Matt Vasilogambros | Stateline.org (TNS)

In April, Wisconsin joined 27 other states that have banned or restricted local governments’ use of private donations to run cash-strapped election offices, buy voting equipment or hire poll workers for Election Day.

All of the state laws came in the past four years, pushed by conservative lawmakers and activists who claim that Democratic voters disproportionately benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in grants primarily funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, during the 2020 presidential election.

Courts and federal regulators have rejected those claims, but the debate over the role of outside money reveals a broader worry among election experts, who say there are significant shortcomings in local government funding of election offices. That includes not just Election Day duties and vote counting, but also the year-round administrative work of maintaining voter rolls and taking care of and updating voting equipment.

Local municipal budgets are tight, and they vary depending on the tax base. It can be hard to justify a new ballot-counting machine when there are potholes to fix or schools to fund.

The ongoing funding uncertainty is untenable, said Tammy Patrick, the chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. Election officials need to have consistent funding to know they can replace outdated equipment and provide a secure and efficient voting experience, she said.

“Ultimately and ideally, we wouldn’t need to run such a critical function of our democracy relying on volunteers or donations,” said Patrick, who is leading a national initiative to promote election funding. “Everyone wants our elections to be secure, accessible, legitimate. And in order to have that, we have to support our election administrators.”

Funding democracy

Counting ballots at 2:30 a.m. on election night in 2020, Dusty Farmer, the election clerk of Oshtemo Township, Michigan, realized she should have chosen a high-speed ballot tabulator.

When Michigan voters amended the state constitution in 2018 to allow for voting absentee without having to provide an excuse to officials, the number of mail-in ballots shot up and townships had to find a way to process those new ballots. Farmer opted for the less expensive, slower ballot processors.

After two years of lobbying her local board, she was able to secure the $40,000 high-speed counting machines last year — a “big investment” ahead of the 2024 election, she said.

“This isn’t a situation where we can just overcome it with pure grit and buck up and get it done,” Farmer said. “We need the tools to get it done.”

Money from Congress has been limited. This year, congressional leaders agreed to provide $55 million in election grant funding for states to distribute locally. That is around as much as Los Angeles County alone spent conducting a gubernatorial recall election in 2021.

State and local election officials could breathe easier about some of the cybersecurity challenges if they had more funding from Congress, Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said to a room of fellow secretaries of state at a Washington, D.C., meeting in February.

“This is an unfunded federal mandate, the only part of our critical infrastructure that does not have sustained federal funding,” he said.

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State money for elections varies widely. Lawmakers in some states do not allocate any of their budget to local election officials. In many cases, states just distribute federal grants for improving election security or as reimbursement for new equipment. Often, however, states hold onto federal grants dollars because they are unsure when the next installment from Congress might come.

Other states do allocate some local election funding in their budgets, but often not at a level that would allow for major equipment replacement, said Matthew Weil, executive director of the Democracy Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a D.C.-based think tank.

States such as Alabama, Colorado, Hawaii and Louisiana also reimburse localities for a portion of elections where statewide candidates are on the ballot, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Alaska and Delaware pay for all expenses of state and federal elections, while other states will pay for statewide special elections or presidential primary elections.

Funding elections mostly at the local level is not the model that is going to work for the future, Weil said.

But asking state governments to use their limited budgets on election equipment is politically tough, he added; it’s hard to cut a ribbon on a new $100 million voting system. Local governments spend as much on elections as they do to maintain parking facilities, according to a report by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in 2021.

“I don’t necessarily disagree with banning private funding in elections,” Weil said. “But that does require that counties, states and the federal government step up and fund elections at the levels they need to provide the services that voters have come to expect.”

Banning private money in elections

Four years ago, as thousands of Americans died every day during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, local election officials hurriedly prepared for the 2020 presidential election, not knowing whether they had the money needed to allow voters to safely cast a ballot and for their staff to safely count those votes.

Foreseeing a democratic disaster, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a Chicago-based nonprofit, used $350 million from Zuckerberg and Chan to hand out grants to nearly 2,500 local election offices across 49 states.

