Legislative Updates Federal Legislation: A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman, Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) unveiled legislation aiming to combat efforts to undermine election results and install new protections for election workers, who have received a rise in violent threats since the 2020 election. The bill, titled the Protecting Election Administration from Interference Act, would extend existing prohibitions on threats to election officials to include individuals involved in ballot-counting, canvassing and certifying election results. The legislation also calls for strengthened protections for federal election records and election systems to “stop election officials or others from endangering the preservation and security of cast ballots,” and allowing the Justice Department to bring lawsuits to enforce compliance with election records requirements. Across the country, we are seeing election administrators and officials face a barrage of threats and abusive behaviors by those seeking to overturn election results,” Klobuchar said in a statement. “We need to respond to these threats head on to protect those who are on the frontlines defending our democracy,” added Klobuchar, who has oversight over federal elections as head of the Rules Committee. Klobuchar argued that the “legislation is key to fighting back against attempts to undermine our elections and ensuring our democracy works for every American.”
The U.S. Senate adjourned for summer recess without taking up voting rights legislation, but according to The Hill, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) teed up a Senate vote for mid-September on taking up the election debate. He’ll need 10 GOP votes to start debate, assuming every member of his caucus votes yes, likely dooming the new effort absent a significant, unexpected, shift from moderate Democrats on changing the chamber’s rules. “Voting rights, voting rights, will be the first matter of legislative business when the Senate returns to session in September. Our democracy demands no less,” Schumer said.
Alaska: The Juneau Assembly is considering turning a city-owned warehouse into a more permanent ballot counting facility. The city will need about $700,000 to remodel its Thane warehouse, and purchase ballot-counting equipment. Juneau implemented a temporary vote by mail system for the 2020 election due to concerns over COVID-19. Currently, that requires city officials to use an Anchorage facility for ballot-counting. That’s what will happen again in 2021, but if this new proposal doesn’t hit any snags, Juneau would have its own facility next fall. The proposal will be introduced at the Aug. 23rd assembly meeting.
Colorado: A committee of the Denver city council unanimously forwarded a ballot measure to the full City Council to shift the date of the city’s municipal elections from May to April. The elections choose the mayor, city council members, auditor, and clerk and recorder. Moving the election up a month was proposed by Denver Clerk and Recorder Paul López after nearly a year of planning. López suggested this option will help his office, which oversees elections, better prepare for runoff elections Moving the election a month ahead would provide more time to prepare for a run-off by changing the city’s law requiring it to take place roughly 30 days after the municipal election. The run-offs would still take place in June under the new proposal. It will be up to the full City Council to decide whether to send the proposal to voters to decide this fall.
Guam: A number of reforms to Guam’s election laws are being offered by a bipartisan pair of legislators: Sen. Jim Moylan and Sen. Joe San Agustin. The proposals from the senators are found in two separate pieces of legislation.
Bill 173-36 would make seven amendments to local statutes, including allowing for the cancellation of certain primary elections. According to the measure, a vote during a primary election for governor and lieutenant governor, senators, mayors or vice mayors won’t need to be conducted “if fewer than the maximum number of partisan candidates who can advance to the general election are running for both political parties.”
Bill 174-36, adjusts multiple deadlines associated with elections. For instance, the legislation proposes to shift the timeframe for candidates to submit their nominating petitions – going from between 130 and 60 days before a primary election to between 160 and 90 days. The change would give residents more time to consider for whom they will vote.The legislation also gives residents less time to register to vote, suggesting that the GEC’s registration period end 21 days before an election, instead of the current 10-day cutoff. Bill 174 would additionally move up the primary to the first, instead of the last, Saturday of August. Other reforms proposed in the bills include: clarifying the GEC is responsible for designating a 100-foot marker from a polling site where electioneering is prohibited; changing the name of a voting precinct to a “voting district;” specifying the “name” of a candidate to be what appears on a birth certificate, passport, or other government document; giving more flexibility for the GEC to count provisional ballots; mandating a special election for a vacancy in the delegate position; and allowing for the electronic registration of electors.
