Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
Culver City, California Ballot Measure
: Fed up at the decisions being made about their education without having any real voice on the board, students have been leading a campaign to lower the voting age for local elections in Culver City, an affluent suburb surrounded by the city of Los Angeles. A proposed charter amendment that Culver City students have been pushing for years, which will be on the ballot in November as Measure YV, would allow 16- and 17 year-olds to cast ballots for city council and the school board elections. Mia Moroz, a senior at Culver City High School and president of Vote 16 Culver City, the school club that has been leading the campaign for years, says the school board and city council have “been creating policy that alters the lives of our teenagers without giving them a way to voice their opinion.” Students at Culver City High School have advocated for years through the Vote 16 Culver City club for lowering the voting age. They came close in 2022, the first time they got the city council to put a measure on the ballot, but it failed by just 16 votes out of the more than 16,500 cast. The club tried to run an initiative in 2024, but they couldn’t collect enough signatures to put the item on the ballot, in part due to restrictions that require an adult chaperone to circulate a petition. After students renewed the campaign this year, the Culver City Council voted 3-2 in February to put it in front of the voters again.
Knoxville, Tennessee Ballot Measure: Knoxville residents will be able to vote on how city elections work in the future this November. A city charter amendment appears on the ballot pertaining to city council elections. It proposes that if a candidate for city council in the August primary race gets 50% or more of the votes, they immediately be declared the winner and do not have to advance to a November runoff election. The amendment would modify Article VII, Sections 707(B) and 707(C) of the Knoxville City Charter, which currently dictates that the two candidates with the most votes advance to compete in the November general election. Voting for the amendment means you support allowing the candidate with the majority of the votes in the primary to be declared elected immediately and issued a certificate of election. Voting against means you want city charter elections to stay the same, and the top two candidates to compete in a runoff election. Knox County Administrator of Elections Chris Davis said that if the amendment passes, it would be in effect for 2027.
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Ballot Measure: Lehigh County voters will consider altering the make-up of the Election and Registration Commission. The independent body, better known as the Board of Elections, is tasked with overseeing the administration of elections in Lehigh County. County employees conduct day-to-day operations in the Voter Registration office – filing paperwork, assisting residents, testing machines – but the three-member body sets policy decisions such as selecting which equipment to use, allowing or disallowing drop boxes and certifying election results. Under Lehigh County’s Home Rule Charter, county commissioners appoint one member from each of the two largest parties to the election board while the third and final seat is held by the county executive. While both parties have praised the board for behaving in a non-partisan manner, County Commissioners Sarah Fevig and Rob Beitler argued the set up could allow one party to dictate election policy and shut out independent voices. Their legislation, which commissioners passed by an 8-1 vote in May, would expand the board to five members: two Democrats, two Republicans and a third-party or unaffiliated voter. Local citizens have the final say on the plan via a referendum question this Election Day.
Wyoming: The Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee moved a draft bill forward that would expand the role that poll watchers have in observing local elections. The committee voted 9-4 to sponsor this bill in the next legislative session. Right now, a poll watcher is authorized to observe voter turnout and registration. This bill would change the language to allow poll watchers to observe “every aspect of the election.” “A poll watcher shall have the authority to be located close enough to hear and see the voters as they check in with election judges,” the bill reads. The chairman of each political party that has a candidate on the ballot may certify poll watchers to go out to the polling places. And at polling places serving multiple precincts, there may be one poll watcher for each political party for each precinct served. And after all the votes are cast and the polls are officially declared closed, poll watchers would be permitted in a polling place. Currently, election judges are the only ones allowed in polling places after the polls close. County clerks would have the authority to require poll watchers to wear identification that lets people know they are poll watchers.
