Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
California: Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed a pair of election reform bills authored by the Chair of the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee into law this week. SB 398 criminalizes lotteries, cash or other prizes, and other incentives in exchange for voter registration. The new law would make those efforts a crime punishable by a fine up to $10,000, imprisonment for up to three years, or both, for any person who knowingly or willfully pays or offers to pay money or other valuable consideration to another to induce them to vote or register to vote or if the payment is made contingent on if a person voted or registered to vote. The other election reform bill authored by State Senator Umberg and signed into law Wednesday was SB 42 which would allow voters to decide in the 2026 election to repeal the statewide ban on public campaign financing programs.
Huntington Beach, California: The Huntington Beach City Council October 7, voted unanimously to pass a resolution seeking a legally valid and transparent election next year. Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns brought forth the resolution. “To me, there’s been so much question to the last several elections, and it bothers me,” Burns said. “The importance of our republic is that we have solid, trustworthy confidence in our elections. When you don’t have confidence, it discourages participation. I dread the thought of people not voting because they don’t have the confidence because our elections aren’t tight, our systems aren’t tight … I don’t trust some of the things that I’ve seen.” The city’s resolution asks for infrastructure compliance, voter verification, ballot security, accurate counts and proven outcomes.
Maryland: Maryland House Republicans are planning to propose legislation that they said would crack down on voter fraud and address noncitizen voting. Del. Bob Long sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which considers potential changes to election laws and procedures in the state. He is sponsoring a bill that would require a photo ID to vote. Under the proposed bill, a voter would be able to present a valid, non-government photo ID and current utility bill, bank statement or other official document if they do not have a government-issued ID. Those without any valid form of ID would be able to cast a provisional ballot. Del. Kevin Hornberger is sponsoring a second proposed bill that would require the state Board of Elections to verify a voter’s citizenship using the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. The SAVE program is administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. States and local governments use it to verify a person’s citizenship or immigration status. Hornberger said the legislation would give the Board of Elections “Yet another arrow in their quiver to ensure that those individuals who are registered to vote are citizens.”
Massachusetts: A proposal to sever the tie between the annual street list and voter registration status to reduce voting barriers in Massachusetts has the backing of voting rights advocates. But it met resistance from the office in charge of summoning jurors and raised questions for the Senate’s election laws point person. “As of 2024, the voter list was at 770,000 inactive voters — that’s 15% of the registered voters in Massachusetts,” state Rep. Shirley Arriaga, D-8th Hampden, told her colleagues last month. “Removing the link between the municipal census and voter registration ensures that access to the ballot is protected, is strengthened, and everyone in our community has that right [to vote].” Existing law deems a voter “inactive” if they fail to respond to the annual street list, also often referred to as the municipal census. House and Senate bills, respectively sponsored by Arriaga and Sen. Cynthia Stone Creem, D-Norfolk/Middlesex, seek to disrupt that relationship since “Massachusetts is in a minority of jurisdictions that tie voter registration to the municipal census,” according to Creem’s summary.
Legal Updates
Supreme Court News: Concerned about chaotic post-election litigation, the Supreme Court seemed open this week to making it easier for political candidates to challenge election rules. “What you’re sketching out for us is a potential disaster,” Chief Justice John Roberts told Illinois’ solicitor general. Illinois said candidates must prove an election rule was harmful to bring a court challenge, but most of the justices were concerned the requirement would limit election litigation to high-profile, close cases that pressure courts to intervene in the days and weeks around Election Day. “You’re saying, if the candidate is going to win by 65%, no standing, but if the candidate hopes to win by a dozen votes … then he has standing,” Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, told Illinois’ solicitor general. “But we’re not going to know that until we get very close to the election, so it’s going to be the most fraught time for the court to get involved in electoral politics.” U.S. Representative Michael Bost, a Republican from Illinois, said the court could avoid that result by loosening the requirements for candidates to bring lawsuits. The only question before the Supreme Court was whether Bost had standing to challenge the mail-in ballot rule — not whether the rule itself was lawful. Illinois argued that Bost needed to show that the ballot deadline hurt his electoral chances. But the justices appeared more receptive to Bost’s arguments, worrying that parsing the degree to which a rule impacted a candidate’s success in a race was too political. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson broke with their conservative colleagues. Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, said lowering standing requirements for candidates could unnecessarily open election rules up to litigation. “[Bost’s] rule would say that that candidate who has not just an insubstantial but a statistically almost impossible chance of winning, that that candidate can come in and seek a change of that rule,” Sotomayor said.
In a brief dated October 7, 23 state attorneys general asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court’s decision in Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, which would prevent individuals from suing to enforce the Voting Rights Act. In their brief, the attorneys general argue in support of the individual right to sue to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars state and local governments from enacting racially discriminatory policies, ensuring American citizens would not be denied or restricted from casting their ballot. While the U.S. Attorney General and private citizens have been able to file lawsuits to enforce this provision for nearly 60 years, a decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has called that practice into question. In their brief, the group of attorneys general argue that private enforcement of the act is essential, and has acted as the primary avenue for enforcing the law since it was enacted. They also argue that exclusively relying on the U.S. Attorney General to enforce the law would be insufficient to protect voters from racial discrimination.
