Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
Federal Legislation: Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Florida) and Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colorado) introduced a bipartisan bill protecting and strengthening oversight of military absentee ballots. Specifically, Lee’s Supporting Military Voters Act directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to compile an in-depth report detailing the federal government’s efforts to implement the directives outlined in the 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) and recommend improvements to voter registration and assistance. “This bipartisan bill calls for a comprehensive study and analysis of all factors and data that impact the ability of our service members and their families to vote.The results of this study will help us better understand the factors that result in the very low voting rate of our uniformed service men and women. It will provide a basis of knowledge upon which we can improve the resources and outreach to our military voters, thus improving their ability to vote in a more hassle-free and seamless manner that is also secure and timely,” said Mark Earley, Leon County Supervisor of Elections.
California Ballot Measure: San Diego Assembly member Carl DeMaio has initiated a new campaign to require voter identification and proof of citizenship for California voters. The proposed ballot measure aims to implement these requirements for both in-person and mail-in voting, sparking debate over election security and voter accessibility. The proposed ballot measure would mandate state verification of citizenship during voter registration and require voters to present identification at polling places. For mail-in ballots, voters would need to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number or another form of government-issued ID. This campaign follows a previously unsuccessful ballot measure in 2023 and similar legislation that failed to advance earlier this year. To appear on the 2026 ballot, the petition must gather more than 874,000 verified signatures. DeMaio’s campaign is aiming to collect over one million signatures to ensure its place on the ballot.
Massachusetts: Republican State Representative candidate and current Taunton City Councilor Larry Quintal said he has filed legislation in the state senate to amend current mail-in ballot policies. The legislation, submitted July 9 by State Senator Kelly Dooner, would require mail-in ballots postmarked by the day of the election to be counted in special elections, according to a press release issued by Quintal. Marc Pacheco, director of elections for Taunton’s Elections Department, confirmed the disqualified mail-in ballots. He said, when it comes to special elections, per state law, all voting ballots submitted by mail must be received by the city or town clerk prior to the closing of polls, which was 8 p.m., on the day of the election held on June 10. Those mail-in ballots were not received by the elections office in time to be counted. “The law is clear and we followed the law.” Quintal’s legislation amends Massachusetts General Law Chapter 54 section 25 to bring it in line with the counting of ballots in November elections.
Michigan Ballot Measure: The campaign to bring ranked choice voting to Michigan elections announced that signature collection has begun in an effort to make the 2026 general election ballot. Petition sheets and signature gatherers began fanning out July 17 and the campaign Rank MI Vote began holding field launch events across the state. That includes the Latin Americans United for Progress Fiesta in Holland and the Ann Arbor Art Fair. Pat Zabawa, Rank MI Vote’s executive director, said the first signature will be his on Thursday morning. “One down, 446,197 to go,” Zabawa said in a statement. “Obviously, we have our work cut out for us: when we qualify for the ballot, it will have taken the biggest signature collection campaign in Michigan history. That might intimidate some campaigns, but it’s what this team is built for. We have thousands of volunteers who are very eager to win this with shoe leather and hard work. We’re now in the stage of the campaign where progress is measured in how much ink we put on paper and how many conversations we have with our friends and neighbors.”
North Carolina Rulemaking: The North Carolina State Board of Elections made changes to overseas and military voting rules this week in response to court rulings in the 2024 race for a state Supreme Court seat. Under the new rule, voters who haven’t lived in North Carolina before, state elections director Sam Hayes said, those “never resident” voters would still be allowed to vote in federal races under federal voting law. But their votes in other races will no longer be counted. The other rule approved Monday confirms the process of verifying the address of voters who use same-day registration by mailing them a postcard, and, if it’s returned, giving the voter a second chance to confirm their address. State lawmakers had previously removed the requirement for the second attempt, but it was added back as a temporary rule after voting rights groups sued over the change in federal court. The vote on Monday affirms that the two-step process will be the process going forward.
Pennsylvania: Rep. Jill Cooper (R-Westmoreland) wants to encourage Pennsylvanians to vote for candidates based on their qualifications and policies, as opposed to regional ties, which can strongly influence statewide elections. Cooper says she plans to introduce legislation to eliminate the requirement to list candidates’ home counties on primary ballots. She argues the change would eliminate divisive attitudes toward candidates based on geographical stereotypes. Pennsylvania’s Election Code currently requires primary ballots to include candidates’ home county or municipality. A candidate’s county must be printed opposite or under the candidate’s name when it appears on ballots in multiple counties. When a candidate is running in only one county, or a district within that county, the candidate’s home city, borough, township or ward, must also be printed opposite or under their name on the ballot. The requirement does not apply to general election ballots.