Legal Updates
Federal Litigation: Democratic Party leaders including Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, are suing in federal court to block President Donald Trump’s administration from usurping states’ authority to administer elections or trying to intimidate state and local election officials into complying with illegal demands. The lawsuit, filed October 20 in Washington, seeks a court order barring the administration from purging legally registered voters from statewide voter registration lists or denying ballots to legally registered voters. The plaintiffs also ask for a ruling that the administration has illegally threatened state election officials with prosecution before the Nov. 3 election. The lawsuit cites the Justice Department’s recent actions in California, where it sued to block state election officials from counting mail-in ballots cast by people whom the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed. “For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud,” the suit says. “While these lies have been debunked at every turn, that has never deterred the President from employing them as a pretext to seize control over elections, even as courts overwhelmingly reject that effort.” The Justice Department said in a statement that election integrity is a top priority for the administration and the department’s actions on that front are grounded in law and under court litigation.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin ruled October 21 that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s practice of knocking on doors and asking people about their immigration status — and whether they have voted in recent elections — likely violates the Voting Rights Act. Martinez-Olguin ordered federal immigration authorities to stop carrying out “elections-related field operations and field interviews” in nine states, including California and New York, if the operations are likely to involve people who government officials “know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens.” Her order will remain in effect until polls close on Election Day. She stayed the ruling until 5 p.m. on Friday, which will give the government a chance to seek appeal. Martinez-Olguin sided with groups that sued over the noncitizen voting investigation surge, including the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United. She found the policy likely ran afoul of a section of the Voting Rights Act that makes it illegal to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce” those who assist people with voting or engage in voter mobilization efforts. “Plaintiffs do not claim, nor does the Court find, that it is unlawful for federal officials to undertake investigations into unlawful voting in federal elections,” the judge wrote. “Rather, Plaintiffs seek to stop DHS from continuing to investigate U.S. citizens, who have a legal right to vote, in a way that intimidates and threatens the participation of CNA/NNU members from urging or aiding others to vote.”
Arizona: Attorney General Kris Mayes sued the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office on October 21 over its handling of the registration statuses of a group of voters falsely flagged as noncitizens by an error-prone federal data tool earlier this year, demanding that the office restore the voters’ ability to cast a ballot in the upcoming midterm election. According to Votebeat, her lawsuit comes weeks after county detectives found that the voters were U.S. citizens. Mayes alleges that Recorder Justin Heap has nonetheless kept the voters in “not eligible” status on the county’s voter roll, despite investigators’ findings. Voters in that status remain on the rolls but may not receive mail ballots and are required to show proof of their citizenship before being allowed to vote. With voting already underway in the 2026 general election, Mayes is asking a judge to order that the voters be fully reinstated and be mailed ballots immediately.
California: The federal government sued California on October 15 over the state’s universal mail-in voting system, in which all registered voters receive a mail-in ballot. The Justice Department claims in its complaint that more than 20,000 registered voters are “likely aliens” and asks a federal judge to “enjoin California from presently tabulating vote-by-mail ballots from likely noncitizens in the upcoming federal election until the voter’s citizenship status can be determined.” “State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche in a written statement. “If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government.” Governor Gavin Newsom (D) lambasted the Department of Justice, calling their lawsuit “a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” in a written statement. He called the demand for an injunction “a totally unprecedented request that should scare the hell out of every American,” and a play from “the dictator’s playbook.” In court filings on October 21, the state asked the court to dismiss the suit arguing the Trump administration is asking officials to ignore the law and dismiss the lawsuit. California is also asking for the court to expedite the case.
An unknown number of San Mateo County vote-by-mail ballots were reportedly stolen from a Daly City post office, county election officials said. The county’s Registration and Elections Division said October 15 that the U.S. Postal Inspection Service is investigating the incident of mail theft — which was reported to county elections officials on Wednesday — that included the ballots. It’s unclear how many ballots were affected by the theft. Assistant Chief Elections Officer Jim Irizarry told the San Mateo Daily Journal that there didn’t appear to be a reason to assume it was an attempt to intentionally tamper with voting.
The Orange County registrar of voters received three subpoenas in September seeking voter records for 20 people, according to documents provided to the Orange County Register. The U.S. Department of Justice requested voter records from January 2024 to present, including registration information, addresses, history and methods of voting, and the registrant’s claims about their citizenship status. The information was sought in connection with “an official criminal investigation” conducted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a letter from Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat said. Registrar of Voters Bob Page said he complied with the subpoenas within the timeframe requested. One subpoena requested information about 18 people. The two others listed just one person each.
