Latest Stories By Hana Stepnick

When many Arizona voters show up to cast a ballot in the Aug. 2 primary, they will be able to choose from several vote centers rather than one assigned precinct. Maricopa County officials predict that 10% to 17% of voters will mark their ballots at one of 210 voting centers. The majority of Arizonans will […]

Online misinformation about the 2020 election drove all sorts of real-world consequences, from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to the then-president of the United States getting banned from Twitter. Those false claims that the last election was stolen haven’t gone away. Instead, they’re driving new campaign messaging for the 2022 midterm races […]

The Jan. 6 committee will be calling forward people who worked inside the White House to provide evidence about former President Donald Trump’s three hours of inaction during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The witnesses include Sarah Matthews, a former Trump deputy press secretary who called Jan. 6 “one of the darkest days in […]

After mass shootings in Florida and Texas, Congress passed a bipartisan bill in June that includes money for states to implement “red flag” laws, a way for family members and law enforcement to ask courts to take away guns from people with patterns of violence.  Not even two weeks later, a man with a known […]

There’s no doubt about it: For election officials across the country, recruiting poll workers is more challenging than ever. COVID-19 made people with health worries want to stay home. Rampant misinformation about election fraud spurred vitriol and even death threats against election workers. Long hours and paltry pay for a seasonal job have never been […]

Fact-checkers don’t like to talk about themselves. They pride themselves on staying out of the limelight and reporting the truth about readers’ communities. But this week at GlobalFact 9, the annual conference held by the International Fact-Checking Network, the attention is in an unfamiliar spot: on the journalists — and their relationship to democracy. In […]