Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
Hawai’i Rulemaking: Hawaiʻi should return to in-person balloting and fire its chief elections officer, a three-member subcommittee of the state Elections Commission is recommending. However, according to Honolulu Civil Beat, it’s far from certain whether those actions will ever be approved by the full commission, which conducted an acrimonious meeting this week. The recommendations come after another three-member subcommittee found discrepancies in the 2024 Kauaʻi County general election results, in which the state counted more ballots than the county said it delivered. This week, the full commission voted 5-2 to conduct an independent audit of the Kauaʻi County results. The commission has scheduled a Sept. 24 meeting to address the findings of the second investigation, this one focused on possible election malfeasance and recommending the firing of Hawaiʻi Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago and a return to in-person voting on paper ballots. The malfeasance report also calls for an “external, independent manual audit” of all mail ballot envelopes and ballots, as well USPS receipts “to reconcile ballot discrepancies” in the general election. The Elections Commission has hiring and firing authority for the chief elections officer, but mail-in balloting was established by the Hawaiʻi Legislature beginning with the 2020 election.
Kentucky: Two Kentucky senators — a Republican and a Democrat — plan to sponsor legislation in 2026 to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot with the aim of restoring voting rights to most convicted felons. Sen. Jimmy Higdon, R-Lebanon, and Sen. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville, told the Interim Joint Committee Local Government that their legislation would exclude people convicted of treason, election-related crimes, sexual offenses and crimes against children. A spokesman for Senate Democrats said the legislation has “not yet been drafted, as the details are still being worked out.” Higdon said the language will be “pretty much identical” to previous versions of the bill. “It has been my belief that once someone has been convicted of a crime, they do their time and they come out, that a part of them coming out and being a citizen and being whole is that they should be able to vote again,” Herron said. Herron and Higdon’s amendment would relate only to voting rights, not other civil rights lost, such as the ability to run for office.
North Carolina Rulemaking: More voters will have to cast provisional ballots in state and local elections after an N.C. Board of Elections vote this week. The Board is asking people who do not have a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number connected to their name to supply one of those identifiers. For certain voters, those identifying numbers may not be attached to their names as a result of a mismatch. If a name is misspelled, if voters change their names, if the numbers on a birth date are transposed, or one record has a middle name and another record doesn’t, for example, the numerical identifiers aren’t added to the voter registration file. The three Republicans on the five-member Board voted to approve the plan that will require those voters who don’t have those identifiers connected to their names to cast provisional ballots and show an acceptable picture ID or document showing their residence when they vote. Additionally, Republicans on the Board flexed their new majority by rejecting plans for Sunday voting in Davidson and Union counties during early voting this year. Democrats on the Board wanted to allow Sunday voting in those counties. The State Board put off discussion of whether it will feed voter information into the federal SAVE database that agencies use to verify immigration status and citizenship. The Department of Homeland Security asked the Board if it wanted to be part of a “soft launch” that allows states to submit voter information, including the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, to check immigration and citizenship status.
Texas: According to Votebeat, Gov. Greg Abbott called on lawmakers to prohibit same-day voter registration, in an apparent attempt to reverse a measure passed earlier this year that relaxed rules for voters who made last-minute updates to their addresses. Texas does not allow same-day registration for new applicants, but under the legislation passed this year with bipartisan support, Senate Bill 2217, voters could update their addresses and immediately cast a ballot based on their new precinct or district, as long as the move was within the county. That law was scheduled to go into effect Sept. 1. Shortly after Abbott’s announcement, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from East Texas, announced on social media that he had filed a bill that would effectively prevent that measure from going into effect. Cain’s bill would maintain the status quo, in which voters can update their address at the polls, but have to wait 30 days for that change to take effect. Their ballot would include races tied to their old address, the one on file in the state voter registration system before the update.
The House sent a measure to Abbott’s desk that would let the attorney general’s office independently prosecute election-related crimes, years after the state’s highest criminal court ruled the office could not do so without an invitation from local prosecutors. Members of the Legislature’s lower chamber voted 85–54 to pass Senate Bill 12, from Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, and Republican Rep. Matt Shaheen of Plano, after a roughly hourlong debate that centered on the constitutionality of the measure. Four years ago, the all-GOP Court of Criminal Appeals ruled the attorney general’s office could not unilaterally prosecute election crimes — such as voter fraud — due to the separation of powers clause of the Texas Constitution. Democratic lawmakers who opposed SB 12 grilled Shaheen about the bill’s constitutionality, considering the ruling. Shaheen insisted that the bill would “fix” the ruling from the state’s highest court for criminal matters.