Laura Lee Yourex, 64 of Costa Mesa, who registered her dog to vote, and cast ballots in the animal’s name in 2021 and 2022, has been sentenced to pay for anti-voter-fraud billboards, prosecutors said last week. Lee was charged in September 2025 with five felonies after posting a photo to social media showing her dog posing with a ballot while wearing an “I voted sticker,” Kimberly Edds, a spokesperson for the Orange County district attorney’s office, wrote in a statement. The dog’s vote was counted in the 2021 recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom and then rejected in the 2022 primary election. In October 2024, the Orange County registrar of voters office flagged the case to the district attorney. In April 2026, Yourex signed a plea agreement. She was required to pay $1,500 for four billboards along the 55 and 22 freeways in Orange County through the Nov. 3 midterm election. The billboards feature Yourex’s photo of her dog with a ballot, and reads: “Don’t be a dog. Voter Fraud is a Crime. If you can’t legally vote, don’t vote. The Orange County District Attorney’s Office will prosecute.”
Hawai’i: The state Supreme Court was asked October 16 to intervene after the state Elections Commission went four months without holding a meeting — in the middle of election season. The commission has been marked by contentious meetings. Republican members have tried several times to fire Chief Election Officer Scott Nago and have questioned the integrity of the voting system. In recent months, commissioners have not been able to get five members to agree on a chair. Two Republican commissioners told the Supreme Court that elections staff has not been willing to help set up meetings. Supreme Court Justice Sabrina McKenna asked, “What efforts, if any, has the election office been taking to try to coordinate or facilitate the scheduling of a meeting? Why are we here?” Aaron Schulander, attorney for the Elections Division, responded, “We don’t see that as our place. We see our duties as ministerial. If five of them on the commission want to have a meeting (or) not have a meeting, that’s their prerogative.” Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins said, “This is just the commission trying to hold a meeting and it seems like the Office of Elections is doing whatever it can to prevent that. This is election season, and let’s try to work together and get something going. Why we can’t set up a meeting here? Why can’t you do that?” The elections staff attorney said the court could order the staff to help, or at least allow them to share contact information. The court recessed without a ruling.
Indiana: Lincoln Party secretary of state candidate Greg Ballard filed suit October 15 to force the Indiana Election Commission to rule on four pending campaign finance complaints against his opponents before the Nov. 3 election. Two complaints are against Republican Max Engling and two are against Democrat Beau Bayh. “The Commission has consistently met in September, but not this year,” Ballard said in an accompanying letter to commission chair Beth Boyce. “Early voting began October 6. The complaint asks only that the Commission convene and decide, as the statute assigns it to do, whether there is substantial reason to believe a violation occurred — before the election, while it still matters to voters.” Ballard said if Boyce calls a meeting before Oct. 26, “the court’s involvement becomes unnecessary.” One of Ballard’s proposals in the race has been to make the Indiana Election Commission nonpartisan, staffed with administrative law judges. It currently has two Democratic members and two Republicans, with no tiebreaker. The lawsuit says the commission has sent the campaigns letters requesting responses but has no meetings scheduled. The complaints were filed on July 24, Sept. 15 and Sept. 17.
Francisco Romero, 41, of Terre Haute, has been charged with one felony count each of submitting a fraudulent voter registration and perjury and three counts of casting illegal ballots in the 2022, 2023 and 2024 general elections. Court documents filed by prosecutors say Romero was born in Mexico, has been in Indiana since 2006 and has remained in the U.S. under the the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Romero told investigators that he simply signed the voter registration forms given to him at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles branch in 2018 and 2023 and did not fill them out himself. “He said that he did not know the box was checked saying he was a U.S. citizen,” the investigator’s affidavit said. “He claims that on both occasions, he advised the BMV employees that he is not a U.S. citizen.” Romero was released on bond from the Vigo County Jail, according to online court records. No defense attorney was listed for him and the Capital Chronicle couldn’t immediately determine a telephone number to contact him for comment.
