AP announces politics, elections and democracy team; one reporter will cover rules and tactics that make voting harder

The Associated Press says it has been expanding its coverage of politics, elections and democracy with a reporting team that will "produce a deeper, more cohesive report the unifies AP’s journalism produced in Washington with reporting from bureaus across the country."

Nick Riccardi (AP)

Reporter Nick Riccardi, based in Denver, "will cover emerging threats to democracy, including new rules and tactics that make it harder to vote," AP says. Christina A. Cassidy, based in Atlanta, will cover how elections are administered in the states and localities. Gary Fields, based in Washington, will cover challenges to democracy with a focus on the marginalized and disaffected.

Other members of the team as announced by AP are:

· Steve Peoples, based in New York, will continue as chief political writer with a focus on the biggest trends, voter behavior and major statewide races.
· Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, will cover politics in Georgia, a state that is on the frontlines of some of the biggest political stories.
· Tom Beaumont, based in Des Moines, will continue to cover politics in Iowa and the Midwest, with a focus on U.S. House campaigns.
· Sara Burnett, in Chicago, will cover governors’ races and the intersection of gender and politics. 
· Jill Colvin, in New York, will cover former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
· J.J. Cooper, in Phoenix, will cover the rapidly changing politics of Arizona and the Southwest. 
· Adriana Gomez Licon, based in Miami, will cover the political influence of Latino voters. 
· Meg Kinnard, based in Columbia, South Carolina, will cover breaking news, the South and the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
· Michelle Price, in New York, will focus on the political players in the nation’s largest city.
· Brian Slodysko, based in Washington, will cover influence, money and politics.
· Will Weissert, also in Washington, will cover Democratic politics, including efforts to maintain control of Congress and the emerging 2024 campaigns.

"With their reporting expertise and strategic locations across the U.S., this team is in a strong position to cover upcoming elections with speed and sophistication," AP Washington Bureau Chief Anna Johnson said. "And this is only the beginning. We also posted a two-year reporting position for a journalist who will cover voting access and race in the U.S., and we will spend the coming months continuing to build out the team and our coverage." 

Working under Johnson to lead the team are Deputy Bureau Chief Steven Sloan, Democracy News Editor Tom Verdin and Deputy Political Editor Ashley Thomas.

Meanwhile, "Frontline" on PBS will begin its new season next Tuesday night, Sept. 6, with "Lies, Politics and Democracy," a documentary that it says is "told in part through the perspectives of key Republican players and party leaders" and will offer "startling new details from GOP insiders on how the embrace of Trump’s rhetoric helped bring the nation to this precarious moment."

FBI probing whether Russians gave to NRA to help Trump

Torshin

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether a Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money through the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump become president, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon report for McClatchy Newspapers. It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia's central bank, has a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has been implicated in a money-laundering scheme in Spain in 2016. A nearly 500-page report in the Spanish investigation called him a "godfather" in major Russian criminal organization called Taganskaya. Torshin is also a lifetime NRA member, and hosted two dinners for a high-profile NRA delegation in Moscow in 2015, then met with Donald Trump Jr. at the NRA's 2016 convention in Louisville.

The convention meeting "matters because Torshin was involved, through an intermediary, in what was described in an email sent to Trump campaign aides as a 'Russian backdoor overture.' Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, denied his request for a meeting with the candidate on an email chain that allegedly also included aides Rick Dearborn, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates," Julia Glum reports for Newsweek. "Senate investigators argued Tuesday that Kushner had not turned over the messages to them, as they'd requested as part of their probe into the Kremlin's meddling in the election. Kushner's attorney denied it."

Journalists can't determine the extent of the FBI's evidence for the claim, but the NRA spent a record $55 million on the 2016 elections, including $30 million to support Trump; that's three times more than the NRA gave to Mitt Romney in the 2012 race. Most of that money came from a part of the NRA that doesn't have to disclose its donors. They may have spent more like $70 million, according to sources close to the NRA, since groups don't have to report spending on internet ads or field operations like get-out-the-vote drives.

