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Wild Hornets: Kyjiw (ots) - Nach Angaben von Wild Hornets führt die Abfangdrohne Sting die Statistik der in der Ukraine abgeschossenen Shahed-Drohnen an. Die ukrainischen Streitkräfte haben im Laufe eines Jahres mit der Hochgeschwindigkeits-Abfangdrohne Sting ...

Lidl: Bad Wimpfen (ots) - Lidl in Deutschland sichert sich wieder Top-Platzierungen bei den renommierten "V-Label-Awards" der Ernährungsorganisation ProVeg*: Die pflanzenbasierte Eigenmarkenlinie "Vemondo" erhält erneut den übergeordneten ...

KfW: Frankfurt am Main (ots) - - Mittelständler und Großunternehmen berichten über einfachere Kreditverhandlungen als im Vorquartal - Banken sind aber weiterhin überdurchschnittlich restriktiv - Großunternehmen zeigen wieder mehr Kreditinteresse, ...

RTLZWEI: München (ots) - - Reality-Neulinge treffen auf alte Hasen - erste Machtspiele beginnen - Kevin Njie sorgt für Eifersucht bei Julia Römmelt - "Der Promihof" ab dem 29. Oktober um 22:15 Uhr bei RTLZWEI und sieben Tage vorab auf RTL+ Gummistiefel ...

Cofinpro AG: Frankfurt (ots) - Deutschlands Finanzinstitute möchten unabhängiger von großen Technologieanbietern werden. 82 Prozent finden, Banken sollten dafür sogar höhere Kosten in Kauf nehmen. Auf Komfort oder Funktionen würden hingegen nur 52 Prozent ...

«Die Tribute von Panem»-Fans dürfen sich freuen: Katniss Everdeen kehrt in Originalbesetzung zurück.

Les survivants de l'accident ferroviaire survenu mercredi dans la province de Tolède ont fait part de leur choc, de leur panique et de leur colère.

Ratgeber Stiftung: Langenfeld (ots) - Unternehmer wollen ihr Lebenswerk sichern und ihr Vermögen über Generationen erhalten. Doch die Diskussion um die Erbschaftsteuer und die Verfahren vor dem Bundesverfassungsgericht sorgen für Unsicherheit. Immer häufiger ...

Heid Immobilienbewertung & Immobiliengutachter sowie Sachverständigen GmbH: Walldorf (ots) - Die Immobilienpreise in Deutschland steigen wieder leicht: Im ersten Quartal 2026 lagen sie durchschnittlich 1,4 Prozent über dem Vorjahresniveau. Doch daraus lässt sich kaum ableiten, was das eigene Haus heute tatsächlich wert ...

Fort du succès de l’événement lancé en 2025 portant sur le sens des multiples teintes dont se parent le travail et le mouvement social, le musée de l’Histoire vivante prolonge l’expérience avec une nouvelle édition dont « l’Humanité » est partenaire. Une façon de « raconter l’histoire de la République et de la nation », rappelle Thomas Le Goff, directeur du musée.

À six mois de la présidentielle, Emmanuel Macron a dénoncé, mercredi, une "désinhibition du racisme" du Rassemblement national et une "désinhibition de l'antisémitisme" de La France insoumise. Après l'attentat "terroriste raciste" perpétré à Trappes, qui a coûté la vie à un Français d'origine africaine, le président a appelé à un "sursaut".

Már legkevesebb 64 halottja van a spanyolországi Urda település közelében szerdán történt vasúti szerencsétlenségnek – közölte Emiliano García Page, Kasztília-La Mancha tartományi elnöke újságírónak nyilatkozva a baleset helyszínén.

Tájékoztatása szerint a holttestek kiemelése még nem fejeződött be, keresőkutyák segítségével kutatnak az áldozatok után a roncsok között.

Mérhetetlen tragédiának nevezet a balesetet, amely mélyen megrázta az egész régiót.

A balesetben több mint 80-an megsérültek, közülük 58-an kerültek eddig kórházba, 15-en súlyos állapotban.

Az áldozatok többsége az Iryo társaság nagysebességű járatán utazott, amelybe belerohant a spanyol állami vasúttársaság (Renfe) nagysebességű vonata Madrid és Sevilla között. A két járaton több mint 500-an utaztak.

