Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
Federal Legislation: House Republicans unveiled a $95 billion legislative plan focused on boosting defense, aiding farmers and enacting stricter voter registration rules. The 47-page outline, called a budget resolution, is a long-shot undertaking designed to supplement Pentagon funding for the Iran war and address the president’s top priority of changing voter registration requirements. A more ambitious effort was narrowed to address concerns from some conservatives about adding to the deficit. The plan does not seek any offsets to pay for the new spending. House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed ahead after meeting with Trump at the White House this week. “Safeguarding American elections and strengthening our national defense are the most basic responsibilities of Congress,” Johnson said in a statement. Rightwing House Republicans have insisted that their leaders make the bill a priority, and Johnson agreed to a plan to combine the Save America Act with a bill authorizing spending by the state department and related agencies, which the House passed by a 217-209 vote on Wednesday afternoon. The Senate’s top Democrat Chuck Schumer vowed to again block the measure, as his party did when majority leader John Thune earlier this year opened debate on the Save America Act under pressure from Trump and his allies. “I’ll say it as many times as it takes: the [Save America] Act is dead on arrival here in the Senate,” Schumer said ahead of the House vote. “I don’t care how Republicans try to package their plan to resurrect the old ghost of Jim Crow – we will kill it.”
North Carolina Rulemaking: It could become easier for North Carolina elections officials to throw out people’s ballots during the 2026 midterm elections and beyond, if proposed rule changes are approved by the State Board of Elections. The proposed changes, backed by the Republican majority on the State Board of Elections, would affect mail-in voting, and also make it easier for elections officials to reject people’s excuses for not having required voter identification, in addition to also making it easier to kick people out of polling places. The mail-in voting changes would give county elections officials more freedom to throw out people’s ballots over technicalities such as using the wrong kind of envelope, although the officials would have some discretion. As for voter ID, state law allows people to vote without an acceptable photo ID if they claim an exemption such as a religious objection to being photographed, or having their wallet stolen, or other factors. The proposed rules would lower the bar for county elections officials to decide people who submit those forms are lying.
Wisconsin Rulemaking: The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted July 9 to limit voters’ ability to spoil their ballots. This means Wisconsin absentee voters who want to change their vote will no longer be able to do so after it’s been returned. “Once you’ve turned your ballot in, that’s it. That’s my view of it. I don’t have a problem changing out, doesn’t matter why you want it back, you just don’t get it back once you’ve validly returned your ballot to the clerk,” WEC Chair Don Millis said. In the past, voters were allowed to cancel a returned ballot and request a new one if they wanted to change their vote. Others on the WEC believe mailed-in votes and in person votes should have the same playing field. “Just because I put it in the mail doesn’t mean I can’t fix my mistake before, because to me returned is when it goes in the machine to get counted, you can’t undo the count… Why are we treating people that mail it in differently than someone that shows up?” WEC Vice Chair Mark Thomsen said. “Once you quote-unquote cast your ballot by placing it in the mail to return to your municipal clerk, you’ve voted. In order to spoil that ballot you would have had to have an accident or mistake, you know a mistake that needs to be corrected,” Shawano County Clerk Raymond Rigsby said. Rigsby added ballots can only be spoiled if issues occur like marking two candidates, checking an oval instead of shading it in, or the ballot gets wet. But, simply changing your mind about a candidate after the ballot has been returned won’t qualify for a spoiled ballot. “In this case, the vote has occurred and it’s not a mistake, so the spoiling is just, it’s not possible because of a candidate dropping out,” Rigsby said.
Legal Updates
Arizona: U.S. District Judge Michael Liburdi blocked a provision in Arizona’s elections rulebook that prohibits people at polling places from “wearing clothing, uniforms or official-looking apparel intended to deter, intimidate, or harass voters.” Liburdi’s ruling came fewer than two weeks before the Grand Canyon State’s July 21 primary election, with early voting already underway. The elections rulebook, which is revised every two years, was written by Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and approved by Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes, also Democrats. The Oversight Project asked the court in May to block multiple provisions of the EPM, arguing that they were unconstitutional. Fontes and Mayes countered that the challenged provisions merely explain existing state law, without expanding upon it. Liburdi handed wins and losses to both parties when he opted to block poll workers from enforcing the intimidating apparel provision, but did not do the same for a provision banning audible electioneering outside the 75-foot perimeter of polling places, if it can be heard at the polling place door. He also chose not to block a provision allowing elections officials to kick political party election observers out of polling places if they raise “repeated frivolous voter challenges to poll workers without any good faith basis.” In his order, the judge noted the conflict in this case between the right to political speech and the government’s authority to maintain order at polling places.
New Jersey: A GOP congressional candidate and state and national Republican committees are seeking to overturn a 2022 law that allows citizen children born abroad to New Jerseyans to vote in the state’s federal elections. In a lawsuit filed in Mercer County Superior Court, the plaintiffs allege the law runs afoul of provisions in New Jersey’s Constitution that require residents live in their state and county for 30 days to be eligible to vote there. Despite the limit in New Jersey’s Constitution, federal law allows some U.S. citizens living overseas to vote in American elections, and those laws take precedence because the U.S. Constitution gives Congress ultimate oversight of federal U.S. Elections. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act allows Americans living abroad to vote in federal U.S. elections if they would be eligible to do so in the last state they lived in before departing the country. New Jersey law enacted in 2022 appears to go a little further, allowing U.S. citizens born abroad to vote in federal elections if their parent, guardian, spouse, or partner would have last been eligible to vote in New Jersey before departing the country and has not registered to vote elsewhere. In some cases, that law extends suffrage to citizens who have never been to the state. New Jersey officials signaled they would fight the suit.