Local clerks, like Robin Cleveland of Williamstown Township, Michigan, used that money to buy personal protective equipment, pay and train temporary election workers, and run voter education campaigns.

The $5,000 private grant was essential for getting “desperately needed” supplies for her small community east of Lansing, Cleveland said. Though she feels supported by her township board, she has not been able to pay election workers more competitive wages nor replace “ancient” equipment — except in 2018, when she got a federal grant for new ballot tabulators.

“Basically, the money has to come from somewhere if we’re going to have safe, secure and accurate elections,” she wrote to Stateline in an email about private grants.

In Wisconsin, more than 200 communities received a collective $10 million in private grants. Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee and Racine — the state’s most populous cities — received 86% of that money, according to a report by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative litigation group that supported the ballot question to ban private donations for election administration. Those five cities accounted for nearly 18% of the state’s total registered voters.

It was important to prevent outside groups from potentially dictating terms for grants or giving the impression that the money is helping a certain political party, said Rick Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

“It creates an appearance of impropriety, and it undermines confidence in the outcome of the election,” he said. “Elections are a public function that have to be undertaken with scrupulous neutrality.”

Esenberg doesn’t think elections are underfunded. If local election officials feel like they need more money, he said, they should go to their state legislature.

Voters approved the state’s new constitutional amendment by more than 54%.

Of the 28 states that have now enacted bans, only Pennsylvania supplemented its measure with more election funding. In 2022, then-Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law the compromise measure, which invested$45 million in local elections.

‘A total lifeline’

Before Wisconsin’s ban went into effect, Cities Forward, a nonprofit based in the state, awarded an$800,000 grant to Milwaukee for new ballot tabulators, text messaging services to reach voters and polling place upgrades. Madison was also able to spend$1.5 million from Center for Tech and Civic Life and U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence grants before the ban went into place.

The need hasn’t dissipated, said Tiana Epps-Johnson, founder and executive director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, the nonprofit that drew conservative ire. Election officials need equipment, such as fast-counting ballot processing machines, to prevent delays in results that can fuel misinformation, she said.

“We hear from election officials in every corner of the country who are severely underfunded,” she said. “Right now, election officials run the risk of having equipment that is not up to the task of the demand that they’re going to see from voters this fall.”

Although the Center for Tech and Civic Life is not issuing grants this election cycle, it is a founding partner of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, which has been distributing money to local offices in states that allow it in the years since the last presidential election.

Macoupin County, Illinois, a downstate farming community halfway between St. Louis and Springfield, recently received a $500,000 grant to create a new early voting center — an amount equivalent to two years of the county’s election budget.

The voting center, which opened in January, is in a building that used to house an insurance agency and law office. It sits across the street from the courthouse, where early voters used to have to cast ballots in cramped hallways, next to people waiting for their court dates. Election equipment was stored under staircases in a hallway or in the boiler room.

“It was a total lifeline that otherwise never would have happened,” said Pete Duncan, the county clerk. “While we would love for it to have been federal or state funding that came in to help get this accomplished, that’s just not something that the feds or states are interested in doing.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Unlikely pop star Billie Eilish will return to St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center for a two-night stand on Nov. 10 and 11. The massive world tour currently has 82 dates scheduled to run through July 2025.

Tickets go on sale for the Nov. 10 show at noon Friday followed by the Nov. 11 show at 1 p.m. Friday through Ticketmaster. American Express cardholders have access to a presale that runs from 1 p.m. Tuesday through 11 a.m. Friday. Neither the promoter nor the venue announced prices.

In an effort to thwart scalpers, the tour is using Ticketmaster’s Face Value Exchange, where fans can only resell tickets at face value. All tickets will be mobile only and restricted from transfer.

Eilish, 22, was born into an entertainment family, as both her parents are actors and musicians. Eilish and her older brother Finneas were both homeschooled and encouraged by their parents to explore songwriting. She penned her first song, inspired by the zombie TV series “The Walking Dead,” at age 11.