New Hampshire: Gov. Chris Sununu signed 30 bills into law this week including elections-related legislation. House Bill 326 requires town and city clerks to make electronic lists of persons who applied for absentee ballots available to candidates.
Texas: The Texas Senate State Affairs committee approved Senate Bill 1 — a bill that disability rights groups say contains measures that would hurt voters who have disabilities. SB 1 is the latest sweeping voting bill before lawmakers, each a point of contention between Republicans and Democrats in the Texas Legislature. During the hearing before the vote, Jeff Miller with Disability Rights Texas said this latest bill does address some of the issues his group raised during the last few times Republicans took up similar voting bills, but ultimately, if passed, the legislation will “end up disenfranchising voters with disabilities.” The sponsor of SB 1, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, said he has been listening to feedback about the bill and the process. “We are trying to make the bill better and accommodate everybody,” he said. After hours of testimony, the committee approved the bill along party lines. It now heads to the full Texas Senate for final approval.
Utah: A proposed ballot initiative aims to change Utah’s election system. The proposed change would dispense with partisan primary elections, in which political parties send the top vote-getter to the general election. Instead, the “Fair Elections Initiative” creates a single, nonpartisan primary election including all candidates. The top five finishers in that primary election advance to the November general election, regardless of political party. The November general election would no longer crown the top vote-getter as the winner, regardless of whether the candidate secures a majority or not. Instead, the winner would be determined by ranked-choice voting. The idea is similar to a ballot initiative approved by voters in Alaska in 2020. The issue could be put to voters in November 2022, but there’s a long road ahead. If the lieutenant governor approves the initiative, backers need to hold at least seven public hearings around the state and prepare a fiscal impact statement to demonstrate how much the initiative would cost if it were to become law. Reasons for rejecting an initiative include being unconstitutional, if it’s deemed “nonsensical,” or it could not become law if passed. Then they would still need to collect nearly 138,000 signatures. They must also meet specific signature thresholds in 26 of the state’s 29 state Senate districts. Sponsors have until Feb. 15 to meet those requirements.
Wisconsin: Gov. Tony Evers (D) vetoed election bills that would have required Wisconsinites to fill out more paperwork to vote. The bills Evers vetoed would have required voters to fill out two forms instead of one to vote absentee, added restrictions on who can return completed absentee ballots, required elderly and disabled voters to provide IDs to vote absentee in most cases and prohibited clerks from correcting defects on absentee ballot envelopes. Other bills vetoed would have created a backup system for voting in nursing homes and required nursing home administrators to notify relatives when special voting deputies will visit the facility. Another would have allowed election observers to sit or stand within 3 feet of poll workers during recounts. Another bill he vetoed would have required municipalities that livestream their counting of ballots to record it and save it for 22 months. Other election records must be retained for that amount of time.
Wyoming: Lawmakers rejected a proposal by State Rep. Chuck Gray (R-Casper) to give the Wyoming Legislature the power to audit elections. Gray, who is running for Congress against incumbent U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney in next year’s Republican primary, has made “election integrity” a centerpiece of his campaign. Gray has also touted his visits to the site of an election audit in Arizona inspired by former President Donald Trump’s disproven claims the 2020 election was stolen from him. County clerks’ offices are responsible for auditing elections at the county level. Wyoming does not require a statewide audit of election results. Gray’s proposal, which failed by a raised hand vote of 8-2, proposed bringing the Wyoming Department of Audit — which primarily handles financial and government performance audits — under the umbrella of the legislative branch. He also proposed authorizing it to audit elections. Sen. Anthony Bouchard (R-Cheyenne), a member of the Management Audit Committee and one of Gray’s opponents in next year’s race, accused Gray of pulling a political stunt. While he said he supported similar legislation in the past, Bouchard has largely rejected claims of rampant voter fraud in the 2020 election. “I’m disgusted that you’re pulling this election issue because you’re running for office here,” he said.