Kansas: The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, for the second time, reversed a prohibition on a Kansas law that bars organizations from prepopulating applications for mail-in ballots before the applications are sent to voters. A three-judge panel found that a lower court didn’t strike down the law based on its justifications, text or legislative history. “It instead inferred an improper purpose from the national political debate on mail-in voting,” the decision said. The Kansas Legislature passed in 2021 the prohibition on prefilling mail-in ballot applications, which also bars out-of-state organizations and individuals from distributing applications. Two voting rights organizations — VoteAmerica and the Voter Participation Center — challenged the law, suing Secretary of State Scott Schwab, Attorney General Kris Kobach and Stephen Howe, district attorney of Johnson County, arguing the state law infringed upon their free speech rights. The appeals panel rejected the Voter Participation Center’s argument that the law was created with the intent to suppress advocacy for mail-in voting. “While we may reasonably infer that the enjoined distributor ban was enacted to restrict mail-in voting, we cannot infer that the ban was enacted to suppress speech supporting mail-in voting,” the 33-page decision said. “The ban prohibited the mailing of mail ballot applications, not messages supporting mail-in voting.”
Kentucky: A lawsuit filed in a federal district court October 15 alleges the Department of Homeland Security has systematically collected sensitive data on Kentucky voters, despite the state’s refusal to share it. In the court filing, voting rights and electronic privacy groups cited emails and memos obtained from the DHS through records requests. The lawsuit points to an email attachment dated July 6, 2026, which said the DHS investigative unit had “enriched” something from Kentucky and five other states, and the information was “pending Palantir entry into ELITE.” ELITE is a tool developed by AI-company Palantir which they describe as being used for “identifying the location of known foreign nationals who meet criteria for removal.” The voting rights group paired that memo with a recent federal whistleblower disclosure warning lawmakers that DHS employees are being told to use “voter data of dubious origins, that is being compiled with ‘supplemental magic.’” A spokesperson for the Secretary of State Michael Adams’ office said they are not a party to the suit but offered assurances that Kentucky’s voter rolls have not been improperly accessed or altered. They said they don’t know if the federal government developed its own voter file, but that it wouldn’t impact Kentucky’s elections even if they did.
Nebraska: In an unsigned, 6-1 decision, the Nebraska Supreme Court has ended a Republican-led challenge to overturn a state voting law allowing certain overseas voters to vote in Nebraska. The justices said challengers — the Republican National Committee and two Lancaster County voters, Jack Riggins and Pam Dingman — “failed to prove the statute is unconstitutional on its face.” The RNC needed to prove that the statute had no constitutional applications. However, Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen and Attorney General Mike Hilgers offered one: a voter born in South America to Saunders County missionaries who intended to return home. “This and other courts have previously recognized that children acquire their parents’ domicile at birth and that such domicile ‘continues until a new one, a ‘domicile of choice,’ is acquired,” the Friday opinion states. The challenged 2005 law allows U.S. citizens who have never resided in Nebraska but who have a parent registered to vote in one Nebraska county to register in that county. It would be a felony to register or vote in multiple states or counties. In 1895, 20 years after the constitutional provision was adopted, the high court said “residence” and “domicile” were synonymous. On October 16, justices stuck with that interpretation and agreed that a child could adopt a parent’s “domicile” under certain circumstances. Justice William Cassel dissented from the majority’s opinion because he said he would have dismissed the case outright.
New Hampshire: The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office is making an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent student IDs from being accepted at polling places in November. The office is asking justices to throw out a 2-1 ruling handed down October 14 by a federal appeals court. That decision allowed a lower court ruling to stand that lets college students use their student IDs to help prove who they are, as long as they have another accepted form of ID, as well. They cannot use a student ID as sole proof of their identity. The legal fight is over a new state law that bans student IDs at the polls. Poll workers have been trained to not accept student IDs for any purpose. The latest ruling means that election officials can take student IDs as part of a process for determining a voter’s identity if that voter does not have an accepted form of identification.
