Kira Lerner

Journalist

A selection of my best and most impactful reporting:

States Newsroom

Criminalizing the vote: GOP-led states enacted 102 new election penalties after 2020, 7/14/2022
Election officials risk criminal charges under 31 new GOP-imposed penalties, 7/15/2022
Candidates fighting 2020 misinformation run to administer local elections, 12/23/2021
Florida gave voting rights to people with felony convictions. Now some face charges for voting, 4/29/2022

‘They don’t include Native voices’: tribes fight to ensure their votes count, 10/2/2021
Scores of US poll workers tested positive for Covid over election period, 12/7/2020

For The First Time, D.C. Is Letting People Vote From Prison, 10/28/2020
Local Officials Thought Their Elections Were Threatened by a Pandemic. Actually, It Was Something Worse, 11/2/2020
The Real Reason Trump’s Lawsuits Disproportionately Target Black And Latino Voters, 11/24/2020

Chicago is tracking kids with GPS monitors that can call and record them without consent, 4/8/2019 (co-published with CityLab)
D.C. shows mercy for people who committed crimes as children, but prosecutors are fighting back, 5/23/2019 (co-published with DCist)
In Oklahoma, private companies run pretrial services, driving people into debt, 6/26/2019 (co-published with The Crime Report)
Former colleagues accuse Mississippi D.A. candidate Jody Owens of sexual harassment, 10/11/2019
Virginia teen was detained and prosecuted for saying ‘oink oink’ to a cop, 6/4/2019
Texas is poised to make it easier to jail people for voting errors, 4/12/2019
Virginia jail accused of favoring Christians who live in the ‘God Pod,’ 12/6/2018 (co-published with VICE)

The Powerful Role Confusion Plays In American Elections, 12/28/2018
How One Conservative Group Plans To Maintain Republicans’ Grip On State Legislatures, 10/21/2019

Native Americans’ right to vote is under attack, 6/20/2018
Tens of thousands of newly registered felons could swing Alabama Senate election, 11/28/2017
Citing Trump’s voter fraud lie, states are working to make it harder to vote, 2/18/2017
Is Hillary Clinton the last Democratic presidential candidate to support the death penalty?, 5/24/2016
Kris Kobach has turned a landmark voting rights case into a comedy of errors, 3/8/2018
Interactive: Voting without a functioning VRA, 4/12/2016