Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
Arkansas: A new bill introduced in the House of Representatives aims to expand absentee voting access to individuals aged 65 and older. House Bill 1064, sponsored by Rep. David Whitaker (D-Fayetteville) proposes amendments to the state’s current absentee voting laws to allow seniors to vote by absentee ballot without additional requirements. Currently, absentee voting in Arkansas is limited to individuals who are unavoidably absent from their voting place, unable to attend the polls due to illness or physical disability or observing a religious holiday during voting hours. HB1064 adds a fourth category, permitting anyone aged 65 or older to vote absentee on election day. The bill also streamlines the absentee voting process for seniors. For voters over 65, their absentee ballot applications would remain valid for one calendar year unless withdrawn. County clerks would then be required to mail absentee ballots for all elections during that year at least 25 days before the election.
Colorado: State lawmakers will not pursue research into the Colorado secretary of state’s office over an election systems password leak discovered earlier this year. The Legislative Audit Committee voted 4-4 on an audit request into the state Elections Division. All four Democrats voted against the request and all four Republicans voted in favor of it. A tie means defeat. The request, which was submitted by committee chair Rep. Lisa Frizell, a Castle Rock Republican, would have examined the procedures and policies that allowed an election system password leak. “I think it’s very important that … a performance audit be conducted if nothing else to re-instill faith in our election system,” Frizell said. “Unfortunately and due to a wide variety of reasons, I suspect, we’ve seen over the last few years some fairly systemic and problematic issues in the secretary of state’s office when it comes to communication with county clerk and recorders.”
Michigan: Rep. Bryan Posthumus (R-Rockford) announced plans to introduce a constitutional amendment in the upcoming legislative session aimed at blocking noncitizens from casting a ballot in the state. According to Posthumus’ office, the plan is a response to reports of a 19-year-old University of Michigan student from China casting a ballot in Ann Arbor. Under the state’s ballot secrecy protections a ballot usually cannot be retrieved or canceled after it is fed into a tabulator. If pursued in the Legislature, the two thirds of the members in each chamber must vote to place the matter before voters in the next general election. If pursued through the petition process, petitioners must gather 446,198 signatures to place the matter on the ballot. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent the Advance the following statement: “All eligible citizens and only eligible citizens have the constitutional right to vote in Michigan. I’m always open to serious and well thought out efforts to further strengthen our secure system. But many of these proposals will prevent large numbers of eligible citizens from exercising their constitutional voting rights in the name of making it even more difficult and rare than it already is for a noncitizen to vote. We know because other states have already tried this – a similar 2004 ballot initiative in Arizona disenfranchised 47,000 eligible U.S. citizens. A federal court struck down Kansas’s law because it violated both the U.S. Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act. Michigan’s voters have overwhelmingly passed constitutional amendments in recent years to ensure that eligible citizens aren’t denied their right to vote. We should respect their will and focus our efforts on policies that actually improve security, such as a guaranteed source of state funding to ensure clerks have the resources they need for every election.”
North Carolina: Lawmakers approved a wide-ranging bill to shift executive power in state government, cementing a Republican override of Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto a month before new elected officials are sworn in. The GOP override passed the House 72-46, after moving through the Senate last week. It now becomes law, though many of its sections do not take effect for months.Legislative leaders were able to flip three GOP votes in the House — a trio of members from western North Carolina who initially objected to the bill’s branding as Hurricane Helene relief. Senate Bill 382 strips offices soon to be held by Democrats of appointment power, redirecting much of that authority to Republicans. And it makes a litany of changes to election administration, including stricter deadlines for absentee voting, and other parts of government.
Lawmakers have approved a proposed constitutional amendment that asks North Carolinians to approve photo ID for those voting by mail. The House passed the proposal 73-45, setting it up to appear on a future ballot. It cannot be vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper and requires a majority vote at a general election to be added to the constitution. Senate Bill 921 requires all North Carolina voters to present photo ID — including those voting by mail. Current state law requires ID for all forms of voting; this amendment would officially enshrine it in the constitution.
