Pam Fessler
Pam Fessler is a correspondent on NPR's National Desk, where she covers poverty, philanthropy, and voting issues.
In her reporting at NPR, Fessler does stories on homelessness, hunger, affordable housing, and income inequality. She reports on what non-profit groups, the government, and others are doing to reduce poverty and how those efforts are working. Her poverty reporting was recognized with a 2011 First Place National Headliner Award.
Fessler also covers elections and voting, including efforts to make voting more accessible, accurate, and secure. She has done countless stories on everything from the debate over state voter identification laws to Russian hacking attempts and long lines at the polls.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Fessler became NPR's first Homeland Security correspondent. For seven years, she reported on efforts to tighten security at ports, airports, and borders, and the debate over the impact on privacy and civil rights. She also reported on the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, The 9/11 Commission Report, Social Security, and the Census. Fessler was one of NPR's White House reporters during the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Before becoming a correspondent, Fessler was the acting senior editor on the Washington Desk and NPR's chief election editor. She coordinated all network coverage of the presidential, congressional, and state elections in 1996 and 1998. In her more than 25 years at NPR, Fessler has also been deputy Washington Desk editor and Midwest National Desk editor.
Earlier in her career, she was a senior writer at Congressional Quarterly magazine. Fessler worked there for 13 years as both a reporter and editor, covering tax, budget, and other news. She also worked as a budget specialist at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and was a reporter at The Record newspaper in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Fessler has a master's of public administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from Douglass College in New Jersey.
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Despite fears of issues at the polls, voting around much of the country has gone fairly smoothly so far. There have been some scattered reports of problems, like voting machine malfunctions.
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More than 500 monitors and observers will watch polling sites in 28 states, looking for voting rights violations such as discrimination against voters because of their race or language. -
There's been much discussion about the integrity of the election. Donald Trump has talked a "rigged" election and Democrats say some states are trying to keep people from voting.
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Democrats claim that the Republican National Committee is violating a 1982 consent decree by working with the Trump campaign to intimidate minority voters. The GOP denies the claim.
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The Democratic National Committee has taken the Republican National Committee to court, claiming that Republicans are conspiring with the Trump campaign to intimidate minority voters and prevent them from casting ballots. The Democrats would like to see a consent decree prohibiting the Republicans from engaging in such activity extended for another eight years. The RNC says it has no poll monitoring activities and is not responsible for the actions of the Trump campaign or state parties.
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The head of one effort asked supporters "to go and hunt down, look for vote fraud and voter intimidation and document it, to do the best we can to stop it this election." -
As early voting starts, there are scattered reports of touch-screen voting machines "flipping" votes from one candidate to another. Old voting machines, not a "rigged" election, are likely to blame. -
More than 35 million eligible voters in the U.S. have a disability. And in the last presidential election, almost a third of voters with disabilities reported having trouble casting their ballots. -
This election, the focus for some has been on vote rigging. But election officials say they are more worried about possible violence at the polls. -
For those worried about problems voting in this year's elections, there are several things they can do to help, such as checking their registrations and polling places ahead of time, and volunteering to be a poll worker.
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"This is an effort to make the voter rolls cleaner ... before the elections in November," says J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, the group behind the suits. -
The government says there was a big drop last year in the number of Americans struggling to get enough to eat, especially children. The USDA credits food aid like the school lunch program and SNAP.