New Mexico: District Judge T. Glenn Ellington ruled against Santa Fe County Clerk Katharine Clark in a legal dispute concerning training for “election watchers” that has seen Clark and the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office on opposing sides. Ellington referred to the case as a “turf war” between the two agencies. The judge approved a temporary restraining order that will require the clerk’s office to accept the secretary of state’s training and certification for election watchers and allow those watchers into the county’s polling sites while the case is being litigated. The pending litigation concerns “election watching,” a practice set out in state law that allows for people to observe voting sites to ensure that elections are being conducted in accordance with the law. The Santa Fe-based progressive organization Land of Action has deployed dozens of election watchers throughout the state in this year’s election. The group has cast the project as an effort to guard against voter intimidation and interference and to ensure procedures are followed at the polls during an election with heightened tensions nationwide. In Santa Fe County, however, Clark has denied entry to some of the group’s watchers, maintaining that their training and certification from the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office was insufficient.
New York: Marva Cook, 66 of Syracuse, has been charged with “illegal voting by alien” – a misdemeanor that alleges she voted in federal elections without becoming a citizen. Cook’s lawyers have not yet laid out her defense, but it will generally be this: She only recently discovered she was adopted by the family she grew up with in Syracuse. In a search for her birth mother, she also discovered she was born in Germany. She said she now has a green card. She is listed as an active voter in Onondaga County, but has not voted since 2022, election records show. The voting charge carries a maximum penalty of $100,000 and one year in jail.
North Carolina: U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder ruled this week that voting organizations will not be able to stop mail-in ballot changes from going into effect for the midterm elections in North Carolina. North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, North Carolina Asian Americans Together, Down Home North Carolina and two voters sued the state board of elections and two county election boards in September, claiming last-minute changes to the absentee ballot process would disenfranchise voters. The state now requires local election officials to verify signatures and disqualify otherwise valid ballots that are not sealed in an inner envelope, a change that was adopted on Sept. 4, just hours before the state became the first to mail out ballots for the midterm elections. The organizations argued before Schroeder that changes to the ballot acceptance process would place an undue burden on voters and asked him to pause implementation of the changes until after the November election. In a 72-page opinion, the George W. Bush appointee declined to intervene. The plaintiffs waited 18 days after the state elections board adopted the new changes to file suit — a delay Schroeder called “significant.” “At a minimum, the merits are far from ‘clear-cut,’ plaintiffs have delayed in seeking the relief they now seek, and implementing the changes sought is infeasible at this stage in the midst of voting,” Schroeder wrote in his order. Local county boards of elections have already begun sorting through absentee ballots and spoiling those that fail to adhere to the challenged requirements. Any burden from the new requirements is “modest,” Schroeder said, and voters who have their ballots spoiled still have other options to cast a vote.
Judge Craig Croom ruled Oct. 15 that fired New Hanover County elections director DeNay Harris may continue her legal challenge against her termination. Harris was suspended with pay earlier this year and fired in June by the state board’s executive director. She filed suit in July, seeking her job back and back pay. She has claimed the action against her was payback for raising concerns about County Manager Chris Coudriet. Croom denied the boards’ bids to end the main part of the case. However, he permanently dismissed two added claims: one arguing her rights under the state constitution were violated and one asking the court to define the legal rights of each side. Harris cannot refile those claims in this case. Croom also allowed the State Board to file an unedited copy of its dismissal argument under seal. Only the court and lawyers can see it. The order does not explain why the court sealed it.
Virginia: Arlington County is suing the Trump administration to block armed federal agents from polling places during the upcoming midterms. The Arlington County Board filed the lawsuit October 20 challenging “policies authorizing armed federal agents, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and FBI officers, to conduct enforcement operations at polling places or other election sites.” Federal law dating to the Civil War prohibits “troops or armed men” from being deployed to places where elections are being held “unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” Arlington’s lawsuit is asking the court to intervene to ensure federal officials cannot undermine election administration, intimidate voters or interfere with the responsibilities of local election officials and law enforcement. The lawsuit states sending armed federal agents to polls threatens voter safety and forces local officials to divert critical resources to prepare for the agents.
Michael H. Drucker
