In the News

For the first time in more than two decades, Maryland is poised to welcome a new elections administrator with the selection of Jared DeMarinis to replace longtime administrator Linda Lamone. DeMarinis, 49, of Annapolis, is a familiar face inside election circles — he previously headed the Maryland State Board of Elections’ Division of Candidacy and Campaign Finance — but he’s largely unknown to the general public.

A new study by Syracuse University researchers suggests the issue has implications beyond politics. The study, led by sociology professor Jennifer Karas Montez, investigates the link between democratic erosion and rising deaths. Previous studies showed labor policies, firearm policies, and more played a role but did not provide a full explanation. The study examines how changes in electoral democracy in the U.S. predicted changes in the risk of death among adults ages 25-64.

Justice Samuel Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf, ProPublica reported. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it published Tuesday night, authoring an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he acknowledged knowing billionaire Paul Singer but downplaying their relationship.

On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online. The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015.

In politics, money talks. And no one knows this better than the politicians running for elected office. It takes a lot of cash to pay for all those campaign ads, from TV commercials to pop-ups on social media, and the fastest way to raise the needed funds is to ask those who have a major stake in decision-making — from big business and labor unions to government contractors — to write the checks. The problem of how deep-pocketed special interests get access and influence (while average Joes are so often ignored) was greatly worsened by the U.S.

Americans surveyed shortly before last year’s midterm elections overwhelmingly saw political violence as a problem facing the country and generally opposed violent acts against either everyday people or elected officials. Still, a significant percentage deemed political violence — which the survey defined as “violence, threats, intimidation or harassment” — acceptable in certain scenarios.

In April 2021, we published the first edition of A Democracy Crisis in the Making: How State Legislatures Are Politicizing, Criminalizing, and Interfering with Election Administration. That Report identified a burgeoning trend in state legislatures: bills that would increase the risk of election subversion — that is, that the declared outcome of an election does not reflect the true choice of the voters. Through the 2021 and 2022 state legislative sessions, we tracked nearly 400 legislative proposals that would make election subversion more likely.

On Thursday, June 8, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision in the landmark redistricting case, Allen v. Milligan, in which the majority upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Section 2 prohibits any voting law, practice or map that results in the denial of the right to vote of any citizen on account of race.