Latest Stories By Amy Sherman

As the presidential election approached in 2020, the elections clerk in Boone County, Missouri, had a problem. A federal grant early in the pandemic had helped pay for unexpected election expenses such as plexiglass shields and cleaning supplies at polling places. But that money was now gone, and Election Day was a couple of months […]

Donald Trump has always been confident in his chances of winning over voters, even if he committed crimes. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump said at a 2016 campaign stop in Iowa. “It’s, like, incredible.” His comment at the time was […]

Texas was already in the spotlight for voting woes before Election Day March 1 due to a new law that added identification rules for casting ballots by mail that tripped up thousands of voters. And then on Election Day, reports on social media went viral that either Republicans or Democrats were denied the right to […]

Many Democrats in Congress were disappointed that they couldn’t muster enough support to pass sweeping voting rights legislation this year. They had hoped for a new law that would protect in-person voting and voting by mail in all 50 states. But that doesn’t mean the federal government will have to sit on the sidelines when […]

A Facebook post suggests putting a serial number on every ballot, but many elections experts suggested it would cause more problems than it solves. “If we can put a serial number on every dollar we can put a serial number on every ballot!” the Jan. 18 Facebook post says. The post was flagged as part […]

In Arizona, Republican state legislators have proposed a bill that would give the Legislature the power to reject election results, and turn back the clock on election advances such as early voting and machine counting of ballots. “We need to get back to 1958-style voting,” said state Rep. John Fillmore, a Republican who introduced the […]

Several weeks after the 2020 election, groups of electors gathered in state Capitols to sign certificates affirming which candidate won their state — a routine step in the process of a president taking office.  But on the same day — Dec. 14, 2020 — something unusual happened: In several battleground states where Joe Biden had […]

In January, the United States marked the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and President Joe Biden’s first year in office, Republicans blocked federal voting rights legislation, and the country experienced a surge of the COVID-19 omicron variant. Our fact-checking of these topics prompted many of our readers to send us […]

Ted Nugent, the musician and outspoken supporter of Second Amendment gun rights (and critic of Democrats), has been clear that he believes former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, despite all evidence to the contrary. But in a recent meme shared on Nugent’s Facebook page, the “Cat Scratch Fever” rocker asserted that voter suppression […]

As Democrats seek to set uniform election policies nationwide to make it easier to cast a ballot, one change on their wishlist would allow all Americans to register to vote on Election Day. Senate Democrats have included a provision in the Freedom to Vote Act, their sweeping voting-rights bill, that would require all states to […]

President Joe Biden denounced Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election in a forceful speech from the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall, the same setting where pro-Trump rioters passed through as they disrupted the certification of presidential election one year earlier. “We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie,” Biden […]

In December, PolitiFact awarded the annual Lie of the Year to lies about the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, lawmakers argued over the price tag of Build Back Better legislation, and Americans grappled with inflation and gas prices.  Our fact-checking of these topics prompted many of our readers to send us emails and comment on social […]