Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Friday, March 11th. I'm Nyla Boudou. Today, long

COVID patients struggle for financial help. But first, Democrats plan B for election reform

is today's one big thing. Earlier this year, Senate Democrats failed to pass a federal

voting rights bill, a huge blow to progressive election reform efforts. Now, the party's turning

to plan B, and some of its high dollar donors are working to put new initiatives in place

ahead of the November midterms. Lockland Marquet covers money and influence in politics for Axios,

and is here with more on what these efforts look like and who's funding them. Hey, Lockland.

Hey. This week, a few progressive groups announced a new plan to elect election administrators.

What's their goal here? Yeah, you know, there's been a lot of movement,

particularly in states that were really close in 2020 to alter the way that either votes are

counted or that votes are cast or the process for certifying the election. So they want to place

about 5,000, at least 5,000 pro-democracy election administrators as they put it to local posts

around the country. So these are the folks who are really on the ground processing and counting

ballots, doing the hands-on work that was sort of at the center of a lot of the conspiracy theories

in the 2020 election. This is a pretty big step in terms of trying to ensure that you have knowledgeable

and really responsible people who are doing the nuts and bolts of election administration.

So when we say progressives are turning to plan B, that looks like ensuring that there are new

election administrators and what else? Well, it's going to be really wide-ranging. You know,

you're seeing stuff on the redistricting front, challenges to maps that are being put forward,

that a lot of progressives feel are unfair or exclude voters of color. Conservatives are looking

really across the board too, posts like secretaries of state, which are generally a state level

officers that oversee these elections, or all of a sudden getting a ton of more attention,

...