New Jersey: Facing resistance from lawmakers fearful of progressive activists, the Assembly Select Committee on Ballot Design is considering dropping a proposal to place brackets around the names of running mates seeking the same office in primary elections. A plan to allow candidates filing a joint petition to associate with each other on the ballot will remain, just without the physical brackets around their names, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak. Brackets and incumbency designations could have faced legal obstacles: U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi, who is hearing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of county lines, has indicated that ballots should have no discernable markings that give any candidate an advantage. The draft bill calls for office block ballots that end the practice of giving party-endorsed candidates preferential ballot placement and an option for county clerks to rotate names on ballots by municipal election districts. The bill standardizes the font sizes of names on the ballot and allows county clerks to design a horizontal or vertical ballot based on their own preference.
Ohio: The Senate passed a bill that would make it easier for the Ohio attorney general to reject a citizens’ proposed initiated statue or constitutional amendment at the beginning stages of the process to qualify for the ballot. House Bill 74 passed the Senate, 24 to 7, largely on partisan lines. It now returns to the House for concurrence on Senate changes. The bill began as a noncontroversial effort to change Ohio’s information technology policies. But in committee Tuesday, the bill was heavily altered. The bill now would rename the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners to the Board of Voting Systems Examiners and add cyber security experts to the board; allow Ohioans to register to vote or update their registration electronically while at state Bureau of Motor Vehicles offices; and require county boards of elections to conduct post-election audits after every election, instead just general elections and primary elections held in even-numbered years. It also would allow the Ohio attorney general to review the title of any statewide initiative or referendum petition, in addition to its summary, as a fair and truthful statement of the proposal before the petitioners may begin collecting signatures, and provide the Ohio secretary of state broad powers to set security and integrity of ballots and voter registration systems used by county boards of elections.
Oklahoma: State Sen. Bill Coleman (R-Ponca City) wants to amend the state constitution to allow for recall elections at the state level. “The will of the people is something that should be taken very seriously,” he shared. His joint resolution concerns statewide offices and state representatives and senators. Recalls already exist at the local level in Oklahoma in certain cases, according to Sen. Coleman. He argued, “The people need to be involved, and the people will have the final say if this process goes through.” His proposal would just allow lawmakers to vote on whether a recall should take place amid public concern. Then, the issue would go to voters. State Rep. Mickey Dollens (D-Oklahoma City) supports the overall idea but asserted that voters should be able to get the process started too.
Texas: Lawmakers are reviving legislation that would require election officials to respond within set time frames to requests to explain “election irregularities” from certain party officials and election workers. If the complainants aren’t satisfied, the bill would let them take their requests to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, which would have to decide whether to investigate further and conduct an audit. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who authored the bill, said it will help clear up “any misunderstanding” about elections. But experts and local election officials said Texas already has policies in place that have increased election transparency and security. The bill, they said, could instead undermine voters’ trust if election officials have to prioritize an influx of meritless complaints. The measure would also add to the burdens on election officials who are already contending with a flood of public records requests, questions from residents worried about election integrity, and voter challenges, while also trying to comply with strict election deadlines set by state and federal laws, experts said. Bettencourt first filed a similar bill in 2021 and reintroduced it in 2023. Both times, it passed in the Senate but not the House. Senate Bill 505, which he filed last month, is identical to his 2023 legislation. The bill would allow candidates, county party chairs, election or alternate judges — election judges are tasked with supervising polling locations — and leaders of political action committees to request that election officials “provide an explanation to election irregularities or violations of the law and to provide supporting documentation” of such.
Washington: Sen. Jeff Wilson, R-Longview has filed legislation that would create a new security camera grant program. Wilson filed two bills: Senate Bill 5010 to create the grant program and Senate Bill 5011 to update what’s written on ballot boxes. While seemingly minor, the proposal follows ballot tampering leading up to the Nov. 5 general election that destroyed hundreds of ballots. If approved, SB 5010 would direct the state to “create and administer” a grant program allowing county auditors and election officials to purchase and install cameras around ballot boxes. The bill is less than half a page long and straight to the point but fails to mention a financial impact. Creating a new grant program would require new revenue, whether through taxes or services; otherwise, the state would need to identify existing means to fund the cameras. Using existing revenue could mean pulling funding away from another priority, which may also raise issues. Wilson said the fiscal note would come later when the sponsors work with the secretary of state to develop the program, but that it would use existing revenue. He said it shouldn’t come with any “sticker shock” and expects a relatively low price for the benefit of enhanced election security.
