Voter Access Project at Columbia Journalism Investigations

From July through December of 2020, I served as a fellow on Columbia Journalism Investigations' Voter Access Project, which was conceived in 2019 as a partnership with the USA Today Network to track voter suppression and ballot access leading up to the 2020 general elections. The COVID-19 pandemic gave the initiative fresh urgency, as states scrambled (or did not) to expand ballot access via the mail.

My reporting and data work contributed to two front-page stories on USA Today: the first, leading up to the election, brought to light the prevailing pessimism among election officials about likely mass disenfranchisement. The second, after the election, explored what went right in the election— but foreshadowed the tightening of ballot laws that Republican legislators are currently undertaking. That legislative activity comes on the heels of years of unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, which the Heritage Foundation attempts to document. But our reporting found that their database is not only fragmentary, but riddled with errors.

I also contributed to reports from USA Today's local parter the Detroit Free Press in Michigan's August primary, and our team's efforts in Wisconsin contributed to the PBS Frontline documentary "Whose Vote Counts", which aired in October 2020 and has been nominated for a Peabody Award.