"It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the news comes as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s campaign, has been heating up," Stone and Gordon report. "Torshin is among a phalanx of Putin proxies to draw the close attention of U.S. investigators, who also have tracked the activities of several Russian billionaires and pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs that have come in contact with Trump or his surrogate."

After record number of ballot initiatives, state legislators scramble to challenge or change them

"State legislators across the country fought back this year against a recent surge in citizen-generated ballot initiatives by modifying or scrapping voter-approved laws and passing new laws to make it harder for people to put measures on the ballot in the first place, Elaine Povich reports for Stateline, the nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

In 2016, citizens initiated 76 ballot measures in 26 states and Washington, D.C., the highest number in 10 years. Part of the reason is that a lower voter turnout in the 2014 elections meant that voters in some states didn’t need as many signatures to submit ballot initiatives. In response to this, some states tried to make the process more difficult to discourage future attempts. In 2017, 186 bills in 33 states have been introduced to make changes in the initiative process; 17 have been approved and 61 are still pending. The bills "added or lifted restrictions on the process, changed campaign finance rules, and added supermajority requirements, among other provisions," Povich reports.

Ballotpedia graphic

Another, larger reason for the glut of initiatives was that voters were attempting to address controversial issues that lawmakers didn’t want to deal with, like marijuana legalization. And finally, a growing number of initiatives have been submitted by citizens representing lobbyists. "The intent of progressives in initiating initiatives and referenda [historically] was to circumvent legislatures that were not doing the people’s will,"says Maurice Cunningham, an associate political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. "Now referenda are often used by interests that can’t get something through the legislative process — hearings, amendments, debates — but can put a measure on the ballot and, by virtue of campaign spending, have a pretty good chance to get voters to pass it."

Josh Altic of Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan website that tracks ballot initiatives, told Povich, "We have definitely seen some notable cases of legislative tampering this year, especially with regard to the boldness with which legislatures are willing to change or repeal initiatives." For example, a voter initiative helped make medical marijuana legal in Florida, but state lawmakers then decided that it couldn't be smoked (triggering a lawsuit from one of the initiative's backers). In Maine an initiative was passed that imposed a new tax on the wealthy, but state lawmakers repealed it.

Why so much resistance to voter initiatives? One reason might be that the issues highlighted lawmakers' unwillingness to tackle lightning rod issues. But lawmakers say "many of the ballot measures voters approve are sloppily written, don’t take into account current law, or wouldn’t have the effect intended," Povich reports.

N.C. passes bill to move public notice from newspapers to government websites in one county

The North Carolina legislature has passed a bill that moves public notices from local newspapers to government websites in a single county, a move some say makes the government less transparent and targets the local newspaper.

State Sen. Trudy Wade

Republican Sen. Trudy Wade of Greensboro, the seat of Guilford County, has tried to pass similar laws twice before, but succeeded this time by narrowing the scope of the bill, creating it as a "pilot program" in the county only, and attaching it to a separate measure she had introduced that declares that newspapers carriers cannot be presumed to be independent contractors, reports the Public Notice Resource Center.

Under the bill, which will become law by July 30 if not vetoed, court-ordered legal notices will be published on the county website instead of in the local newspaper, the Greensboro News & Record. Other local officials may decide whether to publish their notices in the newspaper or on their own websites instead, according to the article. The bill also allows the county government to charge $10 to $450 for notices published on its site.

Some think Wade wanted to hurt the Greensboro paper for what she feels is unfair news coverage. Rep. Pricey Harrison of Greensboro says that Wade held up other pending Senate bills in order to get her bill passed. "I do think it's her vendetta against the News and Record," he told the paper's Taft Wireback.

Not so, Wade told Wireback: "It really doesn't have anything to do with the News and Record. It has to do with making sure the citizens have free access to legal notices. To be honest with you, technology changes. This is just another example of changing technology and people using that technology."

News & Record Publisher and Editor Daniel Finnegan worries that Guilford County residents will be less likely to see important notices that may affect their lives, saying "We reach far more people with the combination of our newspaper and website -- more than 100,000 per day -- than government websites."