Legal Updates
Arizona: U.S. District Court Judge Dominic Lanza has thrown out a lawsuit launched by Arizona Republicans claiming that the state is violating federal law by failing to clean up the state’s voter registration list, saying there is no legal grounds to sue. Plaintiffs filed the lawsuit earlier this year alleging that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ inaction violates the National Voter Registration Act. The trio claim that the Democrat has failed to purge over a million ineligible and unaccounted for voters from Arizona’s voter registration rolls, diluting their votes as eligible voters and costing the Arizona Republican Party time and resources on voter education and mobilization campaigns. Lanza dismissed the lawsuit, siding with Fontes’ argument that the Republicans don’t have sufficient standing to sue his office. Standing is established when a plaintiff suffers a concrete, specific injury, Lanza wrote, that presents an imminent threat and can be resolved by the court. Filing a lawsuit based on the claim that the government broke the law doesn’t constitute standing, and neither does challenging an action that the plaintiff disagrees with, he wrote. A recognizable right needs to have been violated for the court to weigh in on the matter. “…(A) citizen does not have standing to challenge a government regulation simply because the plaintiff believes that the government is acting illegally,” Lanza wrote, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year in an abortion case. “A citizen may not sue based on an asserted right to have the Government act in accordance with law. Nor may citizens sue merely because their legal objection is accompanied by a strong moral, ideological, or policy objection to a government action.” In his 19-page ruling, Lanza picked apart the theories presented by the three Republicans as proof that they have standing to sue Fontes, finding them all to be insufficient. In their lawsuit, Mussi, Swoboda and Gaynor alleged that their votes were being unfairly diluted by the vast number of votes potentially cast by ineligible voters.
California: California will appeal a judge’s decision to reject a state lawsuit over a measure allowing the city of Huntington Beach to require voter identification at the polls, officials said last week. State officials said they plan to continue to fight over the measure — passed by voters in March in the coastal city of 200,000 people — in the court of appeal. An Orange County Superior Court judge last month found it was too soon for the state to bring litigation over the local law, which allows the city to implement voter identification requirements in 2026. “With preparations for the 2026 elections beginning late next year, we want and need a state appellate court to weigh in expeditiously,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement. Michael Gates, Huntington Beach’s city attorney, said he supports the court’s ruling and noted that the voting public supported the local measure. “Voter ID in Huntington Beach is the law of our land here, it’s our Constitutional right, and it’s here to stay – I will make sure of that,” Gates wrote in an email. The Huntington Beach measure also lets the city increase in-person voting sites and monitor ballot drop boxes in local elections.
Bruce Boyer, 63-year-old from Chatsworth, has been charged with four felony counts of perjury for submitting fictitious voter registration applications, according to Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko. Boyer made his first court appearance, and his arraignment was continued to January 17, 2025. He is accused of submitting four fraudulent voter registration forms to the County Registrar in the months leading up to the November 2024 election. Each form was handwritten, attempted to register fictitious characters to vote, included Boyer’s home address, and was signed under penalty of perjury. The case was investigated by the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office Bureau of Investigation after the Ventura County Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Office flagged the voter registration forms as suspicious. Boyer was released on his own recognizance.
Losing Shasta Lake City Council candidate Dolores Lucero has sued the Shasta County elections office, claiming it violated state law by letting two of her opponents in the race be included on the ballot. In her lawsuit, Lucero claimed that Janice Powell should not have been on the ballot because she had a conflict of interest as she was a member of the council and director of the Shasta Lake Chamber of Commerce. The lawsuit also said former Shasta Lake City Clerk Toni Coates violated a state law that prohibited her from serving on the council within a year of leaving her job with the city. “It was not a fair election because two people did not qualify,” Lucero said. Shasta County Superior Court Judge Benjamin Hanna ruled against Lucero’s request for a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order preventing county Registrar of Voters Tom Toller from certifying the election.