Legal Updates
Federal Litigation: On July 18, U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper modified part of a previous ruling that blocked much of President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul elections in the U.S. The minor change affects just one aspect of a preliminary injunction that Casper granted on June 13 in a case filed by Democratic state attorneys general. The judge said that the part of Trump’s order directing certain federal agencies to assess people’s U.S. citizenship when they ask for voter registration forms will now only be blocked in the 19 states that filed the lawsuit. According to the Associated Press, election law experts said the modification will have little, if any, practical effect because a judge in a different lawsuit filed against the executive order also blocked the federal agencies from obeying the mandate in all 50 states. The order follows a U.S. Supreme Court decision in an unrelated case that judges are limited in granting nationwide injunctions. Government lawyers pointed to that ruling in arguing the court needed to “narrow the scope” of the injunction in the elections case. The 19 Democratic attorneys general who filed the case told the judge they wouldn’t object to the narrower scope. The rest of Casper’s initial preliminary injunction against other aspects of the election executive order remains intact.
MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell got a reprieve this week over a $5 million award to a man who discredited conspiracies tied to the 2020 election. The 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s ruling. The appeals judges wrote in a 12-page decision that a panel of arbitrators went too far in requiring Lindell to pay a man who offered proof that cyber data used by 2020 election deniers was invalid. In 2021, Lindell held a South Dakota symposium featuring a “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge” that put up a $5 million reward to anyone who could prove him wrong. Lindell is a staunch ally of President Donald Trump. Software developer Robert Zeidman concluded the data provided wasn’t valid and spelled out the reasons in a report submitted during the contest. But when he didn’t get the prize, Zeidman claimed breach of contract by the Lindell Management LLC entity set up to run the event. He went to arbitration and after a three-day hearing was awarded the money. Lindell went to court and lost the first round. But Wednesday’s appeals court ruling takes Lindell off the hook, barring additional court review.
Colorado: Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, convicted of violating her duties for leaking voting machine data, asked a federal magistrate judge this week to facilitate her release on bond pending her state appeal. According to the research of Chief Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak, however, no federal court in the history of the United States has ever intervened to release an inmate on bond pending a state court appeal. In fact, Varholak said he isn’t even sure how doing so would be logistically possible. “What if petitioner violates the bond? Does the state revoke bond? Do I revoke bond? I don’t think petitioner has cited a single case in the history of the United States where a federal court granted an appeal bond in a state case,” Varholak said. Peters is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence after a jury found her guilty of committing four felonies and three misdemeanors related to a 2021 leak of voting machine data. The Colorado Court of Appeals denied Peters’ request for bond pending her appeal, prompting her to file a federal habeas petition in February.
Connecticut: Josephine Edmonds, 63, one of seven defendants charged in the Bridgeport mayoral election scandals, pleaded guilty to voting fraud charges this week but will avoid jail time under a plea agreement. Under the agreement, Edmonds would be sentenced to a three-year suspended sentence with three years probation when she goes before Judge Tracy Lee Dayton on Sept. 25. Edmonds was facing four felony charges, including witness tampering and illegal possession of absentee ballots stemming from the 2019 election. The charges against Edmonds stem from a case involving a family she knew that she assisted in filling out absentee ballots in the 2019 mayoral election and then taking and mailing them. Edmonds was working for Democrat Marilyn Moore in that primary election. She also was charged with witness tampering when the family informed her they had been subpoenaed to testify at a civil trial after that election and she tried to convince them not to mention her name.
Illinois: The U.S. Department of Justice added its voice to a lawsuit accusing the state of Illinois of failing to properly maintain a statewide voter registration list, in violation of a 1993 federal law. In a filing known as a “statement of interest,” the Justice Department said the government has an interest in the outcome of the lawsuit, although the filing stops short of asking the court for permission to intervene as a party in the case. “This case presents important questions regarding enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act,” attorneys in DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in the filing. “Congress has vested the Attorney General with authority to enforce the NVRA (National Voter Registration Act) on behalf of the United States. Accordingly, the United States has a substantial interest in ensuring proper interpretation of the NVRA.” The lawsuit challenges the state’s practice of delegating to local election officials the responsibility of conducting regular maintenance of voter registration rolls, including the task of purging people from the rolls when they die or move out of the jurisdiction. Under NVRA, the suit argues, the state is responsible for carrying out that function. U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Judge Sara Ellis has indicated she could decide the case at a hearing currently scheduled for July 30.
