Legislative Updates Federal Legislation: U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pennsylvania) this week introduced a new bill that would create a statutory right to vote in federal elections, in an effort to curb the growing number of state-level voting that restrict voting and access to voting. The Right to Vote Act would allow Americans to challenge in court “any policy that unduly restricts ballot access,” and make it more difficult for states to implement policies that make it harder to participate in elections. The bill was announced on the eighth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which removed the requirement for states to have their election changes pre-approved by the federal government, to ensure they don’t hurt minority voting. The court ruled that the formula the Voting Rights Act used to determine which jurisdictions needed pre-clearance was unconstitutional. The legislation would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, “ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot,” Lee’s office said in a statement. It would prohibit state and local governments from restricting voting access in federal elections, to prevent state governments from enacting laws that diminish or substantially impair the ability to vote; and would expedite judicial review to protect citizens’ voting rights. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) introduced a Senate version of the bill in March. It has the support of eight senate colleagues and 25 members of the House.
California: The Assembly elections committee approved a pared-back version of a bill that would have created an automatic voter registration system in California, with some cautious “yes” votes and continued concerns from opponents. Senate Bill 299 by Sen. Monique Limón would have changed the current “opt-out” system of voter registration at the Department of Motor Vehicles to one where someone applying for a driver’s license or ID would be automatically registered if eligible and notified after — a system in place in 11 other states. The bill was amended to take a step back, and instead just allow the Secretary of State to create a list of people “preapproved for registration” — those of voting age who have provided the DMV with proof of citizenship. There are no details yet on what the trigger would be to move people on this proposed list to the rolls of registered voters, but it would require the person to take “some action to acknowledge and confirm their registration,” according to Neal Ubriani, policy and research director for the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Responsive Government, the group behind the effort in other states. That addressed one concern expressed by elections committee Chairperson Gail Pellerin and opponents. Limón said passing the bill would allow stakeholders to develop that process. The committee passed the bill on a 5-0 vote. “I do believe the author and I and all the groups in support and opposition all have the same goal: To improve voter registration for all Californians,” Pellerin, a Democrat from Santa Cruz, said in her recommendation to support the bill.
Idaho: A proposed amendment to the Idaho Constitution that would prohibit non-U.S. citizens from voting in Idaho elections will go before voters on the November general election ballot. That comes after the Idaho Legislature in March widely approved House Joint Resolution 5, with only 12 votes against it and 91 votes in support across the Idaho House and Senate. “No person who is not a citizen of the United States shall be a qualified elector in any election held within the state of Idaho,” the resolution says. The Idaho Constitution already lists U.S. citizenship as a qualification to be a qualified elector. The Legislative Council — a committee of legislative leaders — approved ballot language for the constitutional amendment. The council will submit the language to the Secretary of State’s Office, a spokeswoman for the office said, and the office will publish the language in several newspapers and its voter pamphlet that is sent to all Idaho voters before the November election. The vote by the council largely accepted ballot language drafted by the Legislature’s research arm, the Legislative Services Office. That includes statements in support of and against the amendment.
Louisiana: Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed more elections-related bills into law. Starting on August 1, House Bill 506 will require individuals and entities to register with the secretary of state before conducting voter registration drives. This excludes certain election officials and those holding electronic voter registration drives. The legislation also qualifies certain actions as criminal offenses, including someone filling out information on another person’s voter registration application when they are not providing voter assistance as mandated under the law. Starting on July 1, 2025, House Bill 581 will criminalize being a witness on more than one absentee ballot for non-immediate family members and require witnesses to be 18 years old and to provide their mailing addresses on the mail-in ballot certificate.
Mississippi: Mississippi will now hold runoff elections four weeks after the initial Election Day instead of three. State Senator Jeremy England (R) authored SB 2144, which passed during the 2024 session and changed the runoff period. The legislation, which went to conference, passed the House by a vote of 118-1 and the Senate by 50-1. Governor Tate Reeves (R) signed the bill, with an effective date of July 1. England told Magnolia Tribune that the primary reason for moving runoff elections from three weeks to four was to give Circuit Clerks and election officials more time to prepare properly for a runoff. “In Mississippi, results must be certified within 10 days after Election Day,” England explained. “That leaves only 11 days before the runoff. Clerks’ offices also have to open for two Saturdays before an election. This has always been a difficult time crunch. It was made worse with the move to paper ballots.” He said many of the people who handle elections in the state requested moving runoff elections back a week. This includes the Secretary of State’s office and associations for the County Circuit Clerks and Election Commissioners.
