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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More than a half-million mail-in ballots were rejected in this year's primaries due to mistakes and missed deadlines. Officials feared many more would be rejected in November, but that did not happen.
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In his first interview out of office, Matthew Masterson, a top deputy to Christopher Krebs at the Department of Homeland Security, called 2020 "as smooth a presidential election as I've ever seen." -
Voting took place amid a pandemic and unprecedented polarization. Despite baseless claims by the president and his allies that the outcome was rigged, states say the results are accurate. -
More than two weeks after the election, President Trump still refuses to concede. And now his legal team is alleging an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Democrats stole the election.
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President Trump's campaign is insisting that Trump has a path to reelection victory despite Joe Biden's decisive win. Lawyers say they will pursue legal challenges to results in swing states. -
The campaign suffered a major loss for its flailing effort to overturn the election results. Action by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday followed a string of other defeats. -
Led by one of President Trump's nominees, the agency has been actively trying to correct misinformation spread by all sorts of actors, including Trump, about the election. -
President Trump and his GOP allies are making a series of false claims about how last week's election went. NPR reporters discuss why those claims are false and the larger strategy behind making them.
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The U.S. voting system faced many challenges in 2020, including the coronavirus pandemic, a highly divided electorate and allegations of fraud. But many election observers say things went pretty well.
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The Trump campaign has launched a slew of lawsuits in several states designed to dent Joe Biden's growing lead in the vote count. But state courts are quickly dismissing some of those suits.