Kansas: U.S. District Judge Kathryn Vratil permanently blocked a 2021 Kansas law that banned groups from sending advance ballot applications to voters, finding that state lawmakers tried to suppress free speech. The case focused on the prefilled, mailed ballot applications that voting organizations sent to hundreds of thousands of Kansans leading up to the 2020 presidential election, which was rife with false accusations of illegitimate results nationwide. Republican lawmakers passed House Bill 2332 during the 2021 session by overriding the governor’s veto. The law sought to ban any non-Kansas resident or business from distributing advance mail ballot applications to voters and prohibit any applications from containing personalized voter information. Supporters argued at the time the law ensured transparent elections free from corruption. In the 2020 general election, around 112,000 Kansas voters mailed a pre-paid or pre-addressed envelope containing an advance ballot application, according to the lawsuit. Vratil evaluated in a 40-page decision whether the law was a content-based regulation and, if the law is content-neutral, whether lawmakers crafted the law for an “improper purpose” or reason, including suppression of free expression. The defendants in the case said that HB 2332 was meant to minimize voter confusion, streamline efficiency in election administration and foster confidence in and protect the integrity of the electoral process. However, they didn’t explain how the law was designed to do those things, Vratil said in the decision. Vratil also considered the timing of the Legislature’s introduction of HB 2332, which came a month after the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol and about three months after the 2020 election. “In Kansas however, one week after the election, on November 10, 2020, Schwab had publicly declared that the 2020 election in Kansas was successful, without widespread, systematic issues of voter fraud, intimidation, irregularities or voting problems — an undisputed fact which calls into question any purported legislative intent to root out fraud, promote efficiency or avoid voter confusion in Kansas elections,” Vratil said.
Missouri: Four Jackson County citizens have filed a motion to deny consolidation in a pair of cases related to the recall election of County Executive Frank White Jr. Attorney Phil LeVota, who is representing the group, filed the motion after the Jackson County and Kansas City Election Boards filed a joint motion last week to consolidate their lawsuits concerning the recall election of White. The citizens want the election to be held on August 26, while the two election boards want it moved to November. “The issues in the two cases could not be further apart in a legal analysis and will only complicate and delay this time-sensitive issue, which respondents/election boards clearly are acting to do,” LeVota’s motion said. “Consolidation only complicates the issues and prejudices Relators who filed their own action in an effort to get a timely result.” Along with denying the consolidation, White, the Jackson County Legislature, and the Jackson County Clerk were all dismissed from the case by the citizens. Jackson County elections involve two election boards. The KCEB handles elections in the part of Kansas City that is located in Jackson County. The JCEB handles elections for all other cities in the county. The published Charter has a 60-day deadline. More recently, the legislature, in 2023, approved an ordinance setting guidelines for recall petitions that indicates, “if no legal election date is available within sixty days the election will occur at the next available date after certification of the Petition.” LeVota’s argument against consolidation continued: “It is fundamentally unfair for the election boards to try to hijack Relators’/Citizens’ case with such different facts and law and add the complication and all additional parties and legal action to the writ action,” he said.
New Jersey: The Republican National Committee is suing New Jersey, alleging state officials violated the Open Public Records Act in denying its requests for voting machine seal audit logs and unduly delayed a response to its request for a trove of voter registration data. The GOP alleges that officials within the state elections division violated the records law by failing to return documents within the required seven-business-day response period and by declining to release documents created and maintained by county election officials and shared with the state office. “State officials are slow-walking access to records about voting machines and voter roll maintenance,” Michael Whatley, the committee’s chair, said in a statement. “The RNC is taking legal action because the people of New Jersey have a right to know that their elections are being run fairly, securely, and in full compliance with the law.” A spokesperson for the New Jersey secretary of state, who oversees state elections, declined to comment on the lawsuit. The state has not yet filed a response to the complaint, which was lodged in Superior Court in Mercer County. The Republicans’ request for voter registration documents was voluminous, seeking disclosure of four classes of records of communications with federal agencies spanning two years, every record relating to five national databases over that period, and two years of communications between state and local election officials, among a host of other voter registration-related records. Though New Jersey law largely requires records custodians to fill records requests within seven business days, custodians rarely meet those timelines. Delays to one of the GOP’s requests stretch long even by normal standards.
