by Brittney Melton

March 22, 2026

Good morning. This week, an immigration judge denied an asylum claim for the family of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, an auction for drilling rights in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska set new records, and Daniel Biss won the Democratic primary for a closely watched Illinois House seat.

Untangling the U.S.' patchwork of elections

by Hansi Lo Wang, voting correspondent

Unless you’re an eligible voter in North Dakota, the path to casting a ballot begins with registering to vote.

And that can be complicated.

For this year’s midterm primary elections, some of my NPR colleagues and I tried to make it easier by revisiting a project we first did before the 2024 election — a registration guide for eligible voters in every U.S. state and territory. (Spoiler alert: The only territory-wide primary this year will be held in Guam.)

Illustration showing different methods of voter registration — in person, on paper, via the mail, online

Connie Hanzhang Jin/NPR

There are similar guides out there, but many of them don’t specify the exact dates of the deadlines for signing up in time for the 2026 primaries. To save you from scrolling through the webpages of election offices (some of which are smoother to navigate than others), our guide also compiles links for registering online, checking your status and changing your registration.

The project may sound straightforward, but it took a team of us days to research and fact-check every deadline and other details of the registration process, which can be hard to pin down because of recent changes to state election laws or late-breaking court orders from lawsuits.

Reporting for this guide reminded me that elections are a patchwork across the country, and in some places, registering to vote can only be done in person and/or by mail. There’s no online registration in Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming, as well as American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

If you tend to wait until the last minute to mail important documents like a voter-registration application, staying on top of a deadline — and whether it’s a received-by or postmarked-by date — is key. That’s especially true this year, as the U.S. Postal Service continues rolling out changes to how it processes mail. Here’s my pro tip: If you want to make sure your registration application gets a postmark on the same day you mail it, stop by a post office to ask for one. And USPS recommends putting it in the mail at least a week before the deadline.

I know. It’s a lot to keep track of right now with so much going on in the world.

So if you’re an eligible voter who can use a guide to help you register, I’ll keep it simple: Start by going to npr.org/vote.

And if you’ve already registered to vote, you may want to visit that link, too, to check your status before your state or territory’s deadline. Eligible voters can sometimes be removed from lists, especially if they’ve moved, changed their name or haven’t voted in a while.

Like this year’s primary season, our work on NPR’s voter registration guide has only just begun. We’re planning to update the guide with registration deadlines for this fall’s general election.

You can find all of the voting team’s coverage here, and check out our broader politics newsletter, sent weekly.

Check out more great reads from the NPR network you may have missed:

➡️ The risky lending practice known as “private credit” is causing serious problems for banks and investors, and its impact extends well beyond Wall Street. Private credit refers to when private equity firms and other companies that aren't banks lend money to businesses. The sector has been growing for years and is currently estimated to be worth approximately $3 trillion, according to Morgan Stanley. But recent bankruptcy announcements from companies backed by private credit have raised concerns about how private credit firms vet the companies they lend to — and how investors would get their money back. As investors pull out of the industry, Wall Street’s selloff could ripple through the mainstream financial system, affecting ordinary consumers.
➡️ The U.S. and Israel's war with Iran has spread across the Middle East, affecting even the cities that are typically considered safe havens, like Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has intercepted most Iranian missiles and drone attacks during this conflict. Amid the chaos, foreign nationals like Daffodils Guevarra from the Philippines play vital roles in keeping cities in the region running smoothly. Joanna Concepcion, the head of Migrante-International, says the "lack of urgency" to ensure the safety of migrant workers during the war leaves them vulnerable. Despite the conflict, Guevarra doesn't regret her decision to work abroad and believes others may feel the same.
➡️ The Trump administration has transformed the Board of Immigration Appeals, a lesser-known arm of the Justice Department, to tighten immigration policy and ramp up mass detentions and deportations. The White House shrank the board's size by nearly half and stacked the remaining 15 judges with President Trump's appointees. Last year, these judges sided with Department of Homeland Security lawyers in 97% of cases, a staggering 30% increase over the average from the last 16 years. The board's decisions have made it tougher for immigrants to secure a bond in lieu of detention and made it easier to deport migrants to countries other than their own.
➡️ As sexual abuse accusations against Cesar Chavez made headlines this week, California’s farmworking communities grappled with the jarring contrast between the celebrated labor icon's legacy and the troubling allegations. Luz Gallegos, director of the immigrant and farmworker nonprofit TODEC Legal Center expressed heartbreak over the revelations and commended the bravery of Dolores Huerta and the other victims for coming forward and speaking out about their abuse. Gallegos and others within the community say they hope this moment sparks change and prevents similar abuses from being repeated. But they also hope the allegations don't undercut the hard-won achievements that laborers and their families have made in the farmworker movement over decades. (via KQED)

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Today, we’re listening to an It's Been a Minute. On this episode, host Brittany Luse discusses how young women are in crisis, much like young men, but it doesn’t seem like people are talking about it. Over the past two years, statistics about men's mental health, education and finances have made headlines and rung the alarm about men being in crisis. But data reveals young women struggle at the same rates in most categories. This episode takes a look at broader data across genders to paint a more accurate picture and understand why when one gender suffers, all genders do. Listen to the episode, or read the transcript.

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