New York: A bill is heading to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk that would authorize drop boxes for absentee ballots. Supporters say it will increase access to voting, but opponents say they are concerned it will encourage voter fraud. Co-sponsor state Assemblymember Tony Simone told Spectrum News 1 that in each election, thousands of votes aren’t counted because of issues stemming from absentee ballots. The boxes would only be used for absentee ballots, and they would be optional for each county Board of Elections to decide whether or not to use. Sen. George Borrello said that making it easier to vote isn’t worth what he described as an increased opportunity for fraud. Even if there isn’t fraud, and there isn’t evidence that widespread fraud related to drop boxes elsewhere has taken place, he stressed that the perception there could be issues takes a toll. “It undermines the foundation of our republic, and it’s not something that makes for a healthy representative democracy,” he said.
North Carolina: The Senate is considering a number of elections-related measures, including three proposed constitutional amendments designed to give voters a say in the lawmaking process. According to The Associated Press, GOP senators are trying to advance the legislation quickly as an indefinite recess looms over the General Assembly due to budget negotiations. The bills — which passed a Senate elections committee on June 20 — deal with artificial intelligence in political advertisements, absentee ballot challenges and signature verification — as well as the three amendment proposals that could appear on ballots this fall. The proposed constitutional amendments would cover citizens-only voting, voter ID laws and income taxes. If the amendment projects are successfully enacted by the legislature, voters can cast their ballot for or against the referendums in November, making them law with a simple majority of votes. The first amendment — which also was proposed by House Republicans earlier this month — clarifies that only U.S. citizens who are at least 18 years old and meet other qualifications “shall be entitled to vote at any election.” The Constitution originally stated that everyone who is born in the U.S. or was naturalized as a citizen can vote.The second amendment states that all types of voting in North Carolina require photo identification, whereas the state constitution previously only specified in-person voting. Similarly to the citizens-only voting, photo ID is already required for all voting types in the state.
Legal Updates
U.S. Supreme Court: The Supreme Court on June 26 sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security. By a 6-3 vote, the justices threw out lower-court rulings that favored Louisiana, Missouri and other parties in their claims that officials in the Democratic administration leaned on the social media platforms to unconstitutionally squelch conservative points of view. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court that the states and other parties did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented. The states had argued that White House communications staffers, the surgeon general, the FBI and the U.S. cybersecurity agency are among those who applied “unrelenting pressure” to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms. The justices appeared broadly skeptical of those claims during arguments in March and several worried that common interactions between government officials and the platforms could be affected by a ruling for the states. The justices did not weigh in on the substance of the states’ claims or the administration’s response in their decision. “We begin — and end — with standing,” Barrett wrote. “At this stage, neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. We therefore lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of the dispute.” In dissent, Alito wrote that the states amply demonstrated their right to sue. “For months, high-ranking government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent,” he wrote for the three justices in the minority.
Alabama: This week, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in a case challenging Alabama secretary of state’s refusal to produce purged voter records. The 11th Circuit ruled that although Alabama does have to release information to nonprofit groups, it does not have to do so in a way that is accessible or cost effective for those groups. In 2022, Greater Birmingham Ministries — a nonprofit civil rights organization — filed this lawsuit against former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R) due to his refusal to produce records of voters who were purged after the 2020 election and voter registration applicants who were denied registration or purged from the state’s voter rolls because of felony convictions dating back at least two years. Specifically, the plaintiffs alleged that Merrill refused to produce the requested voter purge records without payment of over $1,000 and also refused to produce the felony records altogether, claiming that they were “outside the scope” of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). In 2022, the trial court issued an opinion in favor of the plaintiff on all claims and ordered the Alabama secretary of state to produce all of the records requested by the plaintiff in digital form. Greater Birmingham Ministries was able to gain access to the purged voter records, but the Republican secretary of state appealed and the 11th Circuit reversed that opinion today. As a result of the opinion, nonprofit organizations will retain the ability to have access to purged voter information, but they will not be able to get that information electronically. Additionally, the court is now allowing the Alabama secretary of state to impose a fee that is greater than the cost of producing the records. As the dissent by former voting rights attorney Judge Nancy Abudu points out, this can be a “cost-prohibitive” barrier to groups doing important pro-democracy work.