Óscar Puente közlekedési miniszter sajtótájékoztatóján elmondta: reggel informatikai hiba miatt leállt az automatikus vezérlőrendszer egy 63 kilométeres szakaszon Toledo megyében, ezért az ott haladó vonatok is megálltak. A rendszer felügyeletét a madridi Atocha pályaudvaron működő irányítóközpont vette át, és útnak indította a Renfe járatát, miközben az Iryo járata a vágányon vesztegelt.

„Ez egy olyan döntés, amely megmagyarázhatatlan körülmények között született” – jelentette ki, hozzátéve, hogy a baleset miatti felelőséget a most indult vizsgálat állapítja majd meg.

A miniszterelnöki hivatal közölte: Pedro Sánchez kormányfő a nap folyamán tragédia helyszínére utazik, hogy személyesen tájékozódjon a történtekről.

Andalúzia tartomány autonóm kormánya háromnapos hivatalos gyászt rendelt el a régióban a szerencsétlenség miatt.

Spanyolországban 1992 óta közlekednek nagysebességű vonatok, azóta ez volt a harmadik halálos kimenetelű baleset.

A első, és az eddig legsúlyosabb baleset 2013-ban történt Santiago de Compostela közelében, amelyben 80 ember vesztette életét, és több mint százan megsérültek. A legutóbbi, idén januárban bekövetkezett szerencsétlenségben januárban 46-an haltak meg Córdoba közelében.

Fotó: Getty Images

MTI

Halálos vasúti szerencsétlenség történt Spanyolországban

The post Már több mint 60 halottja van a spanyolországi vasúti szerencsétlenségnek appeared first on Kárpátalja.ma.

SOS-Kinderdorf-Stiftung: München (ots) - Ob Online-Shopping, In-App-Käufe oder Werbung in sozialen Netzwerken: Kinder und Jugendliche kommen heute früh mit Konsum und Kaufentscheidungen in Berührung. Umso wichtiger ist es, dass sie lernen, bewusst mit Geld umzugehen. ...

Vitalent: Vitalent: Hamburger Matching-Plattform besetzt Stellen im Gesundheitswesen schneller und risikoärmer Bis 2035 könnten im deutschen Gesundheitswesen laut einer Prognose von PwC rund 1,8 Millionen Stellen unbesetzt bleiben. Praxen, Pflegedienste ...

Vitalent: Vitalent: Personalvermittlung im Gesundheitswesen nur im Erfolgsfall Mehrere Tausend Euro investiert, und nach drei Monaten ist die Stelle wieder frei: Diese Sorge kennen viele Inhaber und Geschäftsführer im Gesundheitswesen. Die Hamburger ...

EPSON Deutschland GmbH: Düsseldorf (ots) - - Deutsche Schulen haben in die Einführung von digitalen Medien und Anwendungen investiert, aber sich nicht ausreichend mit dem Lernnutzen beschäftigt - 59 % der befragten Lehrkräfte und 67 % der IT-Verantwortlichen geben an, ...

Dans Nos vies sauvages, la romancière camerounaise Hemley Boum tresse des vies de femmes prises dans les rets d’une dictature, où les révolutions étouffées refont néanmoins surface. En lice pour le Renaudot.

Mali Actu - maliactu.net - Mali Actualités, Les Actus et Informations sur le Mali
Mali Actu
Mali : L’AJSM se qualifie pour les demi-finales de la Coupe ASSEP dans un esprit de concorde

L’Association des journalistes sportifs du Mali (AJSM) a validé, le dimanche 25 octobre 2026, son billet pour le dernier carré de la première édition de…

Mali : L’AJSM se qualifie pour les demi-finales de la Coupe ASSEP dans un esprit de concorde
Mali Actu :
Mali : L’AJSM se qualifie pour les demi-finales de la Coupe ASSEP dans un esprit de concorde

By CIVICUS
Oct 29 2026 (IPS)

 
CIVICUS discusses voter suppression ahead of the USA’s 2026 midterm elections with Aklima Khondoker, an Atlanta-based civil and voting rights attorney, civil society organisation executive and founder and principal of Atabey Strategies, a consultancy firm that advises civil society organisations on democracy and electoral participation.