Legal Updates
Federal Litigation: Dominion Voting Systems has filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against Newsmax and One American News Network for their alleged spread of misinformation during the 2020 election. The election system vendor accused the outlets of spreading misinformation about the 2020 election by accusing Dominion of rigging the ballots in President Biden’s favor via their voting machines. These lies have harmed the company, its employees, and its customers; workers have been threatened, their offices vandalized, and the company has had to spend upwards of $600,000 on security for employees, the suit alleges. The suits also name OAN CEO Robert Herring as well as his son, OAN president Charles Herring, the Chief White House Correspondent for OAN, Chanel Rion, and a network personality, Christina Bobb. Dominion has also sued Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock; he appeared often on OAN and was interviewed as an “expert,” but similarly spread misinformation about Dominion and the 2020 election, the suits allege.
In other Dominion litigation news, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols denied requests by former president Donald Trump’s former lawyers and allies to throw out more than $3 billion in defamation lawsuits over false claims that a voting machine company’s technology was used to rig the 2020 presidential election. The ruling allows lawsuits by Dominion Voting Systems against former Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, as well as MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, to move forward. In a written opinion, Nichols said that Powell and Lindell made their claims “knowing that they were false or with reckless disregard for the truth.” “A reasonable juror” could conclude that Powell did not have a video of Dominion’s founder saying that “he can change a million votes, no problem at all,” as she had claimed, the judge wrote. Nichols also wrote that a sensible juror could conclude that Lindell’s insistence on “the existence of a vast international conspiracy that is ignored by the government but proven by a spreadsheet on an internet blog is so inherently improbable that only a reckless man would believe it,” referencing Lindell’s assertion that a spreadsheet he shared on Twitter as proof of Trump’s victory was evidence.
Arizona: The Democratic National Committee and the Arizona Democratic Party are gearing up to sue Arizona officials to stop a new law that allows a third party designated by the Republican-controlled legislature to scour the state’s voter registration database in search of ineligible voters. Party officials say the provision violates both federal voting law and Arizonans’ constitutional rights, in a demand letter being sent to Arizona officials The letter is the first step in filing a lawsuit under the National Voter Registration Act. The move marks the first time that the national Democratic Party has taken legal action to counter the wave of restrictive voting laws passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures this year.
Georgia: A panel of 11th Circuit judges appeared poised to toss out a voting rights group’s request for an order ending the practice of requiring Georgia voters to pay for their own postage to submit absentee ballots and ballot applications. A federal judge denied the bid for free postage last year, rejecting a class action brought by the nonprofit Black Voters Matter and two Georgia voters against Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and DeKalb County election officials. An attorney for the plaintiffs told a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court that requiring voters to pay for postage to vote by mail is the equivalent of a poll tax outlawed by the 24th Amendment. Sean Young, legal director for the ACLU of Georgia, argued that the state has unfairly abridged the right to vote by mail by conditioning it on voters’ ability to pay for postage. Young asked the panel to refer back to the court’s 2020 decision in Jones v. Governor of Florida, which he said established the definition of a tax as “any government monetary extraction that is not a penalty.” He told the panel that the definition of a tax is broad under the law. Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Ed Carnes, a George H.W. Bush appointee, balked at Young’s argument, calling the plaintiffs’ position “absurd.”
Illinois: DuPage County Judge Craig Belford denied some of the expenses County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek said Former DuPage County Auditor Bob Grogan should pay for a recount of a 2020 race he lost. The total tab was $289,000. Belford knocked the tab down to $112,614 and decided Grogan should only have to post half of that amount — $56,307 — in advance. Belford said that while the court’s “paramount obligation” is to ensure there is a true and accurate vote count, “the posting of a security should never stand as an obstacle to the accomplishment of this task.” In the county auditor’s race, Grogan, a Republican from Downers Grove, lost to Democrat William White, also of Downers Grove. Grogan had 233,046 votes to White’s 233,121 votes. State law allows a judge to order a candidate who requests a recount to provide a bond or cash deposit to cover some or all of the costs. If the candidate wins the recount, the money is returned. Belford denied the clerk’s request to have Grogan pay the $43,309 costs of the election-division workers who would be involved in the recount, saying the workers would be working anyway.
Maryland: Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Glenn Klavans has dismissed a lawsuit brought by two Republican political candidates that sought to block Annapolis from mailing ballots to all registered voters in its upcoming primary and general elections. In the seven-page opinions, Klavans wrote that Republican Herb McMillan, a county executive candidate, and George Gallagher, a candidate for the City Council Ward 6 seat waited too long to take legal action after learning of the city’s plans to mail ballots to voters in mid-June. Klavans ordered the lawsuit, which was filed in late July, be dismissed with prejudice, which means a new lawsuit can’t be filed on the same premise. McMillan and Gallagher said they are considering an appeal of the ruling.
The Maryland State Board of Elections has settled a longstanding dispute over ballot-marking devices that disability advocates say forced them to cast a segregated ballot. The terms of the settlement were publicly announced by the National Federation of the Blind, which filed a lawsuit over ballot privacy in August 2019. At issue are the state’s ballot-marking devices, which allow voters who are blind or have other disabilities to use headphones, magnification, touchscreens and other features to independently cast ballots. But the machines also produce a ballot printout that’s a different size and shape than the paper ballots cast by a vast majority of Maryland voters. Under the terms of the settlement as announced by the federation, the Maryland State Board of Elections will take several steps to address privacy and access concerns: The elections board will ensure that additional ballot-marking devices are available at the polling places of three plaintiffs who documented access and equipment issues in the lawsuit. The state will also ensure that additional machines are in place at polling places where there have been issues in past elections and at precincts that would experience significant delays waiting for a replacement if a machine breaks down; Training materials issued to election judges by the state will instruct them to ensure that at least ten voters at each polling location use a ballot-marking device, which will help protect privacy. Election judges at polling places that do not meet the 10-voter requirement will be subject to additional monitoring and training; When the state next buys or leases election equipment, officials will include the capability for ballot-marking machines to produce a ballot substantially similar in size, shape, and content to hand-marked paper ballots as a factor in picking which voting system to purchase or lease; and Elections officials will not discourage the use of ballot-marking devices or encourage the use of hand-marked paper ballots in public messages or election judge trainings. The elections board will also give the National Federation of the Blind data about the use of ballot-marking devices and complaints by voters with disabilities for each election through 2024. A $230,000 financial settlement to cover the legal fees and costs of the National Federation of the Blind and the plaintiffs is subject to approval by the Board of Public Works. The panel is expected to take up the settlement agreement at its Sept. 1 meeting, according to court filings.
Minnesota: The Minnesota Supreme Court will hear a case regarding a dispute over the restoration of voting rights for people with felonies on their records. The high court agreed to hear a constitutional challenge to state law on Tuesday. Minnesota is among 15 other states that require individuals convicted with felony records to serve their time and complete any parole, probation or supervised released before they are allowed to vote again. Dates have not yet been scheduled for oral arguments.
New Jersey: The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it has entered a proposed consent decree with the state, settling a voting rights lawsuit that was filed against the state and state officials in March. The lawsuit specifically charged that the state’s disability transportation programs, including NJ Transit Access Link and the Community Transportation network, had failed to provide voter registration opportunities as required under section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). “Under the NVRA, these offices must distribute a voter registration application to each person who applies for their services, and along with each recertification, renewal or change of address form relating to such services, unless the person involved declines in writing to register to vote,” the Justice Department wrote. “However, NJ Transit Access Link and Community Transportation programs have not been providing the voter registration opportunities guaranteed by the NVRA.” According to the terms of the consent decree, the State of New Jersey will designate its disability transportation services as voter registration agencies, allowing them to supply voter registration services going forward. The decree is subject to approval from the federal district court in New Jersey. “The right to vote is a constitutional principle that forms a cornerstone of our democracy,” said acting U.S. Attorney Rachael Honig. “We appreciate that the State of New Jersey has worked with us to ensure that all New Jersey residents, including those with disabilities, enjoy convenient opportunities to register to vote.”
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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