Florida: Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office is urging the Florida Supreme Court to reject an appeal stemming from a move by state officials in 2022 to charge convicted felons with voter fraud. Lawyers in Moody’s office filed a brief December 4 arguing the Supreme Court should decline to take up an appeal by Terry Hubbard, who was one of 20 convicted felons accused of registering and voting when ineligible. Hubbard went to the Supreme Court in October after the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that charges against him should move forward. The dispute centers on whether the statewide prosecutor’s office had authority to file charges against Hubbard. A Broward County circuit judge dismissed the case because he said the alleged wrongdoing occurred in one judicial circuit and that the statewide prosecutor only had jurisdiction in cases involving multiple circuits. In the brief, Moody’s office argued, in part, that the statewide prosecutor had jurisdiction because the alleged voting crimes involved two judicial circuits. That is because Hubbard filled out voter-registration applications in Broward County and the information was transmitted to the Florida Department of State in Leon County. Broward County is in the 17th Judicial Circuit, while Leon County is in the 2nd Judicial Circuit. “His conduct formed part of a broader transaction that crossed circuit lines: By registering to vote, he triggered governmental action in the Seventeenth and Second Judicial Circuits,” the brief said. “By law, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections was required to transmit information from his voter-registration form to the secretary of state in Leon County, which then reviewed that information in Leon. Only then could Hubbard successfully vote in Broward. The Fourth District (Court of Appeal) therefore correctly found that Hubbard’s actions ‘occur[red] in both Broward and Leon County,’ implicating two judicial circuits. No more is required.” But a panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal in July overturned that ruling, and the full appeals court later declined a request for a rehearing.
Orange County Supervisor of Elections Glen Gilzean filed a lawsuit on December 5 asking a judge to order Orange County to release funding for his office immediately. County commissioners voted on last week to freeze the disbursements until Gilzean provided financial records about his office’s spending. “They have illegally withheld the funds to this office and they have been lying to the public all along,” Gilzean said after that county meeting and vote on Tuesday. The supervisor followed through with his promise to sue the county. The lawsuit claims the county “does not have the discretion to withhold funds once budget has been approved,” and the move would “result in delayed payment to hard working government employees and contractors — in the middle of the holiday season.” Comptroller Phil Diamond, who’s doing an audit of the supervisor’s office, sent Gilzean a letter Thursday asking whether he has enough cash to pay his workers. The letter claims that records show more than $4 million in the bank, while payroll is about $250,000 every two weeks. Gilzean’s lawsuit is asking a judge to issue an emergency order to make the county send the funding right away.
Illinois: Evanston resident David Melton and his nonprofit advocacy organization Reform for Illinois will appeal a ruling by the Cook County Circuit Court that effectively blocked ranked choice voting in Evanston. In a decision last month, Judge Maureen Ward Kirby dismissed an injunction that would have required Cook County Clerk Cedric Giles to implement ranked choice voting in Evanston, despite the voting system not being one of the systems approved by the Illinois Board of Elections. Kirby ruled that under ISBE rules and the Illinois Constitution, Giles cannot legally use voting machines that are not approved, regardless of Evanston’s home rule status. This week, RFI said it is appealing the decision to give local municipalities the right to implement the voting system should they so choose. “We’re appealing because we disagree with this ruling, which has far-reaching implications beyond Evanston and ranked-choice voting,” Reform for Illinois Executive Director Alisa Kaplan said. “Illinois residents have a right to determine how they will be governed.”
Georgia: Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney dismissed a lawsuit that sought to force the county to hire Republican poll workers for last month’s general election. The county hired 23 of 61 election workers recommended by the party. But in a lawsuit, the Republican Party argued that state law required Fulton to hire all of the workers. Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer rejected that argument before the election. He ruled that state law does not give political parties priority when counties hire election workers. The lawsuit was still pending. But on December 4, Judge Robert McBurney dismissed it “for want of prosecution” after attorneys for the Republican Party failed to appear at a status conference on the case earlier in the week.
