April 17, 2024
Your Guide to Pennsylvania’s Primaries
From Congress to the legislature, these are the 15 primaries to watch next week.
April 10, 2024
Beyond Crimmigration
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Learn about State Courts
Your State-by-State Guide to Every State Supreme Court
Bolts breaks down the structure, selection procedures, and functions of each state’s highest court.
Learn About Election Administration
Who Counts Our Elections?
Who are the local and state officials who are responsible for counting, canvassing, and certifying elections?
In 2024, Politics Is Local
Bolts covers the nuts and bolts of power and political change, from the local up. We report on the places, people, and policies that shape public policy. We focus on criminal justice and voting rights, and delve further in our vertical What’s on the Ballot.
Rights Restoration
Kentucky Activists Step In to Deliver on the Promise of Voting Rights Restoration
After the governor restored hundreds of thousands of people’s rights in 2019, a coalition led by formerly incarcerated Kentuckians is working to inform people of their rights.
Direct Democracy
‘We Have a Right to Put It on the Ballot’: How Organizers Are Defending Direct Democracy
Bolts invited three organizers in Arkansas, Idaho, and Ohio for a roundtable to discuss the attacks on ballot initiatives they are each fighting in their states, and lessons they’ve learned.
Voter Registration
Michigan Law Is First to Automatically Register People to Vote As They Leave Prison
The legislature passed a bill that will also expand automatic voter registration in other ways, including applying it at Medicaid offices, and likely add many new Michiganders to voter rolls.
Criminal justice and local politics
Voting in Vermont
Refugee Organizing Helps Spur Noncitizen Voting in Vermont Cities
Three Vermont cities now allow all residents with legal status to vote in local elections, giving them a voice in everything from school boards to the structure of their municipal government.
Policing in Chicago
“I’m Just Another Traffic Stop”
Chicago built a new police team to rebuild community trust. It harassed drivers of color instead.
Parole in Alabama
In Alabama, an “Out of Control Board” Cuts Chances for Parole
After pressure from the governor and attorney general, denials from Alabama’s parole board have skyrocketed, blocking a key mechanism for release from the state’s overcrowded prisons.
Abortion rights
The 2023 Elections
Long ReadS
May 5, 2022
A Future for Susanville
Plans to shutter a California prison offer halting glimpses of a different world: an economy that doesn’t revolve around incarceration, a country where losing your job isn’t tantamount to ruin, and an opening for abolition.
June 29, 2023
“Just an Opportunity to Come Home”
Illinois, Minnesota, and New Mexico this year abolished sentences of life without parole for juveniles. Now comes the hard part.