Alaska: Anchorage Superior Court Laura Hartz has ruled that opponents of Alaska’s ranked choice election system violated state campaign finance laws in their effort to gather signatures for a repeal ballot measure. In a 54-page order, Hartz upheld almost all fines issued in January by the state’s campaign finance regulator and concluded that Alaska’s “true source” disclosure laws apply to ballot measures. Those laws state that if a nonprofit contributes to a political campaign, it must reveal the names of its donors, the true source of the money. Hartz said one fine, levied for the misreporting of $2,358 in cash contributions, may not have been warranted and remanded the issue back to state regulators. That was a small aspect of the overall case, which involved more than $94,000 in fines levied by the Alaska Public Offices Commission against groups and individuals who backed a ballot measure that seeks to eliminate both ranked choice voting and the state’s open primary, which places all candidates — regardless of party — into a single election for each office. The repeal measure is slated for the November general election. A separate lawsuit has challenged the signature-gathering process used to put it on the ballot.
Arizona: Maricopa County detectives charged Walter Ringfield Jr., 27 of Phoenix, with one count of theft and one count of criminal damage, after they say he took a lanyard with the fob and keys attached while working in the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center. He is in custody and won’t be released unless a court order allows, according to court documents. Ringfield told detectives during his arrest that he took the fob for 20 minutes the day before and then gave it back. But detectives located the fob in his house after obtaining a search warrant. His motive for taking it was unclear, but he suggested to detectives that it may have been a mistake. “Walter said the job was temporary and he was trying to make it permanent, so he wanted to clean up,” the report states, providing no further explanation. Ringfield could not immediately be reached for comment. Ringfield started on June 3 as a temporary election worker for the tabulation center. He had previously been charged with theft after an incident in July 2023, but he entered a diversion program and was not convicted, according to county court records. Maricopa County spokesperson Jennifer Liewer said that the county conducted a background check on him before hiring him, and that no convictions were found.
Yet another attempt from Kari Lake and Mark Finchem to revive a lawsuit that sought to ban the use of electronic ballot tabulators in Arizona’s most populous counties has been dismissed by a federal appeals court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 20 issued a two-sentence ruling, saying without further explanation that it would not take up the case a second time. Lake, a Republican U.S. Senate hopeful, and Finchem, a former state representative who is now running for Arizona Senate, have been shot down at every turn since they first filed the suit in April 2022. In the tabulator suit, Lake and Finchem alleged that the electronic ballot tabulators used to count ballots in Maricopa and Pima counties — and required to be used by Arizona law — were “hackable” and that the courts should place an injunction on their use ahead of the November 2022 election. In August 2022, U.S. District Court Judge John Tuchi threw out the case and issued a scathing ruling. Later, he ordered the attorneys representing Lake and Finchem to pay $122,000 in sanctions because their claims amounted to mere “conjectural allegations of potential injuries.” In October 2023, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with Tuchi’s decision to throw out the case, agreeing that it was “frivolous.” Lake and Finchem again tried to revive their case in March when they petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and overrule the lower courts, but about a month later, the highest court in the nation declined to take up the case. In their June 13 filing, Lake and Finchem asked the federal appeals court — for a second time — to reverse the lower court’s decision to dismiss the case. This time, Olsen asked the appeals court to send the case back to the trial court because, he alleged, Maricopa County’s attorneys had misled the trial court, the Supreme Court and the appeals court.
California: Shasta County Judge Stephen Baker has dismissed a case against the county elections office. “The lack of evidence was profound,” Baker said, while issuing the judgment. Former candidate Laura Hobbs sued the county elections office and her winning opponent Allen Long, shortly after she lost the March 5 primary. She has alleged, among other things, that her name being placed in the incorrect order on the ballot affected the election outcome. Attorney Christopher Pisano, who represented the county, acknowledged early on in the case that the Elections Office had made a mistake in how names on the ballot were ordered. But, Pisano argued, the simple clerical error was neither evidence of mal-conduct by elections staff, nor a reason to invalidate the election outcome. Baker agreed, saying that Hobbs’ attorney, Alex Haberbush, had failed to offer any expert witness testimony to attempt to prove that the mistake made by the Elections Office changed the outcome of the election. He asked Haberbush how he could possibly expect to prove his case without such testimony. In a statement that accompanied his ruling, Baker issued a definitive rebuke against Hobbs and her attorney, saying that evidence presented in the case was “ill-defined, vague, full of irregularities and lacking in foundation.” In fact, the only qualified elections expert interviewed during the case at all, Baker said, was the acting County Clerk and Registrar of Voters herself, Joanna Francescut, who faced hours of questions that he referred to as “argumentative”, “misleading” and “undignified.”
