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.
-
Varying levels of preparedness were on display at an Orlando meeting between Florida election officials and staffers from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. -
Poor families are already having an increasingly difficult time finding an affordable place to live thanks to high rent, static incomes and a shortage of housing aid. -
President Trump dissolved the presidential commission he established last year to investigate claims of voter fraud in the 2016 election.
-
Some countries, such as France, Austria and Poland, prohibit removing people from their homes during cold weather but that's not the case in the United States. -
Neighbors of Stephen Paddock, who authorities say killed scores of people at a concert on the Las Vegas Strip, say he and his girlfriend stayed up nights playing online poker. -
The Department of Homeland Security said earlier this year that it had evidence of Russian activity in 21 states. But they didn't inform individual states whether they were among those targeted. -
One witness suggested voters undergo the same kind of background check now applied to gun buyers, a function that system was never designed for. -
Weird things started to happen as people showed up to vote in parts of North Carolina on Nov. 8. Why didn't state workers know that their elections contractor had been hit by a cyberattack? -
President Trump's Advisory Commission on Election Integrity holds its first meeting Wednesday to uncover voter problems that undermine public confidence in U.S. elections. The panel has already faced criticism, especially from state election officials disturbed by the panel's request to send detailed voter registration data. The commission is looking for signs of voter fraud, which most election officials and experts say is rare.
-
The panel has faced credibility problems right from the start and the concerns have only grown after it asked all 50 states to send detailed voter registration records.
