A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You will rarely find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief quotes from articles plus my take, to articles and other information that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
Voters learn how elections are run, from the people who run them
Election officials are hosting open houses and trainings so that those who are curious about or skeptical of the process can see it for themselves. They are video recording ballot-counting procedures so people can watch live streamsfrom their homes — or request the footage later. They are setting up video cameras at ballot drop boxes, which were central to a baseless theory in 2020that purported “mules” had illegally stuffed the boxes with votes for Joe Biden. Officials say that while none of these measures will likely prevent the onslaught of election conspiracies — and could actually provide more fodder — it should be easier and faster to disprove fake information.
The Post's Sanchez, formerly a reporter with the Arizona Republic, has focused this year on the fraught politics of her home state. Arizona election voter suppression laws are matched in harsh bad faith by a populace that, on the right, is rabidly extreme in its views and willingness to act on them. Voting officials, most of whom tend to have good faith belief in helping every eligible voter do so, are constantly under the gun in a figurative sense that many worry could become literal. (Someone took a shot at a Democratic campaign office today.) It's that context that makes this detailed account so smart – an explanation, with lessons for all voting jurisdictions, in how to keep on-the-ground voting and counting honest (as it was in 2020) and seen to be honest.
Put simply, each pollster has to make a series of educated guesses about the make-up of the electorate. How many of different kinds of people are there? What are their different propensities to vote? Calling these “guesses” probably gives too little credit. It might be better to call them theories of the electorate. From a good pollster, those should include an analysis of recent elections, comparisons of earlier polls with actual election results, other demographic information. In other words, from a good pollster these aren’t based on vibes. They’re based on trying to come up with an accurate understanding of the different groupings which make up the electorate and their characteristics.
The good news is that people with deep knowledge of polling are working hard to fix the problems exposed in 2016 and 2020, experimenting with more data sources and interview approaches than ever before. Still, polls are more useful to the public if people have realistic expectations about what surveys can do well – and what they cannot.
I've been advising anyone who's not a political junkie to pay little attention to polls this year. While public opinion surveys have a long and valuable history, most of the ones you're hearing about in the media – in my opinion – amount to clickbait and journalistic junk food. But it's worth checking in periodically, because trends do matter, and the electorate's collective (and granular) views should be understood. This year's batch seem to be more honest than the "red wave" junk polls that got so much attention in 2022, largely because the press fell for the propagandists' con. Josh Marshall is wise as usual, telling us what he doesn't know, not just what he does know. His bottom line hasn't changed much: This is going to be a super-close election. For more background on this year's polling practices, and how you can better understand what you're being told, the Pew Research Center's summary is excellent.
“The apparatus of criminalizing pregnant people has already been built over time by basically reading into existing civil and criminal law this extreme ideology of fetal personhood — that an embryo or fertilized egg or a fetus is a person that is a victim of a crime, or that is a person under these laws that can apply to them,” Lourdes Rivera, president of Pregnancy Justice, said in an interview. “So charging people under abortion bans is actually not needed because the apparatus is there to do so.”
The demise of Roe vs Wade continues to ripple through our society. The more restrictive the laws, the more control the zealots can take over the women's lives. And maybe sometimes, no doubt, as others have said in other contexts, cruelty is the point.
It’s worth noting that the bizarre pet tales of 2024 politics haven’t really worked out for whoever’s telling them. Noem’s dog-killing story may have killed her vice presidential hopes. Trump’s “they’re eating the pets” spurred viral mockery. Americans, it seems, still want pets to be a happy, shared subject of devotion. It’s not clear whether this is something their political class can deliver.
This perverse election year needs an occasional blast of good-natured irony, if not outright humor, and this brief but entertaining history lesson about public figures and their pets fits the bill. Some of the tales the author tells are anything but light-hearted (e.g. a governor bragging about shooting her dog, not to mention blood libels accusing immigrants of ingesting pets). Overall, you'll probably find this a fun read.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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I spend a lot of time looking for essential coverage, and hope you'll help me by letting me know about the good stuff you find. Let me know.
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Josh Marshall
Scott Keeter and Courtney Kennedy