North Carolina: US District Judge Thomas Schroeder has rejected requests from North Carolina’s legislative leaders and the State Board of Elections to dismiss a lawsuit targeting changes to state same-day voter registration rules. Democracy North Carolina, the North Carolina Black Alliance, and the League of Women Voters of North Carolina all challenge a section of 2023’s Senate Bill 747 called the “undeliverable mail provision.” The provision aimed to change how elections officials dealt with ballots from voters who registered to vote on the same day they cast early-voting ballots. Two other lawsuits targeting the same provision ended in settlements that produced a consent judgment signed by Schroeder. The judge issued an order this week denying requests to dismiss the remaining lawsuit. “At the most basic level, Plaintiffs seek a return to the same-day registration scheme that predated Senate Bill 747 (‘SB 747’), which required, among other things, that a same-day registrant’s vote not be discarded unless the U.S. Postal Service returned as undeliverable a second mailing addressed to the registrant before the canvass deadline,” Schroeder wrote.
North Dakota: The state of North Dakota urged the U.S. Supreme Court to let it use its preferred legislative district map after an appellate court found a federal judge was wrong to change the district lines last year. Attorneys for the state argued that courts have allowed private plaintiffs to challenge and destabilize state district maps for too long. “Redistricting in a world where well-funded private plaintiffs can induce federal courts to strike down state maps based on theories like those that were asserted in this case becomes nearly impossible,” the state wrote in a July 22 filing. Barring a reversal from the U.S. Supreme Court, the 8th Circuit’s decision would allow North Dakota to revert back to the map approved by state lawmakers in 2021. The tribes intend to petition the high court to review the case in the coming months. It remains to be seen which district map will be in place while their request is being considered. The plaintiffs have filed a motion asking the Supreme Court to order that the current map — imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Peter Welte in 2024 — remain for the time being. The state disputed this interpretation. It said the Legislature’s attorneys were merely throwing out hypotheticals and did not indicate there is a high probability that the lawmakers would be unseated if the 2021 district lines are reinstated. The high court last week issued an administrative stay that temporarily prevents the map from changing while the justices consider whether a longer-term stay is necessary.
Virginia: Civil rights groups have filed two new motions in a federal lawsuit that could restore voting rights to thousands of Virginians with felony convictions. Announced July 21, the filings by the ACLU of Virginia, Protect Democracy and the law firm WilmerHale seek summary judgment in the case and class-action status on behalf of the more than 300,000 Virginians who they say remain disenfranchised under a state constitutional provision. The plaintiffs argue Virginia is violating a 150-year-old federal law — the Virginia Readmission Act of 1870 — which governed the state’s return to the Union after the Civil War. The suit hinges on a novel interpretation of the 1870 law, which permitted the state’s return to Congress on the condition that its constitution only allow disenfranchisement “as a punishment for such crimes that are now felonies at common law.” That list, defined in 1870, includes serious offenses like murder, rape and burglary — but not modern offenses such as drug possession. “In Virginia today, we disenfranchise people for things like drug offenses, but those were not felonies at common law in 1870,” said WilmerHale partner Brittany Amadi. “By disenfranchising all people with felony convictions, Virginia is breaking federal law and disproportionately excluding Black and brown people from the ballot box.”
Wyoming: U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl dismissed a lawsuit against a new state law requiring proof of U.S. citizenship and state residency to register to vote. That’s after legal counsel representing the defendant, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, filed a motion to toss the case earlier this month. In the explanation for his decision,Skavdahl wrote that the Equality State Policy Center (ESPC), a nonpartisan group that advocates for transparency in government and that in May sued Gray and every county clerk, failed to adequately demonstrate it has the legal standing to ask to block the law. In his decision, Skavdahl said the court “has not considered nor makes any comment on the merits of Plaintiff’s claims.” ESPC’s original complaint said the new law “will impose new, burdensome, and entirely unnecessary requirements that will make it harder for eligible citizens to vote.” Chief among the reasons Skavdahl provided for dismissing the case is that, “Plaintiff is not a voter and cannot register to vote, and thus Plaintiff is not the object or target of HB 156.” The law, HB 156, says voters must have lived in the state for 30 days for residency. It also says a county clerk can reject someone’s registration due to “any indication” that the person is not a U.S. citizen or Wyoming resident.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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