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Minnesota Freedom Fund Bails Out Those Who Can't Afford It

Bonita Gooch Jazzlyn Johnson

August 20, 2020 |

The Community Voice |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Minnesota Freedom Fund spent its first four years as a modestly funded nonprofit that used donations to bail people out of jail, as a means of countering a cash bail system that critics see as unfair to people living in poverty and people of color. From 2016 to early 2020, it had a budget of $100,000 per year and bailed out 563 people. Protests against Minneapolis police misconduct produced a windfall of $30 million in donations. The fund has excess funds, beyond what's needed to bail out protesters, and faces some criticism that it has freed people accused of violence.

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Courts rule

Emma Athena

August 20, 2020 |

Boulder Weekly |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Massachusetts

Almost half of U.S. states guarantee citizens’ rights to petition for ballot measures, but the coronavirus made gathering signatures in person infeasible. Massachusetts courts allowed electronic signatures, but other states have not approved virtual citizen initiative campaigns. Ballot initiatives allow citizens to advance solutions and enact structural changes without relying on support from elected officials. MA groups used DocuSign to gather 30,000 signatures to get a proposal for ranked choice voting on the ballot. Not all MA groups were able to quickly or successfully pivot to the e-signature process.

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This AI startup is tackling the coronavirus disinformation deluge

Sirin Kale

August 14, 2020 |

Wired |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United Kingdom

Logically is a fact-checking app that combines AI technology and human research to assess and label the truthfulness of news articles. The app has about 20,000 users after a soft launch in the UK, with a full launch planned for late 2020. The AI technology, a feature that makes the app unique, tries to match news claims to other sources and then human researchers take over to make a final judgment. The app has been busy fact-checking the extensive Covid-19 related misinformation. Some aspects, like technology glitches and slow fact-checking responses from researchers, still need to be worked out.

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Here's a look at the security precautions in Colorado's mail-in ballot system

Rachel Lorenz

August 13, 2020 |

Colorado Politics |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Colorado

Colorado has fine-tuned an effective mail-in ballot protocol for statewide elections and has one of the highest voter turnouts. Ballots are stored in tamperproof locked rooms that are continuously monitored and voters’ signatures are compared by bipartisan election judges to signatures in a state database. An audit of election results is also conducted to ensure the accuracy of the results. Officials in other states are reaching out to learn more about Colorado’s system, which is well-suited to keeping voters safe during a pandemic, but a lot goes into the system’s success and it takes time to implement.

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Why most top Foreign Office posts are held by women

The Economist

August 13, 2020 |

The Economist |

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Under 800 Words

Response Location: United Kingdom

More women are serving in top positions of the United Kingdom’s diplomatic corps with a female ambassador to the United States for the first time since the position was created in 1791. Women now hold about a third of Britain’s ambassadorships and the increase can be traced to several changes, including a public pledge to increase women in leadership positions. A reliable pipeline of women to fill the top spots was also nurtured, with nearly 60% of new foreign service employees now female. Grouping interviews forces management to see the big picture and diplomatic life has become more flexible for families.

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Vote-By-Mail Helped Perk Up Hawaii Turnout But So Did Some Competitive Races

Blaze Lovell

August 13, 2020 |

Honolulu Civil Beat |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Hawaii

The August 2020 primary election in Hawaii was the first run entirely with voting by mail and the result was increased voter turnout in all of the state’s voting districts. In fact, the 47.8% voter turnout was the best the state has had in 20 years. The turnout increased by an average of 15% over the 2016 primary election. Some districts that historically have low voter turnout saw smaller gains and still had turnout that lagged far behind other districts.

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Challenge of archiving the #MeToo movement

Colleen Walsh

August 11, 2020 |

The Harvard Gazette |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library’s digital services team gathered and archived all the virtual material they could find related to the #MeToo movement. The social media-driven movement is now represented in the library’s online archive that contains more than 32 million tweets, 1,100 webpages, and thousands of articles. The team created a largely automated system to capture the content, including 71 hashtags, and a steering committee of historians, lawyers, and data experts helped work through the challenges of capturing a digital footprint. The data has already been examined to study aspects of the movement.

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Youngstown, Ohio, Lost Its Only Paper. A 'Zombie' News Site Wants To Fill The Void

Mark Oprea

August 10, 2020 |

NPR |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Youngstown, Ohio

Mahoning Matters formed as a news site with laid-off veterans of the Youngstown Vindicator, filling part of a void in local accountability journalism in what is now the largest U.S. city without a seven-day print newspaper. Its funder, The Compass Experiment, set the startup on a three-year trajectory toward self-sustainability, an experiment that has yet to play out. Meantime, Compass successfully recruited a tiny band of Vindicator alumni, whose first stories have included unmasking the public official whose sexual misconduct compromised the management of a local police department.

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Why doctors are handing out voter registration kits

Philip Marcelo

August 10, 2020 |

Associated Press |

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Under 800 Words

Response Location: United States

Thousands of physicians and 60 hospital systems are participating in Civic Health Month, a nationwide effort to encourage voter participation. VotER has over 15,000 orders for “Healthy Democracy Kits,” which compile voter registration resources for medical professionals. Med Out the Vote is another effort focused on registering medical students to vote and dozens of universities have expressed interest in hosting head-to-head voter registration competitions with rival schools. Some don't think doctors should be involved with civic education, but others believe it is one part of treating the whole individual.

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Can the LBJ Women's Campaign School build a pipeline for women candidates?

Barbara Rodriguez

August 07, 2020 |

The 19th |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

The LBJ Women’s Campaign School at the University of Texas at Austin provides nonpartisan support for women running for political office and seeks to recruit more center-right women into the pipeline of political candidates. The inaugural class had 50 women - 33 Democrats, 12 Republicans, and 5 Independents/Other. The group was racially diverse, 58% identified as women of color, but there is room for improvement when it comes to recruiting Republican women. The LBJ program received a financial award from the Women’s Public Leadership Network, which helps center-right women get involved in politics.

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