Aklima Khondoker

On 14 September, the US Supreme Court maintained a freeze on the postal ballot provisions of Donald Trump’s March 2026 executive order, meaning they won’t apply in the November midterms. This was the latest setback to Trump’s efforts to manipulate the election. Since January 2025, Trump has pardoned around 1,500 people charged over the 2021 Capitol attack and placed 2020 election deniers in election security roles. The administration has ordered voters to show documentary proof of citizenship to register, and the Justice Department has sued 30 states for their voter rolls. Courts have blocked the citizenship requirement and dismissed most of these lawsuits.

How is the Trump administration changing the way elections are run?

President Trump has called for ‘nationalising’ elections, which means centralising election control within the federal government, giving his administration more control over who can vote, who receives a mail ballot and how election officials do their jobs. Trump is using the federal government to upend how elections are run. His March 2026 executive order required federal agencies to compile citizenship lists for states and instructed the Justice Department to prioritise investigations of election officials who issue ballots to people deemed ineligible. The order also directed the Postal Service to develop new mail ballot rules, including a federal enrolment system that could determine whether a voter’s postal ballot is delivered. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has demanded state voter data. The administration says these measures protect election integrity. Yet integrity requires accurate records and fair administration free of political pressure. Using disputed data to question eligible voters and threatening officials with investigation can undermine both and risk wrongful exclusion.

This creates serious constitutional tensions. The Constitution assigns states responsibility for running elections and gives Congress, not the president, the power to change the rules by law. The Supreme Court has allowed parts of the executive order to take effect on procedural grounds, without ruling on their legality. However, it has blocked the new postal ballot rules from applying in the midterms.

Democracy depends on people being able to register, get clear information and cast a ballot that will count. Rights can be hollowed out one procedure at a time, each change defended as technical or necessary, until they survive in name only. Erosion of this kind works like a slow boil, making each new restriction feel ordinary. A safeguard is weakened here, a group pushed to the margins there. The danger is that the rest of us grow accustomed to the heat and call it normal, while power moves further from the public it’s meant to serve.

What does the Supreme Court’s ruling on postal ballot deadlines mean for the midterms?

It means states can keep counting mail ballots that arrive after election day as long as they were posted on time. The case concerned Mississippi, one of several states that allow this, which gives ballots up to five business days to arrive. The Republican National Committee and the Libertarian Party of Mississippi argued that federal law requires ballots to be received by election day. Had the Supreme Court agreed, all these grace periods could have fallen, and the practical effect would have been to discard eligible voters’ ballots because of postal delays beyond their control. That’s voter suppression in practice.

But the ruling leaves states free to set their own rules and doesn’t require any state to offer a grace period, so voters face different deadlines depending on where they live. Someone can post a ballot on time and still be caught out by postal delays or other barriers. And voting by mail matters. The pandemic showed its value by letting people vote without in-person exposure, and many voters with disabilities still depend on it.

To be clear, postal voting is safe. For over two decades, Oregon has mailed ballots to active registered voters, who can return them by mail or drop box. From 2000 to 2019, around 61 million ballots were cast there and there were only 38 criminal convictions for voter fraud. In Georgia, amid the Trump campaign’s fraud claims after the 2020 election, a Republican-led audit of a random sample of 15,118 absentee ballot envelopes found no fraudulent ballots. Years of investigations have not substantiated claims of widespread or outcome-changing mail ballot fraud.

What pressure do election officials face from federal authorities?

They face federal demands, on tight deadlines and under threat of legal action, to withhold the ballots of voters whose citizenship is questioned. In California, the Justice Department gave officials 48 hours to review a list of voters on a password-protected drive, without disclosing how many people were on it. It demanded that ballots not yet sent to these voters be withheld until their citizenship was confirmed and that returned ballots be set aside if officials couldn’t verify it. It threatened emergency legal action if they didn’t comply.

The task involves far more than a database search. Officials must check whether records are accurate, coordinate across state and county offices and protect eligible voters’ ballots, all as the election approaches. California has 23.16 million registered voters. Los Angeles County alone had about 5.89 million in its June primary, in which over 80 per cent of ballots were cast by mail. Days after the vote, the county still had around 355,000 mail ballots to process. That’s the ordinary work. The 48-hour deadline lands on top of it.