Colorado: The 10th Circuit terminated an appeal filed by Tina Peters, a former Mesa County clerk and recorder who sued the district attorney prosecuting her on state charges related to leaking voting machine information. “Ms. Peters must show the state court proceedings could not afford her an adequate opportunity to present her First Amendment claim. She has not,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Scott Matheson, in an 18-page opinion. “She has made no argument that state law clearly bars her from raising her claims.” Prosecutors say in April and May 2021 Peters allowed unauthorized individuals to access voting equipment during a sensitive security update and leaked voting machine passwords to a social media site. Peters faces three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant; four felony counts related to impersonation and identity theft; and a misdemeanor count each of official misconduct, violating her duties and failing to comply with the secretary of state’s requirements.
Florida: A man who filed to run for the Escambia County Supervisor of Elections seat, but was disqualified this week, is now filing a lawsuit against incumbent Robert Bender. The suit was filed by Bruce Childers, who says his removal from the ballot is “a personal attack.” Childers filed to run for Supervisor of Elections last Wednesday — two days before the deadline to file. But that all changed Thursday when he was disqualified. Bender told WEAR News on Friday that “Mr. Childers’ full and public financial disclosure was not provided by close of qualifying.” On Facebook, Childers says he wasn’t notified until Thursday that he “failed to provide a copy of the full and complete financial disclosure form 6.” Childers says he never received a call about any issues, which is something he says should have been done, according to the Florida statute that states a qualifying officer shall make every reasonable effort to notify the candidate of missing or incomplete items.
Pennsylvania: A far-right group is asking a judge to order Pennsylvania to clean up its voter roll, citing flaws it claims to have found in voter registration data as evidence that the state is violating federal law. The group’s claims, however, appear to contradict facts about how the state’s voting systems work, reflecting what one election expert suggested is a “gross misunderstanding of election law.” Much of the information in the suit comes from groups with histories of making false claims about the state’s voter rolls, and the suit includes at least one easily disproved claim. The lawsuit is part of a broader strategy that the lead plaintiff, United Sovereign Americans, has acknowledged: to challenge voter rolls across the country, in separate federal court jurisdictions, to force the issue up to the U.S. Supreme Court in time to affect the 2024 general election. The group filed a similar suit in Maryland that was dismissed in May because the plaintiffs didn’t have legal grounds to sue. It is unclear if the Pennsylvania suit will face the same fate, but the group has gotten a high-profile local attorney,
Texas: The Fifth Circuit ruled that Kim Ogg, the district attorney for Harris County, Texas, should have been granted sovereign immunity in a lawsuit against her and other state officials challenging sweeping changes to the Texas election code. Senate Bill 1, or the Election Integrity Protection Act of 2021, modified policies for early voting, voting by mail and voter assistance. It also made changes to election-related criminal statutes, and added new ones — for instance, making it a crime for an election officer to refuse to turn away a poll watcher. Three groups of plaintiffs updated their complaints to include Ogg as a defendant after after a the Fifth Circuit found in a 2022 ruling in State v. Stephens that another law, which granted the Texas attorney general unilateral authority to prosecute election law violations, went against the state’s constitution. Ogg argued she had sovereign immunity from prosecution in this case, but the lower court denied her motion to dismiss the whole case against her on that basis. Instead, a federal judge allowed the challenges to the criminal provisions of SB 1 to continue, and found that Ogg did not have immunity from those specific challenges, citing a 1908 Supreme Court case, Ex parte Young, as the basis for an exception to Ogg’s claim of sovereign immunity. A three-judge panel reversed parts of the that decision and vacated others, ruling that the plaintiffs “failed to demonstrate an adequate enforcement connection between Ogg and the challenged provisions of [SB 1] for Ex parte Young to apply.”
Wisconsin: Wisconsin: Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell issued a temporary injunction this week that will allow voters with “print disabilities” to cast absentee ballots by email. Mitchell’s order came in a lawsuit brought by Disability Rights Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and four voters with disabilities. The lawsuit alleges that the current absentee voting system discriminates against voters with disabilities such as blindness because they can’t cast their ballots without assistance under the current rules, violating the right to cast a secret ballot. Mitchell issued the temporary injunction, ordering the Wisconsin Elections Commission to “facilitate the availability of electronically delivered (i.e., emailed) accessible absentee ballots for the November 2024 general election for absent electors who self-certify to having a print disability and who request from their municipal clerk an electronically delivered absentee ballot in lieu of mailing.” The emailed ballots must be able to be read and marked electronically using assistive technology such as a screen reader. Despite a request from the groups bringing the lawsuit that ballots be allowed to be returned electronically as well, the completed absentee ballots will still need to be printed and mailed back to voters’ municipal clerks, with Mitchell writing that the order “shall not be construed to permit electronic return of a marked absentee ballot.”
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
No comments:
Post a Comment