Ashley Lopez
Ashley Lopez is a political correspondent for NPR based in Austin, Texas. She joined NPR in May 2022. Prior to NPR, Lopez spent more than six years as a health care and politics reporter for KUT, Austin's public radio station. Before that, she was a political reporter for NPR Member stations in Florida and Kentucky. Lopez is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and grew up in Miami, Florida.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days after it. -
Primary voters in a small number of districts play an outsized role in deciding who wins Congress. The Trump-initiated mid-decade redistricting wave, which led to a new Republican-drawn map in Missouri, is driving that number of competitive seats even lower. -
Legal experts say President Trump lacks the constitutional authority to stop states from offering mail ballots. Both Missouri and Kansas currently allow absentee voting by mail, but Kansas Republican lawmakers recently made it harder by eliminating a three-day grace period. -
A federal judge has paused a sweeping new plan from the Trump administration to halt categories of federal spending. -
Voters in a record number of states — including the battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada — are set to decide this fall whether to enact far-reaching changes to how their elections are run. In Missouri, a constitutional amendment could ban ranked-choice voting if it passes in November. -
New Republican-backed laws in several states — including Missouri and Kansas — threaten large fines or criminal penalties for minor mistakes in voter registration work. As groups pull back, they're reaching fewer voters. -
For Texas Democrats, the state's Super Tuesday primary could help define the shape of a party that's on the rise after more than two decades of being shut out of power. -
Three years after winning a big legal battle, abortion providers still find themselves losing the ground war when it comes to keeping clinics open across the huge, populous state. -
Secretary of State David Whitley was behind an effort to remove alleged noncitizens from the state's voter rolls. He resigned Monday as the Texas Legislature's session came to a close. -
After high turnout in the 2018 midterms gave Democrats big gains, several Republican-controlled states are considering changing the rules around voting in ways that might reduce future turnout.