Election workers also pay a personal price. After the 2020 election, some were falsely accused of fraud, treated as political enemies and subjected to racist threats.

Which voters are most likely to be shut out?

Those asked to spend the most time, money or effort proving they belong at the ballot box are the most likely to be excluded, including Black voters and those from other communities of colour, Native voters, people with disabilities, naturalised citizens caught in record mismatches and people with felony convictions. Exclusion doesn’t always arrive with a sign saying ‘you can’t vote’. It can come as an inaccessible polling place, an address that doesn’t match the one on an ID, a database error or a confusing deadline.

This kind of exclusion has a long history. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution promised Black men the vote. But after Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War, southern states used discriminatory laws, grandfather clauses, literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation and violence to push newly enfranchised Black voters out of political life. While today’s barriers are not a replay of the Jim Crow era, that history shows how administrative rules can produce profoundly unequal consequences.

Eligible citizens whose records are incomplete or outdated, including naturalised citizens, risk being wrongly flagged as ineligible. If their citizenship can’t be confirmed quickly, their ballot may be withheld while they face a rushed demand to prove they belong. That can cost them their vote, and it can deter other eligible voters from taking part. The danger is real enough that on 9 October, a federal judge struck down as unlawful a Justice Department policy of cross-checking voter rolls against federal records, citing the risk that outdated federal records could mark eligible citizens as ineligible.

In 2024, an estimated four million Americans were barred from voting because of a felony conviction. Around 40 per cent had served their full sentences but still could not vote. This is ‘civil death’. People who live in a community, raise families and work alongside their neighbours have no say in the decisions that govern their lives.

Accessibility also determines whether voters with disabilities can participate independently and safely. In a national study of the 2020 election, 18 per cent of voters with disabilities who voted in person reported difficulty, compared with five per cent of those who voted by mail.

The representatives voters choose make decisions on the cost of living, education, healthcare and the future of democracy itself. When the people most affected by those decisions face the hardest path to the ballot, their interests become easier to ignore.

How is civil society protecting voting rights ahead of the midterms?

Civil society groups make a constitutional right reachable. They translate changing rules into clear guidance, connect voters with legal help, monitor the process, document problems and challenge unlawful barriers. Most voters will never read a court filing or an election observation report, but they may call a hotline because their name is not on the rolls, ask a volunteer what to do when a ballot is challenged or rely on a trained observer to document what happened at a polling place.

The Election Protection coalition brings together over 300 local, state-level and national organisations, and its trained volunteers help voters by phone or text. Observers witness and document the process so public confidence rests on evidence, not rumour.

Around the world, civil society groups are often among the first to document exclusion and defend civic space when governments restrict it. Contexts differ, but the lesson travels: participation does not protect itself. It takes organised people, acting together, to make sure that voters are heard.

What safeguards are needed to protect votes?

Safeguards begin with adequately funded election offices, clear rules announced well in advance, accessible ways to vote, and fair notice and time to fix registration problems. The right to vote means little if a voter can’t reach the polling place, understand the instructions, correct a registration error or get help without fear. Voter roll maintenance, which federal law requires to be uniform and non-discriminatory, should protect eligible voters from wrongful removal instead of leaving them scrambling to prove they belong.

Vote counting must also be transparent, with documented ballot handling, open audits and clear public explanations of the process. Voters, election workers and those who help people vote must be protected from intimidation and threats. The Voting Rights Act, the landmark law against racial discrimination in voting, must be strengthened and fully enforced. Its protections must cover every stage at which someone can be denied the vote or an equal voice, including registering, casting a ballot and having it counted. They must also guarantee language access and assistance for voters who need them. These safeguards are how we stop a slow erosion of rights from becoming a democratic rupture.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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SEE ALSO
Democracy: an enduring aspiration CIVICUS | State of Civil Society Report 2026
US democracy under siege CIVICUS Lens 20.May.2026
USA: ‘The challenges have never been greater, but civil society’s capacity to respond has never been higher’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Lauren Prather 05.May.2026

 

 

 

 

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