Andrew Hess, a Michigan man charged with making a “terrorist threat” against “an Oakland County election official” has filed an application on the interim docket urging the court to “intervene and stop the county from prosecuting him,” according to the Detroit Free Press. “Hess was charged after attending a recount in December 2023 at which an elections employee said she heard him say, ‘hang Joe for treason,’ apparently referring to Oakland County Elections Director Joe Rozell. … [Hess] has maintained in court documents that any comments he made were ‘off-hand’ and ‘political commentary and hyperbole’ protected by the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee.”
Arkansas: A Franklin County resident asked a judge this week to move up a special election to replace the late Sen. Gary Stubblefield by six months, alleging the current schedule prevents District 26 voters from having a voice during the 2026 fiscal session. The lawsuit, which attorney Jennifer Waymack Standerfer filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court on behalf of Colt Shelby of Cecil, seeks an injunction and an order declaring Stubblefield’s seat must be filled within 150 days of his death. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Secretary of State Cole Jester are the defendants. “We look forward to a full victory,” Jester said in a statement provided by his spokesperson. The complaint requests a judge hold a hearing within seven days. Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Patricia James was assigned to the case. “The General Assembly will officially convene and begin the 2026 Fiscal Session on April 8, 2026, where it will determine how to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money and set the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year,” the complaint says. “The Governor’s designated election schedule prevents the people of Senate District 26 from having representation at the 2026 Fiscal Session.”
Three women without citizenship status have been arrested and charged with felonies for violating Arkansas election law by voting in 2024, Attorney General Tim Griffin announced Thursday. The investigation began earlier this year “when federal officials notified us about certain voters in Arkansas whose voting records appeared to be incongruent with their citizenship status,” Griffin said. Working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations arm, investigators determined the conduct of three people warranted further investigation, according to a news release. Griffin said in a press conference that such arrests and charges are “rarities” and “not a persistent problem,” but that his office is committed to protecting the integrity of Arkansas elections. He created an Election Integrity Unit in his office’s Special Investigations Division in March 2023.
Maryland: A lawyer representing five unaffiliated voters is asking an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge to deny a motion to dismiss their suit challenging a state law that limits the participation of unaffiliated voters in Maryland primary elections. The plaintiffs, represented by former Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, are asking a judge to rule that state funding for partisan primaries violates their rights under the Maryland Constitution. An attorney representing the state is asking the judge to dismiss the lawsuit. The case is scheduled for an Oct. 20 motions hearing. “This case, at its core, is a voting rights case,” Rutherford wrote on behalf of his clients. “It is not, as defendants suggest, a case brought to assert some violation of the Maryland Election law and to challenge a particular election outcome. Nor is it a taxpayer case.” Instead, Rutherford said his clients are asserting that primary elections for the Democratic and Republican parties should not be paid for with tax dollars if nearly 1 million unaffiliated voters in the state cannot participate.
Oregon: A judge in Douglas County Circuit Court ruled against motions last week to dismiss a high-profile elections case. The import of those rulings is twofold: First, the specific dispute will continue toward trial; and second, the continuation of the case will keep attention focused on some of the participants’ larger aim—to end Oregon’s vote-by-mail system. Most directly, the judge’s rulings keep alive a petition for review that plaintiff Todd Vaughn filed in June after apparently losing his seat on the Umpqua Public Transportation District board. As OJP has previously reported, Vaughn claims the vote tally, conducted by Douglas County Clerk Dan Loomis, unfairly cost him his seat.
Wisconsin: Wisconsin state agencies asked a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge to stay his ruling requiring election officials to verify the citizenship of existing voters and those seeking to register. The Wisconsin Department of Justice filed the motion on behalf of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Department of Transportation, and related state officials. In it, the respondents called Judge Michael Maxwell’s ruling “impermissively vague,” because the order bars election officials from processing new registrations without “verification” of applicants’ citizenship but doesn’t define the verification process. The filing says that any new citizenship verification process for online voter registration would require months of testing and development, and that disabling the electronic registration system in the meantime would conflict with state law requiring that system to exist. “The impact would be enormous: Wisconsin receives an average of more than 200 online voter registrations per day,” the filing states, citing a declaration from Robert Kehoe, the election commission’s deputy administrator. The state Justice Department repeated its argument that a citizenship verification system would exceed what state law requires, noting that the Legislature has expressly required proof of residency for new registrants but not proof of citizenship. The motion further contends Maxwell exceeded his authority by effectively prohibiting local election officials from processing new registrations without verifying citizenship, even though local officials aren’t party to the case. Late on October 6, Maxwell put a hold on his order until the state’s motion opposing it is decided.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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