Pulitzer Center Update October 29, 2026
Read and Watch Pulitzer Center-Supported Midterm Election Stories
Americans are already voting early and mailing in ballots for the November. 3 midterm election. It’s hard to underestimate the stakes: The election will determine which party dominates the U.S. Congress and many state governments.
Midterms are also an unofficial referendum on the sitting president, in this case President Donald Trump. That’s normal. But what’s not normal is how much Trump and loyalists have spread unproven allegations that elections could be rife with fraud at the local level.
To address misinformation, the Pulitzer Center is supporting stories about voting and the state of U.S. democracy. Trump has remained unrelenting in pushing the false claim that his 2020 re-election loss wasn’t legitimate. Recently, Trump administration officials have also been sending out missives to local election officials and threatening legal action if they suspect fraud.
With Pulitzer Center support, PBS Newshour recently went to Philadelphia for a story featuring election commissioners, one a Republican, the other a Democrat, defending their city’s election system. Trump previously attacked Philadelphia as untrustworthy. Election commissioners received death threats.
Another Newshour piece features Georgia GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who also defended the integrity of that state’s election system. In 2020, after losing Georgia, Trump called Raffensperger, telling him he wanted to “find” more votes because he believed he’d won.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution will soon release a Pulitzer Center-supported podcast investigating how Georgia became the epicenter of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement in 2020. The project will look into an unexplained FBI raid in Georgia’s Fulton County this year to seize boxes of ballots from the 2020 election.
In Michigan, Pulitzer Center support helped the outlet Votebeat explore how a Republican clerk in a Trump-voting county began purging residents from voting rolls, and how safeguards stopped her. Votebeat will soon release stories about other states. And in a partnership with Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania members of States Newsroom, Evident Media received support to produce videos and social media posts about voting rights, billionaire donations and concerns about federal intervention.
In North Carolina, The Charlotte Post is exploring concerns about Black voting rights with “The Franchise.” And an outlet in another state is exploring how brand-new U.S. citizens are approaching voting at a time when false claims of noncitizen voting are swirling.
Stay tuned.
Susan Ferriss
Senior Editor
This message appeared in the October 30, 2026, edition of the Pulitzer Center's weekly newsletter.
