With the election just over 40 days away, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg could become a pivotal issue in the race — and energise voters on both sides of the partisan divide.
A King County, Washington election worker verifies signatures accompanying ballots cast in the state’s August primary.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
It’s not just whether the US Postal Service can handle the load. In 2020 primaries, states have had trouble distributing, collecting and counting mailed-in ballots.
The mail-in voting process has several built-in safeguards that make it hard for one person to vote fraudulently, and even more difficult to commit large-scale voter fraud.
Today’s genuine pessimism about America’s future has very old roots.
Aaron Foster/Getty
Think American democracy is ending? You’re not alone, writes a historian. American leaders have often yielded to despair – as far back as the founding of the republic.
With its largely white and older workers, this poll site in Maine is typical of poll sites across the U.S.
Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
An army of mostly older, white volunteers run America’s voting sites. They’re reluctant to work during a pandemic. So new recruits are signing up to run the polls, for better and for worse.
The polls are predicting a comfortable win for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. But if this election sees the same polling errors as in 2016, Trump’s chances of re-election are higher than we think.
With rare exceptions, like the 2000 presidential election, the winning candidate usually declares victory on election night. But the win isn’t actually certified until January.
ranklin McMahon/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images
Many political issues in the 2020 US election are domestic. But black resistance to white supremacy has long had global repercussions.
Asian American voters leave a Temple City, California, polling place in 2012, in the state’s first legislative district that is majority Asian American.
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
Russian agents reportedly placed malware in U.S. voter registration systems in 2016 and are actively interfering in the 2020 election. Here’s the state of election cybersecurity.
President Donald Trump speaks during an event on judicial appointments at the White House on Sept. 9, 2020.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Donald Trump’s attack on racial injustice is an attempt to replace historical consciousness with historical amnesia. It’s a racialized politics of organized forgetting.
Trump supporters fight Black Lives Matter protestors at an anti-racism rally in Tujunga, California, Aug. 14, 2020.
Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images
Americans are mad – fist-fighting, protesting mad. And that’s just how politicians want voters in election season. But the popular anger stoked by candidates doesn’t just dissipate after the campaign.
A campaign poster of John Magufuli of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party who is seeking re-election as president in October.
Ericky Boniphace/AFP via Getty Images)
International observation will not insulate controversial polls – such as Tanzania’s in October – from malpractices, but will make them less likely and allow them to be exposed.
President Donald Trump works on a smartphone, a common tool in his political communication efforts.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
The technical qualifications for presidential candidates are the same, but how people seek the nation’s highest office has shifted over the centuries.
International observers from Canada, India and Jamaica tour the Utah County election facilities on Nov. 6, 2018 in Provo, Utah.
George Frey/Getty Images
Many US states forbid foreign observers to monitor their elections, but as the 2020 presidential election nears, a poll finds broad public support for international election observers.
President Trump stressed law and order on a recent trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
President Trump’s law-and-order campaign rhetoric has been compared to Richard Nixon’s and George Wallace’s similar themes in 1968. But such appeals go much further back, to the US in the early 1800s.
Students’ positive attitudes toward conservative ideas are the same before and after four years of college.
FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images
Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations at the United States Studies Centre and in the Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney