Election News This Week
Federal Update: Tulsi Gabbard will resign from her position at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, citing her husband’s recent bone cancer diagnosis. President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post that Gabbard had “done an incredible job, and we will miss her”. Her resignation is effective as of 30 June. Aaron Lukas, the principal deputy director, will step in as acting director, Trump said. During a House Subcommittee on Elections hearing on election security last week, election officials warned lawmakers that threats against election workers and voting systems are escalating even as federal funding for election security remains far below 2020 levels, posing risks ahead of the 2026 midterms. Thomas Hicks, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission said election workers across the country have faced phishing attacks, bomb threats, and swatting incidents — false emergency reports intended to trigger large police responses at polling locations. “For the United States to continue to be a world leader in election best practices, the federal government must support and invest in our election infrastructure,” Hicks said. According to exclusive reporting from Reuters, White House adviser Kurt Olsen last year sought to ban voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states by asking whether the Commerce Department could declare their components national-security risks. The plan to exclude the machines, reported here first, got far enough that in September, Commerce Department officials began exploring what grounds could be invoked to execute it, three additional sources said. It eventually collapsed, however, because Olsen and other administration staffers working with him failed to provide evidence to justify such a move, two of the sources said.
2026 Elections: The 2026 election season continued this week with runoff elections in Texas and early voting in several states. In Texas, voting unfolded slowly but smoothly in Dallas County’s runoff on Tuesday, a change from the chaos that took place during the March 3 primary election. “It’s been quiet, thank goodness,” Republican election judge Lila Farmer told the Dallas Morning News. Oak Lawn Democratic election judge David Fisher said voting was going without a hitch Tuesday. This came after one hiccup during early voting at the site, when a flasher exposed himself to voters before fleeing. A wrong file was uploaded into the voting system in Fort Bend County, causing countywide issues at polling locations for close to three hours. “This was just a manual process,” added Fort Bend County elections administrator Chase Wilson. “Unfortunately, very small mistake can lead to a very great outcome here, so a mistake with the click of a button essentially takes.” Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth called Election Day a success Tuesday night, celebrating the completion of the county’s eighth election in eight months while wearing a lei around her neck. “We have worked very, very hard and we are excited to say aloha, at least until we get to November,” Hudspeth told KHOU 11. In South Carolina, a record number of people turned out for the first day of early voting on May 26. A vote center in Garden Grove, California that had served as a shelter for those displaced during the chemical threat at a nearby aerospace plant reopened on Tuesday. Three ballot boxes in the area around the plant remain closed though. Registrar of Voters Bob Page said last week his office was able to collect ballots from two of the drop boxes on Friday morning before the evacuation area was expanded. And normal security measures are in place to ensure the ballot drop boxes remain secure while they are shuttered, Page said. Replacement ballots have now been mailed out to all Maryland voters who received mail ballots with errors, about 500,000. Two weeks ago, SBE officials identified the error with the state’s mail-in ballot vendor, which prompted the reprinting and replacement of ballots for all voters who requested a mail-in ballot.
Artificial Intelligence: OpenAI announced its plans to safeguard information and aid cybersecurity defenders in the 2026 midterm elections, including work to combat deepfakes and other forms of artificial intelligence misuse. According to CyberScoop, the announcement builds on commitments from major tech companies in 2024, including OpenAI, to protect elections from AI-infused election interference — efforts that some thought weren’t enough. Government agencies, non-governmental institutes and others have increasingly warned about AI’s ability to have a negative impact on elections even as they advertise its potential for good. OpenAI’s plan has five planks: spreading reliable information about voting and election results, helping with cybersecurity, watermarking deepfakes, enforcing policies that ban users from deploying its tools for election interference, and weeding out political bias in its models. OpenAI highlighted that it has made its Codex Security agentic framework and Trusted Access for Cyber framework available to election officials, and was briefing the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors on its tools. “This is an important moment for cyber defenders across industries, and we believe AI plays a critical role in hardening digital infrastructure — including systems that support elections,” the company said. “OpenAI is committed to building resilience across the infrastructure stack, including in ways that support election execution.”
Vote for your Life: According to a paper published in The Journals of Gerontology Series B titled “Voting behavior and mortality risk in older adults,” voting may help you live longer! Femida Handy, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice and one of the study’s co-authors, told Texas Public Radio the results surprised even the researchers. “Because the results were so striking, we had to rerun and rerun the data,” Handy said. She added that peer reviewers asked the researchers to conduct additional checks before publication. The study used data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, one of the longest-running social science studies in the United States. It began in 1957 with a random sample of more than 10,000 Wisconsin high school graduates and has followed participants throughout their lives. The study also found that people in poorer health appeared to benefit more. Handy said the result didn’t change depending on which party the voter supported. “It didn’t matter what their political affiliation was,” she said. The benefit also was not limited to people who physically went to the polls. “Even those who had voted remotely have a decreased mortality risk,” Handy said. But the researchers are careful to say the study does not prove that voting itself causes people to live longer. There is no evidence that simply wearing an “I voted” sticker extends life. Instead, Handy said, the act of voting may reflect something deeper: a sense of purpose, community connection and belief that one’s actions matter.
Sticker News: The Palm Beach County, Florida Supervisor of Elections Office announced the winners of its 2026 Sticker Design Contests, which invited middle and high school students to create official “I Voted,” “Future Voter,” and “Celebrating America’s 250th” stickers. Wendy Sartory Link, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, praised the students’ creativity and enthusiasm. “This contest is a wonderful way to combine creativity, civic pride, and community engagement,” Link said. “Our students created thoughtful and inspiring designs that reflect the importance of participation in our democracy, and we are excited for voters throughout Palm Beach County to wear these stickers proudly during the 2026 elections.” The winning designs will be distributed to voters during the 2026 election cycle and showcased at voter education events throughout the county. Congratulations to Giahna L. (Independence Middle School), Dylan L. (FAU High School), and Gabriela W. (Spanish River High School) for winning each category. Lake County, Florida Supervisor of Elections Alan Hays revealed the winners of the department’s inaugural “I Voted” sticker art contest in an announcement May 22. “The level of talent and creativity was remarkable. The judges and I had our work cut out for us. Congratulations to both Kaleah and Emily for their outstanding submissions,” said Supervisor Hays in the announcement. “This contest is one way to engage future voters in our community. I’m extremely pleased with the turnout, and I would like to thank every student who participated.”
Personnel News: Recently retired Midland County, Michigan Clerk Ann Manary will return as the county’s new elections director. Harrison “Joe” Johnson is the new Pender County, North Carolina deputy director of elections. Brandy Wynn is the new Martin County, North Carolina director of elections. Jessily Joseph has been appointed executive director of the Peoria County, Illinois election commission. Bill Carter is the new Bedford, New Hampshire clerk. Cristian “Cris” Pérez Garcia has resigned as the Guadalupe County, Texas elections administrator.
Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska Ballot Measure: A petition circulating around the Fairbanks North Star Borough aims to require the hand-counting of all votes in borough elections. If enough signatures are collected, the effort, co-sponsored by Barbara Haney and Tammie Wilson, would put the issue on this year’s ballot for borough residents. Haney said her primary purpose in putting forward the petition was to cut costs for the borough. “The Dominion contract, the machine contract, is actually kind of pricey,” she said, arguing that the borough does not need that level of technology for the limited turnout being seen at its elections. Listing the cost of the software, the time spent by staff bringing the equipment out to polling locations around the borough and the cost of storing the equipment, Haney said the technology is not worthwhile enough to keep, pointing to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough as an example of a location that switched back to hand-counting ballots. While Haney said she was unconvinced by the evidence she has been presented about “nefarious things going on” with machine counted ballots, she said glitching in the machines during past elections has led to community concerns about their reliability.
California: Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has signed legislation into law that bans law enforcement from interfering with California elections. The law, which takes effect immediately, criminalizes the act of taking cast ballots from the custody of a local election official. State lawmakers originally introduced the measure, Senate Bill 73, to guard against potential federal interference with California’s elections. However, Riverside County’s Sheriff Richard Bianco’s decision to seize ballots turned a hypothetical threat into a real one, spurring legislators to seize the moment and rush the bill through so it could take effect before Election Day. The new law makes it illegal for a county registrar to surrender ballots or voting equipment to law enforcement agents such as Bianco or his deputies. Riverside County Registrar Art Tinoco would have violated the law by allowing the sheriff’s department to take the ballots, despite the search warrant they presented. The law also reiterates that the attorney general, secretary of state or local county elections officials can sue any person, business or entity that takes “a package containing ballots” from an election official’s custody. Legislators included safeguards in the law that allow the attorney general and secretary of state in some circumstances to override the authority of a county election official — such as if a registrar permitted armed personnel to stage near polling places. The new law also prohibits any individual from allowing any law enforcement agent to “access, disrupt, modify or take possession of” any voting technology without a court order. Another provision prohibits election observers from challenging voter signatures.
Louisiana: Voters in Louisiana without a photo ID may soon have to take extra steps to cast their ballots, pending if Gov. Landry signs the new bill into law. Senate Bill 319, was approved by the House on May 26 without amendments. It was authored by Sen. Thomas Pressley (R-Shreveport). The bill would change how voters across the state verify their identity. Currently, individuals who show up to polling places without picture ID are allowed to cast a ballot by signing an affidavit paired with a “generally recognized picture identification card,” which has the voter’s name and signature, according to legislative records. If SB 319 is signed into law, voters will have to go through a longer verification process by going to an office of registrar of voters in their parish. There, they will cast a conditional paper ballot with two days to gather the required photo ID documents. The bill also changes what qualifies as a photo ID. Under the proposed law, voters must be able to present “primary documents” such as a birth certificate, Social Security card, U.S. passport, or tribal ID card. If the items are provided, the conditional ballot will be counted; if not the ballot will be rejected. The bill now heads to Gov. Landry’s desk and would become a law on July 1, 2027, if he signs it.
New Jersey: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a state-level voting rights bill for the first time since the proposal was raised in 2022, a step that moves the state one step closer to enacting voting protections that have been stripped from the proposal’s federal counterpart. The bill would expand language access requirements beyond those in federal law, afford state courts broad powers to rewrite discriminatory election rules, and require the state attorney general’s approval for any changes to election procedure. The Committee approved the bill, called the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act after the late congressman and civil rights figure, in a party-line vote with one abstention from Sen. Jon Bramnick (R-Union), a moderate who expressed concerns about litigation in jurisdictions with no discrimination. Supporters of the New Jersey bill said that state-level protections are needed, particularly as President Donald Trump and members of his administration raise questions about whether elections for federal office will continue to exist. “This bill brings protection home to New Jersey, where we have the authority to enforce it,” said Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson (D-Mercer), the bill’s chief sponsor in the lower chamber.
Ohio: A new election-related bill would reduce how long voters who have trouble standing must wait in line. Introduced May 12, House Bill 893 focuses on improving voting accessibility, particularly for voters who have difficulty standing for long periods because of age, disability or medical conditions. According to the Ohio Legislature, the bill would amend existing state law (sections 3501.11 and 3501.29 of Ohio’s Revised Code) to require boards of elections to take steps to reduce wait times for voters who struggle to stand for long periods. The newly introduced bill builds on existing accessibility laws by focusing specifically on reducing or eliminating long periods of standing for voters, especially those with mobility or health challenges. The bill would require boards of elections to create an accommodation plan for each polling place to reduce standing time for affected voters. This includes measures such as: Priority waiting lines for voters who struggle to stand; Designated seating areas; and Other options that reduce voters’ time spent standing. The bill would also incorporate these accommodation plans into broader election administration plans submitted to the secretary of state. The bill requires poll workers to offer these accommodations to all voters, though no one is required to use them.
South Carolina: A push to overhaul South Carolina’s congressional map ended this week, as a record-setting start to early voting prompted Republican senators to abandon their support. The 26-18 vote to effectively kill the bill requested by the White House included 14 Republicans. It followed one of the chamber’s most conservative members taking the podium to explain why he could no longer support the effort, 12 days after the start of a special session ordered by Gov. Henry McMaster. “Neither my conscience nor my common sense will allow me to stop an election underway,” said Sen. Richard Cash of Anderson County. “The deadline is past. Voting has begun. It is time to conclude the matter.” By noon May 26, 26,000 South Carolinians had voted in person. That’s more than the total for the first day of early voting in 2024. The tally rose to 32,300 an hour later. In addition, more than 4,100 mailed absentee ballots had been returned by Tuesday, according to the state Election Commission. Recognizing that Republicans will be angry at the Senate, Cash stressed that the fastest the bill could become law would be sometime May 27, after many more thousands of people will have voted. The only way it could have passed sooner was if at least 31 senators — a two-thirds supermajority — had voted Friday to ignore the chamber’s rules for redistricting debates. But that motion failed twice.
Wyoming: Members of the Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee met for the first time this interim on May 21. Lawmakers spoke for two days on a broad range of topics, including election security. Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s office identified roughly 30 election bills that failed over the past two legislative sessions that he wants to see reconsidered. Lawmakers on the committee narrowed that number down to 14 with 13 ultimately being approved. HB 48 Pen and paper ballots: This bill would require counties to use pen and paper as the default method to mark ballots for elections in Wyoming. Gray noted that this was already the norm in all but Laramie County. Gray said this would help to implement President Trump’s executive order on election integrity. HB 49 Ballot drop boxes-prohibition: Gray wrote to county clerks in 2024 urging them not to use unattended ballot drop boxes. Several clerks offered them later that year, though they said they checked the boxes at least daily and some used video surveillance. Gray contends the Wyoming Constitution already bars using drop boxes. Now, he wants Wyoming law to prohibit them explicitly. Gray added that, under the current statute, he maintains the attorney general “should take action on ensuring compliance with counties on the current code.” HB 50 Ballot harvesting prohibition: This bill would bar third parties from delivering ballots to the county clerk on behalf of others. HB 51 Random hand count audits of election results: Lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year requiring clerks to compare the results of machine tabulating equipment against a hand count. But it’s only for this year’s primary and general elections. This bill would require clerks to do a hand count accuracy check for one precinct in each county in perpetuity. HB 52 Election hand counting for recounts: This bill would allow certain recounts to be counted by hand, instead of the currently used machine tabulators. HB 53 Poll watchers-polling stations observation: Gray referred to this bill as the “poll watchers bill of rights.” It would include voter registration and vote counting as events poll watchers could observe, and allow them to be close enough to hear and see voters. Poll watchers would be designated by chairs of county political parties. HB 54 Elections-independent candidate requirements: This bill would require independent candidates to swear that they are unaffiliated or not registered with a major or minor political party. It would also increase the number of signatures needed to petition to be on the ballot. HB 94 Election purity and hand count act: This bill would provide the basis to enact hand-counting methods around the state in place of voting machines. HB 22 Recall of elected municipal officers: This bill would allow for 40% of voters to petition to recall any municipal official. SF 29 Elections-acceptable identification revisions: This bill replaces a chunk of state law that specifies which types of identification can be used to vote with a simpler description: The ID must not be expired, must be in the original form in which it was issued and must include a photograph of the person. Medicare and Medicaid insurance cards and some student IDs may no longer be acceptable. SF 33 Political parties-county central committees: This bill would allow party members to be elected to their respective county central party committee.
Legal Updates
Federal Litigation: U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump nominee based in Washington, D.C., has declined to temporarily block President Trump’s executive order that calls for restricting voting by mail. The ruling released May 18, leaves in place — at least for now — an executive order on voting that tests the limits of the president’s power under the Constitution. A separate, 2025 executive order on voting was halted by courts. The March 31 EO, calls for the Department of Homeland Security to work with the Social Security Administration to create lists of adult U.S. citizens in each state, and to send those lists to state election officials. It also calls for the U.S. Postal Service — a federal agency that’s independent of a president’s administration — to come up with lists of eligible voters and to only deliver mail-in ballots to people on those lists. “The Court recognizes that the Postal Service may ultimately issue a final rule that directly affects Plaintiffs or their members, or that the Government may develop State Citizenship Lists that omit specific individuals due to particularized flaws. Plaintiffs may, of course, renew their motions if and when those future actions occur. Until then, however, Plaintiffs cannot show that preliminary injunctive relief is warranted,” Nichols wrote about the decision not to block the order. Nichols’ ruling comes as another federal judge is preparing to issue a ruling in the coming weeks for a similar set of lawsuits based in Boston.