Michigan: Judge Joseph C. Oster threw out felony charges against two poll workers accused of allegedly helping voters vote more than once in the August primary. Oster dismissed charges against Patricia Guciardo and Emily McClintock, who were both poll workers in St. Clair Shores. Both faced multiple years in prison for allegedly allowing the voters to cast ballots after they’d already voted in the election and for falsifying election records. But, according to Votebeat, Guciardo’s and McClintock’s cases aren’t necessarily done. Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for Attorney General Dana Nessel, said Tuesday that the AG’s office is “exploring its appellate options concerning the dismissals.” “The Department of Attorney General takes very seriously cases of election fraud, and will attempt to hold accountable all individuals criminally responsible for these instances of double voting in St. Clair Shores,” Wimmer wrote in an email. St. Clair Shores Clerk Abby Barrett told Votebeat that she was relieved for the workers who had charges dismissed. “This sets the precedent that people should not be afraid to work the elections,” Barrett told Votebeat. “We will support our people.”
New Jersey: Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Pedro J. Jimenez Jr. has ordered a recount in last month’s borough council race in which four candidates vying for two seats were separated by less than 50 votes. Jimenez Jr. ordered that the voting machines used in the election will be opened at noon Wednesday, Dec. 11, and recounted by hand. The request for a recount was made by candidate Tracey Madigan on Nov. 25. Madigan’s petition for a recount says errors may have been made by the optical scanners in reading the vote-by-mail and provisional ballots. No objection was raised by any of the candidates for a recount.
North Carolina: The North Carolina Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit December 6 to stop the State Board of Elections from erasing votes as Republican candidates want. Democrats said in the lawsuit that it is unconstitutional and against federal law for the state Board of Elections to toss bundles of votes cast by categories of voters. Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin is trailing incumbent Democratic Supreme Court Justice in the Supreme Court race by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. The margin remained at 734 after a first recount. Griffin is protesting more than 60,000 ballots, including ballots cast by people who his campaign says did not include a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number on their voter registration forms; overseas voters who have never lived in North Carolina but whose parents were eligible voters in the state before they moved; and ballots from overseas and military voters who did not include photo ID. Three Republican legislative candidates are protesting ballots based on the same arguments.
Virginia: A panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled December 5 that a pair of disenfranchised felon voters can pursue a lawsuit against Virginia officials for violating a Reconstruction-era federal law. Writing for the panel, U.S. Circuit Judge Toby Heytens found that several Virginia officials do not enjoy 11th Amendment immunity from claims under the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870, which restored federal representation for the Confederate commonwealth after the Civil War. Heytens, a Joe Biden appointee, determined the plaintiffs have a right to sue under the Ex Parte Young doctrine, which permits lawsuits to be brought against state officials even when the state itself is immune to the claims. The Virginia Readmission Act, which prohibits the commonwealth from barring citizens from registering to vote except for certain felony convictions, is a federal law, Heytens wrote, which meant the federal courts had authority to enforce it. The panel determined two defendants, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Gee, should be dismissed from the case, however. Heytens wrote the officials had the power to restore voting rights but no role in administering the rules restricting voter eligibility, which meant they were not responsible for the claimed violations. “If King and Johnson are right that their disenfranchisement was unlawful from the start, they have no need to ask the governor or the secretary to restore their voting rights because those rights were never validly taken away in the first place,” Heytens wrote.
Wyoming: Felony charges for allegedly intimidating election officials have been dropped by the court in the case of Joshua Hayden-Ali, known to local store owners as “Wisdom.” The original charge could have been punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. The case was dismissed Monday by Judge Peter Froelicher with the option of being refiled in circuit court without the felony charge after a request from Laramie County Assistant District Attorney Steven McManamen. Additionally, Hayden-Ali faced two misdemeanor charges of criminal trespass and breach of peace for disturbing an election center from which he was already trespassed. On Aug. 6, Hayden-Ali entered the Laramie County Governmental Complex, allegedly disrupting an election site and tearing up election materials. As of June 29, 2023, Hayden-Ali had been trespassed from the courthouse until 2033, meaning he cannot legally be in the courthouse unless he is there for official business, due to several previous incidents of disruptive and threatening behavior. In order to prosecute the felony charges, the prosecutor would have had to show that Hayden-Ali was making an effort to interfere with the election process. McManamen filed a single-count misdemeanor charge for criminal entry in Circuit Court, which is punishable by up to six months in jail and/or $750 in fines. Hayden-Ali’s initial appearance on the new charge is scheduled for Jan. 7.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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