 30 primary at the […]
Ron Conway is worried that California's proposed wealth tax could pass
"Our job is to get Gavin to negotiate this so that it doesn't get to the ballot," Tech investor Ron Conway said.
States Brace for a Potential Supreme Court Ban on Late-Arriving Ballots
The court’s conservatives appear skeptical of laws allowing mail ballots to arrive after Election Day. A decision could come as late as June, potentially scrambling midterm elections.
Florida Democrat flips seat in special election in district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago
Democrat Emily Gregory won a Florida special election on Tuesday, flipping a state legislative district that is home to Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach estate that President Donald Trump counts as his residence. The president had endorsed Gregory’s rival, Jon Maples. In a social media post Monday, he urged voters to turn out, saying Maples was backed “by so many of my Palm Beach County friends.” READ MORE: Trump casts Florida ballot by mail as he
Trump votes by mail amid his push to end mail-in ballots
President Donald Trump cast a ballot by mail in the March 24 special election in Palm Beach, Florida, even though he has spent years attacking mail-in ballots as susceptible to fraud.
Ballot box upset: Democrats flip Florida legislative seat in Trump’s stomping ground
Trump-endorsed Republican Jon Maples loses to Democrat Emily Gregory in a Florida House District 87 special election in Palm Beach, home to President Donald Trump
Trump casts Florida ballot by mail as he pushes Congress to severely limit that voting option
Trump has in the last week called mail-in voting "cheating" and "corrupt as hell" as he urges Congress to pass the SAVE Act, a sweeping bill that would bar universal mail ballots.
Iowa House passes restrictions on foreign involvement in health care, ballot issues
The Iowa House passed two measures Monday restricting foreign entities from health care ownership and ballot issue campaigns.
Trump casts Florida mail ballot as he pushes Congress to severely limit that voting option
President Donald Trump has cast another mail ballot in Florida as he continues to publicly bash the voting method as a source of fraud and push Congress to curtail the practice
The Supreme Court’s conservatives could significantly alter the 2026 election
The Supreme Court on Monday appeared ready to limit mail-in ballots, a move that would reinforce the justices’ pattern of shrinking voter protections and that has, at bottom, favored Republican interests and the Trump administration.
Trump casts mail ballot in Florida even as he calls the method 'cheating'
The president cast a mail ballot in an upcoming Florida special election, according to county records.
Group abandons Michigan minimum wage ballot campaign
A group seeking to reverse changes the state Legislature made last year to Michigan's tipped and minimum wage laws is abandoning its efforts for now.
Takeaways from arguments in the Supreme Court case that could end grace periods for mail-in ballots
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared dubious of state laws that allow the counting of mail ballots that arrive at election offices after Election Day as justices heard oral arguments in a challenge to Mississippi’s five-day grace period for mail ballots.
Manor Township Democratic committee person kicked off May 19 primary ballot
Kirk Barrett, a candidate for a Manor Township seat on the Lancaster County Democratic Committee, has successfully kicked the incumbent’s name off the ballot for the upcoming May 19 primary.
The Supreme Court seems alarmingly willing to trash thousands of ballots
At least four justices appear to be on board with a frivolous lawsuit attacking voting by mail.
SCOTUS conservatives signal readiness to curb late-arriving mail ballots
Conservative Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical during oral arguments of allowing states to continue counting late-arriving mail-in ballots. A decision is expected in June.
Supreme Court leans toward Trump-backed push to limit mail-in ballots
The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed skeptical of late- arriving ballots. The case could lead to stricter rules in this year's midterm elections.
Californians may need to mail ballots early as Supreme Court signals support for new election day deadline
California counts mail-in ballots that arrive up to seven days after election day, but that option may be deemed illegal
Supreme Court hears arguments in mail-in voting case
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today in a case about whether states may count mail-in ballots received after Election Day. Follow here for live updates.
Mailer in Germantown school election has one big problem
An outside political group urges Germantown School District voters to re-elect a candidate who isn't on the ballot.
In California, a Republican Sheriff Seizes Ballots, Prompting Concerns
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a candidate for governor, recently took possession of more than 650,000 ballots as part of a fraud probe. Election officials say his investigation is baseless.
LISTEN LIVE: Supreme Court considers late-arriving mail ballot laws in case that may affect midterms
California sheriff seizes 650,000 ballots in defiance of state officials over election count dispute
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized over 650,000 ballots to probe alleged excess votes in California's Proposition 50 special election.
The Supreme Court Could Make it Harder to Vote by Mail in the Midterms
The Republican National Committee wants to toss ballots arriving after Election Day. Critics say thousands of votes — a majority cast by Democrats — are at stake.
I let AI pick my Oscars ballot. It messed up oddly, but still won.
Alistair Barr's AI-assisted Oscars ballot, powered by Anthropic's Claude, outperformed despite missing some categories.
Big Money Flows Into State Attorney General Races as Legal Battles Shape American Politics
With control of Congress on the ballot in November, state attorney general races can get lost in the shuffle. But just outside the election spotlight, there are partisan groups, corporate interests and advocacy networks revving up campaigns for offices that are playing a growing role in American ...
Billionaires, trial lawyers and unions gear up for 2026 California ballot brawls
It costs millions to qualify for the ballot and most measures fail, but that’s not stopping lots of special interest groups from trying
Ballot measure to curtail dark money in San Diego politics gets initial vote
His District 9 office will now work with the city attorney's office to draft language for the ballot proposal, which must then be approved again by the Rules Committee and then the full City Council before being placed on the November 2026 ballot.
CMA opposes dangerous ballot measure threatening community health clinics
CMA is strongly opposing a proposed statewide ballot initiative that would strip billions of dollars from vital health...
California’s proposed billionaire tax gains majority support in new poll, with a partisan split on voter ID
A new poll shows California voters are sharply divided over two brewing ballot measures: a one-time tax on billionaires and new rules and procedures to verify voter citizenship.
Beach parking, money in politics and more: Four San Diego measures move one step closer to November ballot
Support was unanimous for three of the measures, but the committee vote was only 3-2 in favor of a measure to ban paid parking at beaches and bays.
GOP candidate cites ‘failure’ of Newsom, Dems as new poll shows Republicans leading crowded California field
Steve Hilton, a Republican running for governor, said that the “absolute failure" by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats means that the GOP has a real shot at victory this year.
Texas primary results showed limitations of polling
Many factors explain why pollsters face challenges in getting good sample sizes that truly reflect who is going to cast a ballot.
Madison reports failing to count a ballot in February primary
The error comes as the city and former clerk face a class-action lawsuit over losing track of nearly 200 ballots in the 2024 presidential election.
No Trump Endorsement for Cornyn or Paxton in Texas Senate Race as Deadline Passes
President Trump’s decision not to weigh in before the deadline means both John Cornyn and Ken Paxton remain on the ballot, extending their costly and increasingly personal battle into a May runoff.
It’s official. Maine will vote on proposal to ban trans athletes in girls sports.
The Maine secretary of state announced Tuesday that it had verified the signatures collected by proponents to get the measure on the November ballot.
House leaders tie business tax benefits to income tax ballot question
House budget writers tucked a provision in a bill advancing this week that would potentially block benefits worth up to $400 million a year if the ballot question passes in November.