Alabama: A group of Alabama voters made a last-ditch effort at the Northern District of Alabama to maintain congressional district maps that give Black voters the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in two of the state’s seven districts. A favorable decision here would reverse recent efforts by the Republican legislature to eliminate one minority district following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which weakened the Voting Rights Act and made it harder to challenge voting maps on racial grounds. Republican state lawmakers want to go back to a 2023 map. It was previously ruled unconstitutional — and after substantial litigation, a special master approved a remedial map creating a second Black-majority district. The remedial map has already been used in three elections, including the most recent primary on May 19. When it was initially implemented in 2024, it resulted in the election of Congressman Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. If the 2023 map is approved to be used again, the reassignment process must be completed by May 27, with absentee ballots due by June 2. Before a three-judge panel, attorneys spent the morning grilling State Director of Elections Jeff Elrod about the implications of using either map. Elrod acknowledged the legislature’s 2023 map would be difficult to implement, particularly in counties that are divided by new district lines. He said he was uncertain if local election officials could meet new timelines and that he hadn’t had conversations with individual counties about it. The panel hearing the case includes U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus, a Bill Clinton appointee, along with U.S. District Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer, both Donald Trump appointees. Their questioning largely focused on stress‑testing how Callais changed the legal analysis, as well as pressing both sides on evidence, feasibility and equities. On May 26, the panel blocked the state from using the 2023 maps. The judges wrote in the 79-page opinion that the state’s argument contradicted its arguments made in 2023, and said that its 2023 map “made it impossible not only to remediate the vote dilution we identified, but also to respect the longstanding community of interest the Legislature identified in Alabama’s Black Belt.” The state has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Arizona: This week, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to wade into a legal fight between the Republican National Committee and a host of Democratic and voting rights groups over a series of voting restrictions in Arizona. If the court takes the case, it could lead to a significant decision granting states greater leeway to purge alleged noncitizen voters close to elections and mandate that voters prove their citizenship — a key aim of the SAVE America Act, President Donald Trump’s signature elections legislation that’s stalled in Congress. Arizona requires individuals to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, to vote in state elections. Residents who don’t offer documentation can still use a federal form to register, but can only vote in federal elections. Election officials must run the names of federal-only voters through a U.S. Department of Homeland Security computer program that can identify possible noncitizens. DOJ argues that the Supreme Court should affirm the Arizona law and find that it doesn’t violate the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 federal law that sets rules for how voters are registered and when states can remove them from their rolls. The NVRA imposes strict limits on canceling registrations in the 90 days before a federal election. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that Arizona’s law violates the NVRA. “But that decision eliminates the flexibility the Act promises to States when enforcing their voter qualifications,” the Justice Department says in its brief.
Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap referred potential noncitizens that he claims to have found on the county’s voter roll to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office on May 22. His referral comes after the attorney general’s office suggested it could take legal action against Heap unless he handed over information about the voters, according to public records obtained by Votebeat. Nicholas Klingerman, the chief counsel of the office’s criminal division, wrote in an April 2 letter to Heap that he was violating state law by failing to refer the alleged noncitizen voters for further investigation. On May 20, he sent another letter stressing those concerns and adding that Heap’s “current handling” of the voters’ registration status didn’t comply with state election law. “At this point, your insistence that you are following the law is wrong at best and purposefully misleading at worst,” Klingerman wrote in his letter, adding that Heap must refer the voters to state prosecutors by the end of the week. Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, told Votebeat his office received the referral from Heap around 2 p.m. on May 22.
Florida: Leon County Circuit Judge Joshua Hawkes has denied a motion to put off use of a new congressional map in Florida until after the Midterms. Hawkes, who was appointed to his seat by Gov. Ron DeSantis, said he could not immediately determine whether a challenge brought by voting rights groups would likely win on the merits. Presented with 1,900 pages of briefs from plaintiffs challenging the map and more than 220 pages of evidence defending the state, he said a decision could not be rendered at this stage. Hawkes cited the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision increasing a threshold for drawing minority majority seats, and the state said a new map must be implemented in a timely fashion. He said DeSantis’ office was effectively within the law to declare the congressional map approved in 2022, notably one DeSantis’ office designed and strong-armed through the process, was no longer legal. “The 2022 map was declared unconstitutional when the Governor and Legislature replaced it with the 2026 map challenged in this litigation,” Hawkes wrote. “The political branch’s position was in anticipation of a changing legal landscape with the Supreme Court’s pending ruling in Louisiana v. Callais… Plaintiffs’ evidence focuses on challenging the constitutionality of the 2026 map, but does not sufficiently challenge the political branches’ finding that CD-20 in the 2022 map was drawn with impermissible racial intent.”
Maine: The U.S. District Court in Maine delivered a blow to President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, granting the state’s motion to throw out the federal government’s lawsuit over Maine refusing to turn over sensitive voter data. Further, Chief U.S. District Judge Lance Walker concluded that the government’s stated purpose for the request — to ensure compliance with federal voter laws — is insufficient. Such an interpretation of federal law, Walker wrote in his ruling, “would take a sledgehammer to the balance Congress struck when it required states to create and maintain computerized lists of registered voters in the first place.” “Under our Constitution, states are the primary regulators and administrators of elections for federal office, unless Congress passes legislation that preempts that framework,” Walker wrote. “And Congress’s power to do even that is itself subject to limitations.” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows twice rejected requests from the Trump administration for Maine’s full, unredacted voter rolls — among other information — and the DOJ responded with a lawsuit in September. Attorney General Aaron Frey, on behalf of the state, asked the district court to dismiss the lawsuit in December. Bellows said in a statement that Thursday’s ruling affirms that the states are in charge of elections. “Let me clear – Trump and the DOJ may continue to try to interfere with free and fair elections run by the states,” said Bellows, who is also running for governor. “We will not let them.”