In 2015, Eilish released the song “Ocean Eyes” online and soon earned record label interest. The song later went triple platinum in the States and found success around the world. She has since issued more than 30 singles, many finding a similar reception, including “Bad Guy,” “Everything I Wanted,” “Therefore I Am” and “Happier than Ever.”

Despite her odd, downbeat songs and whispered (and/or mumbled) vocals, Eilish has also been embraced by the music industry. At the 2020 Grammy Awards, Eilish became the youngest (and second ever after Christopher Cross in 1981) to win the four major categories — best new artist and record, album and song of the year — on the same night. After further wins in 2021 and 2024, Eilish now has a total of nine Grammys. She also won best original song Oscars for her James Bond theme “No Time to Die” and “What Was I Made For?” from the “Barbie” soundtrack.

Eilish made her Twin Cities concert debut in April 2018 when she sold out 7th Street Entry. The following summer, she pulled off the same feat in the much-larger Armory and drew nearly 15,000 fans to her March 2022 debut at the X.

“Hit Me Hard and Soft,” Eilish’s third album, is due out May 17. For the tour, she is focusing on sustainability and is continuing her longtime relationship with environmental nonprofit Reverb, to which she’ll donate a portion of proceeds from ticket sales. She’s also encouraging fans to carpool or take public transportation to her concerts and to wear thrifted or borrowed clothing rather than purchasing new. Fans are also invited to bring an empty reusable water bottle as there will be free refill stations at the venue.

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Aaron Bolton, MTPR | KFF Health News (TNS)

KALISPELL, Mont. — On a cold February morning at the Flathead Warming Center, Tashya Evans waited for help with her Medicaid application as others at the shelter got ready for the day in this northwestern Montana city.

Evans said she lost Medicaid coverage in September because she hadn’t received paperwork after moving from Great Falls, Montana. She has had to forgo the blood pressure medication she can no longer pay for since losing coverage. She has also had to put off needed dental work.

“The teeth broke off. My gums hurt. There’s some times where I’m not feeling good, I don’t want to eat,” she said.

Evans is one of about 130,000 Montanans who have lost Medicaid coverage as the state reevaluates everyone’s eligibility following a pause in disenrollments during the COVID-19 pandemic. About two-thirds of those who were kicked off state Medicaid rolls lost coverage for technical reasons, such as incorrectly filling out paperwork. That’s one of the highest procedural disenrollment rates in the nation, according to a KFF analysis.

Even unsheltered people like Evans are losing their coverage, despite state officials saying they would automatically renew people who should still qualify by using Social Security and disability data.

As other guests filtered out of the shelter that February morning, Evans sat down in a spare office with an application counselor from Greater Valley Health Clinic, which serves much of the homeless population here, and recounted her struggle to reenroll.

She said that she had asked for help at the state public assistance office, but that the staff didn’t have time to answer her questions about which forms she needed to fill out or to walk her through the paperwork. She tried the state’s help line, but couldn’t get through.

“You just get to the point where you’re like, ‘I’m frustrated right now. I just have other things that are more important, and let’s not deal with it,’” she said.

Evans has a job and spends her free time finding a place to sleep since she doesn’t have housing. Waiting on the phone most of the day isn’t feasible.

Tashya Evans waits outside the Flathead Warming Center, a low-barrier shelter in Kalispell, Montana, on March 5, 2024. Evans had just finished work in time to join the line for a bed that evening. (Aaron Bolton/MTPR/TNS)

There’s no public data on how many unhoused people in Montana or nationwide have lost Medicaid, but homeless service providers and experts say it’s a big problem.

Those assisting unsheltered people who have lost coverage say they spend much of their time helping people contact the Montana Medicaid office. Sorting through paperwork mistakes is also a headache, said Crystal Baker, a case manager at HRDC, a homeless shelter in Bozeman.

“We’re getting mail that’s like, ‘Oh, this needs to be turned in by this date,’ and that’s already two weeks past. So, now we have to start the process all over again,” she said. “Now, they have to wait two to three months without insurance.”

Montana health officials told NPR and KFF Health News in a statement that they provided training to help homeless service agencies prepare their clients for redetermination.