The Republican-led House approved a new congressional map crafted to hand five additional U.S. House seats to the GOP, over fierce opposition from Democrats, who cast the plan as a racially discriminatory attempt by President Donald Trump to stack the deck in next year’s midterm election. The House adopted the map, 88 to 52, along party lines. A Senate panel advanced a similar map earlier in the week.Republicans have said the new districts were drawn purely to maximize their partisan advantage, arguing that the GOP’s margins of victory in 2024 supported new lines that entrenched their hold on power. They have also framed the effort as a response to Democratic gerrymandering elsewhere. Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, the map’s sponsor, emphasized in laying out House Bill 4 that Republicans were legally permitted to pursue redistricting in the middle of the decade and to maximize partisan gain.
Legal Updates
Alabama: U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco ordered lawmakers to draw new state Senate districts after ruling the state violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the influence of Black voters around the capital city. Manasco blocked the state from using the current map in the 2026 elections and said a new map must be put in place that creates a new district in Montgomery where Black voters “comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” As for the Alabama State Senate seats in question, Manasco ruled, “The appropriate remedy is a redistricting plan that includes either an additional majority-Black Senate district in the Montgomery area, or an additional district there in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a senator of their choice,” Manasco wrote in the 261-page ruling. The ruling said the court will redraw the districts if the state does not do so in time for the 2026 elections.
Orange County, California: Orange County supervisors narrowly shot down calls from their colleagues to settle a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice and order the county’s top elections official to hand over 17 people’s voting data to prosecutors amid a probe of alleged noncitizen voting. The request comes amid concerns that the 17 people in question – all of whom county election officials say have been purged from voter rolls – could’ve improperly voted after their names showed up on rolls, despite not being eligible to vote. The lawsuit came after federal prosecutors rejected the county’s proposal to hand over redacted files that included the voters’ names and home addresses, with County Counsel Leon Page arguing it would be illegal to hand over without a court order. But Supervisors Don Wagner and Janet Nguyen – the two Republicans on the board – argued they should not block the request by the federal government, and that it makes people raise questions. But the three Democrats on the board – Chairman Doug Chaffee, Supervisor Katrina Foley and Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento – pushed back on their colleagues, voting against their colleagues’ proposal to settle the lawsuit. Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Doug Chaffee also voted against ending the lawsuit, with Chaffee raising concerns about violating the 17 individuals’ right to privacy.
Georgia: Senior Superior Court Judge David Emerson ruled this week that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners will be fined $10,000 per day until the panel agrees to approve Julie Adams and Jason Frazier’s appointments to the elections board. “The court finds beyond a reasonable doubt that the Board of Commissioners has failed to comply with this court’s order,” Emerson wrote in his ruling. The judge declined to hold any of the commissioners in criminal contempt of court, but ordered that the board of commissioners must pay the Fulton County Republican Party’s legal fees in the case. While normally the fees would be paid to the county government, Emerson said the fines would instead be paid to the superior court clerk and transferred to the state of Georgia. The Democratic-led board of commissioners voted 5-2 to reject the nominations, citing concerns about Adams and Frazier’s past actions and arguing that they were not qualified for the position. In June, the Fulton County Republican Party filed a lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court, claiming that commissioners do not have the power to reject nominations from political parties. In an Aug. 3 ruling, Emerson sided with the Fulton County Republican Party, ordering the commissioners to approve the nominations. “There is nothing in the statute to support the BOC theory that the county commissioners can veto the chairperson’s nominees other than for failure of the nominee to meet the two qualifications and one restriction,” Emerson wrote.
