Votebeat is the only news outlet in America that exclusively reports on elections and voting at the local level. It’s journalists are more concerned with the process of elections—as opposed to candidates or campaigns—and keep up with their reporting in off-years when other outlets move on to other topics. “That is a key strength of ours,” says Chad Lorenz, the nonprofit newsroom’s editor-in-chief. “The reason we do that is because the policy setting and the debates about voting happen year-round.”
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Votebeat initially launched as a pop-up newsroom for a few months during the 2020 election—and published almost 200 articles with local news partners. The site reemerged as a permanent outlet in May 2022, at a time when few newsrooms devote major resources to the nitty-gritty of how elections work. Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news outlet that covers local education issues, raised more than $3 million to start the spin-off venture. The nonprofit model allows Votebeat to rely more on donors and less on ad revenue. That’s what drew Lorenz in: the focus on public service over clicks. Votebeat’s stories are available for free and can be re-published by local and national news outlets.
Votebeat’s reporters largely focus on threats to elections and the staff that runs them. That involves keeping tabs on constantly changing rules around voting and ballots, while also working to thwart misinformation even before it arises. “A lot of our stories provide a pre-bunking effect,” says Lorenz, who previously worked for Slate and The Washington Post. If readers already know about how elections work when they come across false claims, they will already be equipped with healthy skepticism, he adds.
After Votebeat’s more formal launch in 2022, it put a particular focus on a few states, including Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas, with reporters diving deep into restrictive voting laws and problems with election worker attrition. Votebeat aims to eventually have a presence in all 50 states.
Votebeat’s reporting is already making an impact. Its stories have helped spur changes in law and policy. After Votebeat reporter Natalia Contreras led a project on how the voting choices of some voters in Texas could be identified through public data, the state’s top election official issued an emergency guidance and a coalition of advocacy groups formally requested a Justice Department investigation.
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