Federal health officials have warned Montana and some other conservative states against disenrolling high rates of people for technicalities, also known as procedural disenrollment. They also warned states about unreasonable barriers to accessing help, such as long hold times on help lines. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said if states don’t reduce the rate of procedural disenrollments, the agency could force them to halt their redetermination process altogether. So far, CMS hasn’t taken that step.

Charlie Brereton, the director of the Montana health department, resisted calls from Democratic state lawmakers to pause the redetermination process. Redetermination ended in January, four months ahead of the federal deadline.

“I’m confident in our redetermination process,” Brereton told lawmakers in December. “I do believe that many of the Medicaid members who’ve been disenrolled were disenrolled correctly.

Health industry observers say that both liberal-leaning and conservative-leaning states are kicking homeless people off their rolls and that the redetermination process has been chaotic everywhere. Because of the barriers that unsheltered people face, it’s easy for them to fall through the cracks.

Margot Kushel, a physician and a homeless researcher at the University of California-San Francisco, said it may not seem like a big deal to fill out paperwork. But, she said, “put yourself in the position of an elder experiencing homelessness,” especially those without access to a computer, phone, or car.

If they still qualify, people can usually get their Medicaid coverage renewed — eventually — and it may reimburse patients retroactively for care received while they were unenrolled.

Kushel said being without Medicaid for any period can be particularly dangerous for people who are homeless. This population tends to have high rates of chronic health conditions.

“Being out of your asthma medicine for three days can be life-threatening. If you have high blood pressure and you suddenly stop your medicine, your blood pressure shoots up, and your risk of having a heart attack goes way up,” she said.

When people don’t understand why they’re losing coverage or how to get it back, that erodes their trust in the medical system, Kushel said.

Evans, the homeless woman, was able to get help with her application and is likely to regain coverage.

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Agencies that serve unhoused people said it could take years to get everyone who lost coverage back on Medicaid. They worry that those who go without coverage will resort to using the emergency room rather than managing their health conditions proactively.

Baker, the case manager at the Bozeman shelter, set up several callbacks from the state Medicaid office for one client. The state needed to interview him to make sure he still qualified, but the state never called.

“He waited all day long. By the fifth time, it was so stressful for him, he just gave up,” she said.

That client ended up leaving the Bozeman area before Baker could convince him it was worth trying to regain Medicaid.

Baker worries his poor health will catch up with him before he decides to try again.

(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

CHICAGO — The Twins landed in Chicago on Sunday night riding high on a seven-game winning streak that has helped turn their season around dramatically.

Things got even better for them on Monday when they got their star shortstop back from the injured list. Carlos Correa had been among their most productive hitters when he strained his right intercostal muscle on April 12 in Detroit. The injury kept him out for the past 16 games.

The Twins initially feared he was out with an oblique strain when he was clutching his right side after a strikeout, but they soon got news that the injury was to his intercostal, which had a shorter recovery time period.

Correa traveled with the team to Anaheim, where he took infield reps at shortstop and batting practice on the field for the first time in preparation for his return.

At the time of his injury, Correa was hitting .306 with a .876 OPS during his first 11 games of the season, one of the only members of the lineup that was productive during the early days of April.

Martin optioned

To make room on the roster for Correa, the Twins opted to send down rookie Austin Martin rather than infielder Jose Miranda. Martin was primarily playing a mix of center field and left field, although appeared at second base during part of one game.

A day earlier, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli praised Martin’s approach at the plate after he battled back from 0-2 to a full count and then singled in a pair of runs on the seventh pitch of his at-bat.

“To be doing things like that at the major league level, normally there’s an adjustment period and normally young players come in super aggressive just swinging at a lot of pitches and not having a plan,” Baldelli said. “He has a good plan and he knows what he’s trying to do and he stays within himself. He can really work an at-bat in a way that it looks like a veteran player in the way that he does it.”

With Correa back, the Twins can now start shifting Willi Castro, who was his primary replacement at shortstop, back to the outfield, if they choose.

Miranda is hitting .292 with a .820 OPS and two home runs in 16 games. Miranda, who could see some time at third base, first base and DH, entered Monday with seven hits in his past three games.