Ashley Clarke

Taxpayer advocates, more data and a halt to license suspension over tax debt help states better serve low-income taxpayers.

Investigating inequality

What happens to students experiencing homelessness? Federal law requires that public schools assist to help break what could become an inescapable cycle of hardship. But many of the students who need that aid fall through the cracks. Read our investigation Thousands of schools are failing to identify and help homeless students, despite a federal mandate […]

What does equality mean for the “Equality State” in a modern world? Wyoming got its nickname in 1869, before it was even a state, when the territory granted women the right to vote. In the 153 years since, waves of voter suppression tactics have followed closely after societal and political gains ma…

New Mexico has steadily expanded access to voting since Democrats took control of state government in 2018, but continues to disenfranchise citizens convicted of felonies. Starting this year, people in New Mexico can register to vote up to and on Election Day. Previously, voters had to register at l…

Voting in Arkansas was made considerably more difficult by a slew of new laws last year that create stricter voter ID requirements, signature matching, a special voter fraud hotline (despite no evidence of fraud), earlier absentee voting deadlines and much more. In March, an Arkansas judge found ma…

Since 2020, Illinois has gone further than almost any other state to expand access to voting for both the overall population and some of the state’s most marginalized people. The state expanded early voting hours, made Election Day a state holiday and set a higher bar for local election officials to…

Many aspects of voting in Maine are among the most progressive in the country. It pioneered ranked-choice voting. It’s the only place besides Vermont and Washington, D.C., that guarantees voting rights for all adult citizens, regardless of criminal convictions or incarceration. It has same-day voter…

Voting in New York is a work in progress. In the past year, the state adopted a new Voting Rights Act, but its voters shot down an opportunity to make mail-in voting broadly available. In these midterms, advocates’ most pressing concern is the lack of education around unnecessarily complicated abse…

For decades, multiple Indigenous tribes in North Dakota have sued the state for infringing on their voting rights, with mixed success. In 2011, they were successful in keeping polling places open in Benson County after they were closed, and since 2013 they’ve both won and lost lawsuits over the det…