Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here.

Connecting today’s news with the research & opinion you need.

Rolling With It

What to Know: Early voting in the Nov. 5 elections has begun, without the often-abused “rolling polling” voting locations.

The TPPF Take: In theory, the practice was supposed to be a way to get hard-to-reach voters to the polls.

“But in reality, rolling polling enabled a handful of bad actors to harvest voters likely to be sympathetic to the government’s cause,” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “For example, a school district wanting voters to approve debt for new facilities might just park a mobile voting site outside of a high school football game on a Friday night. This move will boost Texans’ confidence in their elections.”

The Real Housing Crisis

What to Know: San Francisco is losing residents because virtually no one can afford to live there.

The TPPF Take: You can't afford what you can't afford. 

“The average cost of a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is more than three times what it is in Dallas,” says TPPF’s Chuck DeVore. “The high cost of living—and more specifically, the cost of housing—is why California is the nation’s poorest state, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure. People naturally go where their dollar goes further.”

Border Crisis

What to Know: The crisis at the border continues, though numbers are dropping.

The TPPF Take: A key component of border security is knowing how severe the crisis is—but gathering this data is difficult.

“The United States needs to know who is crossing its borders,” says TPPF’s Igor Magalhaes. “But the tools we have for measuring that, including technology, surveys and statistical modeling, are flawed. We must improve our statistical models to more accurately reflect the composition of border crossers, and incorporating asylum application numbers to our metrics.”