Louisiana: Louisiana is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a case that could toss out the state’s congressional boundaries and limit the extent race can be considered in the redistricting process nationwide. The state filed a brief Wednesday in response to the high court’s request that parties to Louisiana v. Callais, a lawsuit that non-Black voters filed over a second majority Black district for the state in the U.S. House, address whether the legislature’s creation of that district violated the 14th 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment, in part, covers representation in Congress, and the 15th Amendment prevents citizens from being denied the right to vote based on their race. If the justices determine Louisiana violated the Constitution, it could undermine the Voting Rights Act. The legislation was approved in 1965 to bolster protections granted in the 14th and 15th amendments. It has been amended five times since then to strengthen its provisions, though voting rights advocates note federal court rulings over the past decade have chipped away at the law. The state drew a second majority Black district in 2024 in response to a federal judge ruling the state violated the Voting Rights Act with its 2022 map, which kept a single Black-majority district among Louisiana’s six U.S. House seats. Attorney General Liz Murrill, who previously defended the second Black district,now argues that adding another Black district was unconstitutional.
Michigan: Five out of seven double voting criminal cases in the August 2024 primary in St. Clair Shores have been dismissed, but the Michigan Attorney General’s Office is appealing the rulings to a higher court, including the Michigan Court of Appeals in four of the cases. The most recent dismissal came Aug. 6 in the case against Douglas Kempkens Jr., a voter who was charged with one count each of voting absentee and in-person and offering to vote more than once. Macomb County Circuit Judge Joseph Toia dismissed and closed the case. A claim of appeal was filed this week with the state appellate court, according to a check Aug. 21 of online court records. According to the Detroit Free Press, AG Spokesman Danny Wimmer indicated in an Aug. 15 email: “Maintaining free and fair elections is predicated on the premise that citizens can cast their ballot once and only once per election. To allow some people to vote twice makes a mockery of our electoral systems.” He indicated the office was evaluating its appellate options after recent dismissals. The voters were accused of committing election fraud when they sent in an absentee ballot and still voted in person at the polls, Attorney General Dana Nessel said at a news conference announcing the charges in October. The election workers were accused of knowing of the voters’ absentee ballots — an electronic voter information tracking system informed them — and letting them vote anyway. The AG’s Office identified the election workers as assistant clerks, but St. Clair Shores Mayor Kip Walby previously told the Free Press they were seasonal workers, not assistant clerks.
New Hampshire: A trio of visually impaired residents filed a lawsuit against the state last week after Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a bill into law that they say makes “absentee voting even harder” and burdensome for voters. SB 287 requires anyone seeking to vote by absentee ballot to show photo identification in person or have their absentee ballot application form notarized. While the law was meant to prevent voter fraud, the burden of the law will fall on the most vulnerable, the lawsuit claims. The law requires voters to show such proof for every local, primary and general election in order to receive an absentee ballot. Plaintiffs Adele Robertson of Exeter and Regina Wilson of Brentwood are visually impaired; Daniel Frye of Concord is blind. All are regular absentee voters. Ayotte signed the bill into law along with 42 other bills on Aug. 1 with no public statement. The defendants are listed as Secretary of State David Scanlan and Attorney General John Formella. No response had been filed in court as of press time. The plaintiffs seek to have a judge issue an injunction to halt the new absentee ballot requirements.
Ohio: Voting rights advocates are fighting a new law that requires Ohioans to prove citizenship at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles if they want to register to vote. State lawmakers added the rule to the two-year transportation budget − passed in March − that allocates funding for airports, roads and bridges. Under the budget change, registrars can only offer voter registration to people who have proof of U.S. citizenship or previously provided documents to the BMV. Ohio already requires proof of legal presence to get a driver’s license or state ID and puts “noncitizen” labels on the IDs of those without citizenship. That means people in the BMV database confirmed to be U.S. citizens wouldn’t need to do anything more. But the lawsuit, filed Aug. 22 in the U.S. District Court’s Northern Ohio District, contends it will make registration difficult for new Ohio residents, older Ohioans and women who change their name for a marriage or divorce. The suit also noted that Ohioans who register online or by mail need only attest to their citizenship in a sworn statement. “There is no evidence in Ohio (or any other state) that the attestation requirement has been insufficient in preventing noncitizens from voting,” the complaint stated. “The substantial criminal and immigration consequences that a noncitizen would incur from voting have long effectively prevented noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections.” The suit was filed by Elias Law Group on behalf of the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans and Red Wine and Blue, an advocacy group led by suburban women.
