TOMS RIVER, N.J. -- On a narrow street coated with mud and strewn with debris, Pat Shields stood at a makeshift barrier of scrap metal and plywood, tattooed arms crossed over his burly chest. He turned away strangers headed toward the nearby water's edge.

This neighborhood, a few hundred...

ABSECON, N.J. -- Off in the distance, under a threatening sky, stood the casino and hotel towers of Atlantic City. Lenora Brown, 29, was ready to walk there if necessary, even as the night grew cold. But the cop in the patrol cruiser blocking the highway told her to turn...

As Hurricane Sandy battered coastal New Jersey on Monday morning, Atlantic City felt some of its worst effects, with floodwaters surging through the streets and emergency responders facing mounting calls to evacuate residents who tried to ride out the storm.

Pounding waves have already broken up sections of the...

Voting rights groups from all sides of the partisan divide are deploying troops to the polls on Election Day to monitor voting activity in battleground states nationwide, as accusations of voter intimidation and suspicion over voter fraud continue to plague the run-up to the November elections.

Labor Unions are sending...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a last-gasp appeal by Ohio Republicans and approved early voting for Ohio residents on the weekend before Election Day.

Ohio's Secretary of State John Husted had refused to enforce last week's appellate court decision, in which a three-judge panel

The parents of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin have launched a new website and political committee to take aim at the state’s controversial "Stand Your Ground" law and similar laws across the country.

The website, Change For Trayvon, and committee of the same name, are intended...

One by one the billboards started popping up all over Cleveland. One showed up at Carnegie Avenue and East 36th Street. Another was plastered at East 185th and Harland Avenue. More cropped up across town.

Nearly all are in predominately black or poor neighborhoods. And all carry the...

Mark O'Mara, the lead attorney for George Zimmerman in the case of Zimmerman's alleged murder of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin earlier this year, has published a scathing retort to recent claims made by Martin's lawyer that race is the "elephant in the room" in the...

Earlier this week when Ohio's Secretary of State John Husted said he'd appeal a court ruling that would reinstate early voting on the last three days before Election Day, the announcement threw an already chaotic run-up to the elections into further confusion. Local election officials said they don't...

Lawyers for George Zimmerman, the man accused of second-degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin, have filed a motion requesting that a Florida judge delay his trial and that the teenager's school records and social media posts be released.

In the motion, Zimmerman's...

Depending on who's telling it, the Rev. Jesse Jackson is either a civil rights icon and trailblazer or a self-serving opportunist and attention-monger. But of all the titles Jackson has garnered in his lifetime of activism and leadership, master negotiator and hostage-freer probably aren't on the top of the list.

Eric Bates was caught twice in the late 1990s driving with a suspended license, and then again in 2006. That third time, under then-Virginia law, Bates was considered a habitual offender and was prosecuted as a felon.

He served 14 months in prison and was released in 2008. He returned...

A Democratic congressman has launched an investigation into True The Vote, a conservative Tea Party group that has attempted to purge thousands of registered voters from voting rolls across the country ahead of the November presidential election.

The organization is pursuing an aggressive ground...

PHILADELPHIA -- When Betty Ann Workman was a little girl growing up in Philadelphia’s Tioga neighborhood, Election Day was like a family holiday.

“My grandmother would pick me up from school and say, 'Come on darling, put your galoshes on and let's go vote,'” Workman, 80, recalled Tuesday afternoon. “She...

Longtime Republican politician Stanley R. Lawson Sr. says he knows a rat when he smells one. And what's going on politically around recently passed voter ID laws in his home state of Pennsylvania reeks of partisan politics.

Lawson, 70, a registered Republican, is currently the head of the Harrisburg chapter...

Fourteen members of Congress have co-sponsored a bill that would override a recent spate of voter identification laws, passed in more than a dozen states to require voters to present government-issued photo ID in order to cast a ballot.

Rep. Rick Larsen, a Washington Democrat, has introduced the...

Clarence Mingo, a rising star in Ohio’s Republican party, offered cautionary advice to an overwhelmingly white group of his colleagues during a GOP platform planning meeting in late August: tread carefully and be honest with black voters.

Mingo’s words followed an amendment offered by Kansas’ controversial secretary of state

An estimated 700,000 young minority voters could be barred from voting in November because of photo ID laws passed across the country in recent years, according to a new study.

The number of minority voters under the age of 30 likely to be disenfranchised by these new voting laws...

As public pressure mounts on the Jonesboro police department's investigation into the death of Chavis Carter, a 21-year-old who authorities say killed himself while handcuffed in the back of a squad car last month, new evidence in the case has been released that the department says supports its...

Charles Douglas, the father of 21-year-old Chavis Carter, who was fatally shot in the head while handcuffed in the back of a police car last month, said none of what the police have told him about his son’s death makes sense.

“They could have told me anything, that...