With Support from More Perfect, Votebeat Expands National Election Coverage and Expertise Ahead of 2026 Elections

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Votebeat, the nation's only nonprofit newsroom dedicated exclusively to covering how elections are run, announced a major expansion of its national reporting and expert-response capacity with support from More Perfect, a bipartisan alliance advancing five Democracy Goals, including trusted elections and access to trusted news and information.

Through this investment, Votebeat will build critical infrastructure to ensure communities across the country have access to clear, factual, nonpartisan reporting about how election systems work.  This comes at a moment when misinformation and polarization continue to undermine public trust.

"Elections don't happen in one news cycle, they happen every day in county offices, local courthouses, and state legislatures," said Carrie Levine, Votebeat's Editor in Chief. "More Perfect's support allows us to deepen our reporting and expand the trusted expertise communities rely on to understand how their elections are run."

Founded in 2020 as part of Civic News Company, Votebeat operates newsrooms in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. These are key states whose election systems shape national outcomes and public confidence in democracy. Its reporters are embedded year-round in the communities they cover, producing on-the-ground reporting, explaining complex voting procedures, and identifying emerging challenges before they escalate.

"Local election administration is where democracy is most tangible for voters, yet it's also where clear, sustained reporting is often hardest to find," said Elizabeth Green, Founder and CEO of Civic News Company. "With More Perfect's support, Votebeat can deepen its on-the-ground journalism and ensure communities across the country have access to trusted, nonpartisan reporting that helps them understand, and have confidence in, how their elections are run."

"Trusted election information is essential to American democracy, yet too many communities lack the reporting and local expertise they need," said John Bridgeland, Founder & CEO of More Perfect. "Votebeat's deeply rooted, nonpartisan journalism helps Americans in local communities understand how elections work, the checks and balances to avoid error and fraud, and how they can engage in the process. More Perfect is proud to support this critical work during a defining moment for our country."

With support from More Perfect and its partners, Votebeat plans to significantly grow its national newsroom in preparation for the 2026 elections. Already, Votebeat has brought on a new managing editor, Nathaniel Rakich, formerly of FiveThirtyEight, to guide its five state bureaus and help scale its real-time Elections Experts Desk into a permanent national resource. It will also hire an additional national reporter to track federal voting policy, legal battles, and cross-state trends, connecting local reporting to the broader national landscape. Together, these expanded capacities are designed to produce 100 national stories, nearly doubling the previous year's output, and achieving 225 documented measures of reporting influence.

This project, along with several others, advances More Perfect's Democracy Goal 4: Trusted Elections and More Representative & Responsive Governance and Democracy Goal 5: Access to Trusted News and Information, which aims to ensure Americans have confidence in the democratic system's ability to serve communities effectively and fairly.

About More Perfect
More Perfect is a bipartisan alliance of 43 Presidential Centers, National Archives Foundation, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia, and more than 100 organizations working together to advance five Democracy Goals: 1) Universal Civic Learning; 2) Expanding National Service and Volunteering; 3) Bridging Divides; 4) Trusted Elections and More Representative and Responsive Governance; and 5) Access to Trusted News and Information.

About Civic News Company and Votebeat
Civic News Company is the publisher of nonprofit newsrooms Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and Healthbeat. With 15 local newsrooms across the United States regarded as must-reads by their communities and a team of award-winning journalists and media executives, Civic News Company is a leading model to address the crisis in local news. Civic News Company strengthens its communities with journalism that is rooted in local needs and subject matter expertise. Its reporting covers the critical, day-to-day work and life experiences of the people who fight to improve education, voting, and public health outcomes and the people affected by that work.

In October 2020, the Chalkbeat team launched Votebeat, a pop-up newsroom designed to provide independent, nonpartisan coverage of election integrity. The effort was powered by on-the-ground reporters covering local election administration in eight priority states. After the success of the pop-up, Votebeat launched as a permanent newsroom in May 2022. Votebeat currently serves five states – Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin – and also has a national desk.

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SOURCE More Perfect