From the editor
Voting is something most people think about every two to four years, as congressional and presidential polls roll around. But since last November’s election, 19 Republican-led states have enacted laws that the Brennan Center for Justice says will “make it harder for Americans to vote.” Add the fact that Republicans have blocked Democratic-proposed measures to protect ballot access — and the gerrymandering of election maps around the U.S. is already in full swing — and it’s clear that the time is now for voting rights and election administration coverage.
As Celeste Katz Marston reports in our exploration of the voting rights beat, journalists covering elections face plenty of challenges, from the maze of different laws in effect in different states to cash-strapped local newsrooms deploying fewer people on these stories. Still, heading into the 2022 mid-terms, news outlets are broadening and deepening coverage by integrating voting rights into other beats, from business and sports to criminal justice and tech, diversifying the pool of reporters writing about civic issues, and calling out election disinformation and lies.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily bad for the media to have a pro-voter bias,” Ari Berman, a senior reporter at Mother Jones, told Nieman Reports. “That’s different than having a pro-Democratic bias [or] an anti-Republican bias. I have a pro-voter bias; I’m for policies that expand access to the ballot.”
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