North Carolina: The North Carolina Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by 11 voters challenging partisan gerrymandering in the state, upholding a lower court decision that the objections to the maps raised “non-justiciable political questions.” Represented by former Republican state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, the voters challenged the constitutionality of the 2024 state and federal legislative districts drawn by the General Assembly in 2023 to heavily favor Republicans. They made the case that North Carolina’s constitution contains an implicit promise of fair elections, or its other guarantees of fundamental rights would be meaningless. In a brief 13-page unpublished opinion released Wednesday, Judge Chris Freeman wrote that because the lawsuit’s central claim is “at its core an allegation that the General Assembly acted to change districts to give one party or group an advantage in the upcoming election,” it lies beyond the authority of the state courts. “Plaintiffs rely on an unenumerated right to fair elections as the limitation on the General Assembly’s authority to gerrymander on a partisan basis,” Freeman wrote. “Because we review whether the General Assembly violated an express provision of our constitution, plaintiffs’ reliance on an unenumerated right cannot be the basis for an unconstitutional act of the General Assembly.” Both the U.S. Supreme Court and North Carolina Supreme Court have ruled that the issue of partisan gerrymandering falls outside of their jurisdiction. The state Court of Appeals also rejected a separate request by legislative leaders to require the plaintiffs pay the state’s attorneys’ fees.
U.S. Virgin Islands: U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage dismissed two lawsuits challenging different aspects of the 2026 election process. The rulings narrow — but do not end — a broader legal challenge brought by three prospective candidates against election officials. Savage dismissed both the plaintiffs’ March 9 and May 1 lawsuits without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction, concluding the challengers had not demonstrated the concrete, imminent harm necessary to establish standing in federal court. A third lawsuit filed May 13 remains pending. The plaintiffs — Shelley Moorhead, Collister Fahie, and Lorelei Monsanto — have filed three separate federal actions tied to the administration of the 2026 election cycle. Their initial March lawsuit alleged that campaign finance transparency laws had gone unenforced in the territory for more than two decades. They later filed a May 1 challenge focused on ballot access and the role of political party certification in the election process. Savage’s dismissal orders did not reach the plaintiffs’ underlying constitutional claims. Instead, the court concluded that the alleged injuries remained too speculative to establish federal jurisdiction. Because both dismissals were entered without prejudice, the rulings do not prevent the plaintiffs from bringing future claims should a concrete injury later materialize.
Wisconsin: U.S. District Judge James D. Peterson rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s demand for Wisconsin’s unredacted voter list, the latest defeat for President Donald Trump’s administration in its quest to obtain more information about voters around the country. In his 10-page ruling, Peterson said the department’s allegation that the Wisconsin Elections Commission violated the Civil Rights Act by not turning over the state’s voter roll “fails as a matter of law.” The federal government requested Wisconsin’s unredacted voter rolls late last year, and the Wisconsin Elections Commission argued that state law explicitly bans election officials from disclosing information like driver’s license numbers to most people who aren’t election officials. That led to the lawsuit. The Department of Justice has requested voter rolls with unredacted information — including voters’ full birthdates, full or partial Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information — from at least 48 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. At least 15 states have provided or said they will provide the data, but most have not, prompting the department to file suit against 30 states plus Washington, D.C.
The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin is challenging the state’s law governing voters’ ability to fix missing information on their absentee ballots, alleging that the law violates the Wisconsin Constitution by giving clerks a vast amount of discretion over whether to reject ballots. According to Votebeat, the group is asking a Dane County judge to require all clerks to provide voters notice when an absentee ballot certificate is lacking necessary information — such as a signature or the address of a voter or the person who witnessed the ballot’s casting — and give them an opportunity to add that information before rejecting the ballot, a process known as “curing” the ballot. Right now, the law tells clerks that they “may” return incomplete absentee ballots to voters. That results in some municipal clerks sending voters prompt notice about faulty ballots, while other clerks put those ballots in the rejected pile without informing the voter at all, the lawsuit states. Municipalities also treat absentee ballots differently depending on when they receive them, the lawsuit alleges, and those that arrive closer to Election Day often have a lesser chance of getting cured. The lawsuit, which names the Wisconsin Elections Commission as the defendant, argues that, without a blanket curing requirement, “mail-in absentee ballots are jeopardized by the lack of mandatory notice and curing opportunities across the state.”
Michael H. Drucker