Nebraska: The Democratic National Committee withdrew a request to intervene in a lawsuit from the Republican National Committee against a Nebraska voting law. Omaha attorney Daniel Gutman, representing the DNC, said that as of July 1, it was unclear whether Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen and Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers would defend a law that allows certain U.S. citizens who have not lived in Nebraska or the United States, but whose parents are Nebraska residents and voters, to vote in the state. At a July 14 hearing, which lasted just over five minutes before Lancaster County District Judge Ryan Post, Gutman said officials now pledging to mount a defense changed the DNC’s position. Evnen previously described the lawsuit as “a little baffling” in an interview with the Nebraska Examiner. In a July 9 brief, state attorneys said the DNC’s involvement is neither allowed nor needed. The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office said representation is “adequate” if the parties did not collude, if Nebraska is not adverse to the proposed intervenor and if the state “diligently” prosecutes the case. The office said the state and Evnen have met each point and Hilgers has not determined that the law is “facially unconstitutional.”
New Mexico: U.S. District Court Judge Judith Herrera dismissed a lawsuit from the United States Department of Justice seeking detailed New Mexico voter information in a ruling the New Mexico Attorney General and Secretary of State’s Office hailed for preserving the integrity of the state’s elections. The USDOJ filed lawsuits in December against New Mexico and five other states for failing to produce statewide voter registration lists. The lawsuit came after Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver resisted formal requests from federal officials to turn over voter rolls due to concerns about what the data would be used for. The USDOJ sought the state’s full voter list, including Social Security numbers and birth dates. The Secretary of State usually redacts those details for any publicly released list of voters. By the time of the lawsuit, Toulouse Oliver had already given the federal government voter rolls that included years of birth but not Social Security numbers, she told Source NM in December. Herrera ruled that the USDOJ lacked any basis for the lawsuit and failed to adequately argue that the unredacted voter rolls would enable the federal government to evaluate whether New Mexico is complying with federal election law. “Had the DOJ identified as the factual ‘basis’ statistical anomalies within New Mexico’s registration data or conduct associated with the State’s [Voter Registration Logs] maintenance practices, then the outcome may have been different,” Herrera wrote in her ruling.
Oklahoma: An Oklahoma Supreme Court referee heard arguments in a case which could shape the future of the state’s initiative petition process. Supporters of a state question that would let voters decide if the state’s primaries should be open challenged a determination by the Oklahoma Secretary of State that they failed to garner enough legal signatures to get it on the ballot. Frederic Dorwart, an attorney for the state question, which would place all primary candidates on a single ballot, said the Secretary of State must explain why over 57,000 signatures were rejected. Failure to do so imposes an “extraordinary burden” for supporters to be able to challenge the finding, Dorwart said. Secretary of State Benjamin Lepak found that supporters of State Question 836 gathered 142,567 signatures, short of the 172,993 needed to get the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Supporters said they turned in over 200,000 signatures. Lepak, under a new law passed in 2024, determined 57,841 signatures did not match the required number of data points with the state’s voter registration rolls and tossed them out. But the agency could not provide supporters of the state question with the specific reason each signature was deemed invalid. Supreme Court referee Meredith Wolfe will issue a report to the court. Her report is not binding on the court.
Pennsylvania: Matthew Laiss, 32, of Bethlehem who was found guilty of voting more than once in a federal election and voter fraud received his sentence this week according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Charges were brought against Laiss in Sept. 2025 for election fraud during the 2020 election, prosecutors said. He was convicted in March 2026. According to prosecutors, Laiss resided in Ottsville, Pennsylvania, from at least Oct. 2012 to Aug. 2020 and was lawfully registered to vote there. However, Laiss moved to Frostproof, Florida, in or around Aug. 2020, obtained a driver’s license and registered to vote there. In Oct. 2020, the Bucks County Board of Elections mailed Laiss a ballot at his old address, where his parents still lived, prosecutors said. Prosecutors proved at trial that Laiss filled out his Pennsylvania ballot and submitted it in late October. He then went back to Florida and voted at a polling place there on or around Election Day. Laiss claimed he voted twice for President Donald Trump, but that is unverifiable since he cast secret ballots in both Pennsylvania and Florida, according to court documents. Laiss was sentenced to three years probation, with the first six months being home confinement, prosecutors said. He also received a $6,000 fine and $200 special assessment.
West Virginia: Nearly five months after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued West Virginia in an attempt to force the state to turn over unredacted voter ID data, a district court judge has dismissed the case entirely. According to a Facebook post put out Monday night by West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, the case was dismissed on Monday by the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. The case was filed just weeks after Warner publicly rejected the DOJ’s request to voluntarily provide personal information about West Virginia’s registered voters, citing that such a move is contrary to state law. Warner said that the decision to dismiss “is an important victory for the rule of law, voter privacy, and the dedicated election officials across West Virginia who work every day to ensure the accuracy of our state’s voter registration system.” In the dismissal order, Warner said that the Court found the DOJ’s demands included “no indication that West Virginia is suspected to be noncompliant with the list maintenance requirements of [federal law], nor does it point to any anomalies in West Virginia’s voter registration data.” Despite the victory in court, Warner made it a point to mention that he shares the DOJ’s goal to ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots in West Virginia’s elections.
Michael H. Drucker