Pennsylvania: A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that It is unconstitutional for Pennsylvania counties to reject mail ballots on the grounds that the envelopes are undated or misdated. The judges found the dating requirement to be a minimal burden on voters, but said there was not a sufficient state interest to justify enforcing it. “Weighing the burden that practice imposes on Pennsylvanians’ constitutional right to vote against the State’s interest in the practice, the balance of the scales leads us to hold that it does not comply with our Constitution,” the judges concluded unanimously, upholding a decision earlier this year from a federal district court judge. Act 77, the 2019 law that created no-excuse mail voting in Pennsylvania, says a person must sign and date the mail ballot return envelope for their vote to be counted, but election officials have said this date is not used for determining whether the ballot was received by Election Day. Since then, some Pennsylvania counties have rejected thousands of ballots because the envelopes lacked a proper date, and counties have had varying policies about whether to notify voters and give them a chance to correct the error. The validity of the dating requirement has been disputed for years, with state and federal courts going back and forth.
Texas: According to the Texas Tribune, hours after the Senate approved a new congressional map early Saturday morning that more heavily favors Republicans — legislation Gov. Greg Abbott plans to “swiftly” sign into law — a lawsuit against the governor was filed, alleging that the redrawn districts are racially discriminatory. The 67-page complaint against Abbott and Secretary of State Jane Nelson supplements legal action filed by LULAC in 2021 challenging the state’s original maps and argues that redrawing districts mid-decade is unconstitutional. Redistricting usually happens at the start of the decade after U.S. census data comes out. The complaint argues that because the new map was drawn based on the same data used for the initial map passed by the Legislature in 2021, the measure was a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. “Even if racial and partisan considerations are an unavoidable part of redistricting, there is no need for legislatures to take those considerations into account a second time in a single decade,” the complaint reads. The complaint, which is expected to be followed by others targeting House Bill 4, was filed by two law firms on behalf of 13 Texas residents collectively called “the Gonzales plaintiffs.” The bulk of their argument is that the new congressional map “dismantles majority-minority districts” by prioritizing Republican representation in Congress.
Utah: District Court Judge Dianna Gibson has ruled that the Legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries. Gibson ruled that the Republican-controlled body circumvented safeguards put in place by voters to ensure districts aren’t drawn to favor any party. The current map, adopted in 2021, divides Salt Lake County — Utah’s population center and a Democratic stronghold — among the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins. Gibson made few judgments on the content of the map but declared it unlawful because lawmakers had weakened and ignored an independent commission established by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering. “The nature of the violation lies in the Legislature’s refusal to respect the people’s exercise of their constitutional lawmaking power and to honor the people’s right to reform their government,” Gibson said in the ruling. New maps will need to be drawn quickly, before candidates start filing in early January for the 2026 midterm elections. The ruling gives lawmakers a deadline of Sept. 24 and allows voting rights groups involved in the legal challenge to submit alternate proposals to the court.
Washington: Timothy Hazelo of Island County, avoided a jail sentence after being convicted of a felony for an incident where he refused to wear a mask in an election center. In July, a jury found Hazelo guilty of unauthorized access to a voting center, which is a felony. Hazelo was also found guilty of criminal trespass, a gross misdemeanor. The criminal charges stem from an incident in November 2024, where Hazelo was removed from the Island County Election Office after he refused to wear a mask while observing ballot counting. Though Island County Prosecuting Attorney Greg Banks requested Hazelo be sentenced to seven days in jail, Hazelo was ultimately sentenced to probation and required to complete 40 hours of community service with a non-profit and non-political entity. No contact orders were also issued, prohibiting Hazelo from contacting the county auditor or elections supervisor. He can only contact them if he needs to file paperwork to run for office.
Wisconsin: Marcey Patterson, 45, the Milwaukee Police Department’s former community relations engagement and recruitment director has been criminally charged with election fraud. Patterson has been living outside of the city of Milwaukee but voting in Milwaukee elections and using her 80-year-old mother’s Milwaukee address to receive increased pay, according to a criminal complaint filed Aug. 25 in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. Between March 2018 and April 2025, Patterson voted in 12 city of Milwaukee elections while living outside the city, according to the complaint. In June 2024, she submitted a voter registration application to the Milwaukee Election Commission listing her address on North 40th Street. She was actually living in Brown Deer at the time, according to prosecutors. Patterson was charged with one count of election fraud — voting by disqualified person, which is a Class I felony and punishable by not more than $10,000, or imprisoned up to 3½ years, or both. She resigned on July 21 from her job with the police department.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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