Electionline Weekly May-14-2026

Election News

Federal Update: This week, the U.S. Department of Justice released a legal opinion outlining the legal rationale behind its nationwide voter data collection efforts, justifying an aggressive federal role in vetting voter eligibility, a position courts have repeatedly rejected in related litigation. The memo, released May 12 by the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, concedes that while election administration is “primarily the purview of the states,” the administration’s efforts are a lawful exercise of federal oversight. The Justice Department grounds that rationale in a provision of the 1960 Civil Rights Act, requiring election officials to keep voter records for 22 months after an election so it can investigate potential civil rights violations. Under the memo’s reading, that retention rule also gives the Attorney General authority to obtain copies of those records “upon demand in writing.” According to CyberScoop, the memo also cites several other federal election laws – like the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Voting Rights Act – as support for the executive branch’s efforts. It argues that those statutes have long required states to modernize and secure voting systems (including accessibility upgrades) and maintain accurate voter rolls by removing ineligible voters. The memo further argues that the potential presence of one or more non-citizens on state voter rolls is enough to trigger the federal government’s nationwide data collection and sharing efforts with immigration authorities.

2026 Elections: The 2026 election season continued this week with primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia. The biggest news out of Nebraska on Tuesday was the defeat of incumbent Secretary of State Bob Evnen. According to the Nebraska Examiner, as of 11:55 p.m. on Tuesday, businessman Scott Petersen led Evnen statewide by more than 16,000 votes, or 55% to Evnen’s 45%. Early results showed a tight race, but Petersen gradually increased his lead as the night progressed. According to the Examiner, throughout his campaign, Petersen largely criticized Evnen’s handling of the state’s elections systems, particularly in vote counting. He has questioned whether the ballot-counting machines the state uses can access the internet and be hacked, has argued that voting by mail should be restricted to only special circumstances and promised to conduct full hand counts of races. Petersen now faces the winner of the Democratic primary, school nutrition director Sarah Slattery, in November’s general election. Slattery said she was “overwhelmed with gratitude” for her win, and said she was prepared to face Petersen in the fall. According to West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, things went very smoothly on Tuesday. “We fielded 196 calls. Those are reports from the field. I would tell you, a majority of those just dealt with human error. Voters going to the wrong precinct. Someone who didn’t update their name or address if they got married since the last election and the name changed and it didn’t match what was in the book,” Warner told West Virginia Public Radio. “We had a couple of situations where the marking machines that used to mark the ballots ran out of battery life. They might not have been completely plugged in, and they were beeping at the poll workers. We had one that got a paper jam, but every one of those calls has already been handled.” Warner noted that the state did not receive one call about issues with new voter ID rules and less than five calls about closed primaries. Overall turnout was about 21 percent. With early voting already underway for the May 19 primary, this week Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey set an August 11 special election for four of the Congressional races currently on the May 19 ballot. There will be no runoff, as required by legislation passed by the Legislature and signed by Ivey last week. The special primary is estimated to cost $4.45 million, according to the Legislative Fiscal Office, in reimbursements to the counties affected from the state’s General Fund budget. Secretary of State Wes Allen said at a press conference that the state will count all votes in the coming primary election but will invalidate the votes cast for the party nominees in the districts that were affected by the recent Supreme Court order. Elections officials are warning voters in Louisiana that they could face delays when voting in Saturday’s primary. Under a new law, no-party voters can vote in closed primaries however when signing in at their polling site, no-party voters must declare whether they are voting in the Republican closed primary, the Democrat closed primary or as a no party voter. They also must fill out a one-page form, sign it and get the elections commissioner at the polling site to sign it. “We anticipate a long day and voter confusion,” Lafayette Parish Clerk of Court Louis Perret said. “We’re asking the public to be patient.”

New Legal Program: The Center for Election Innovation & Research is launching a new legal program to combat the unprecedented and illegal attempts to interfere with elections. In the past year, the federal government has pursued a sweeping campaign to challenge states’ constitutional authority to set election policy. That campaign has included President Trump’s two executive orders on elections, the Justice Department’s demands and subsequent lawsuits to access states’ sensitive voter data, and the FBI raid of an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia. Without immediate intervention, states’ rights and election integrity could be compromised nationwide, an outcome that threatens the very foundation of American democracy. This ambitious program will be led by Tamar Hagler, CEIR’s new legal program director and former Voting Section Chief at the Justice Department. “I am thrilled to take on this vital new program,” Hagler said. “There is nothing more important today than safeguarding the integrity and security of our nation’s elections, upholding the rule of law, and defending democracy.” In partnership with national law firms like the Washington Litigation Group and local law firms in several states, CEIR will foster and oversee a comprehensive legal strategy that best serves our elections and the professionals who administer them. These efforts will complement the work being done by our network of volunteer lawyers recruited by the Election Official Legal Defense Network (EOLDN), a CEIR project that provides pro bono legal assistance to election officials facing threats or harassment because of their work. The legal program’s efforts have already begun, with the filing of two amicus briefs (one in Washington, DC, and the other in Massachusetts) detailing election officials’ concerns about the ramifications of President Trump’s March 2026 executive order on mail voting. Over 50 election officials from 20 states signed on to the briefs, which were filed on Monday, April 27 (D.D.C.), and Monday, May 4 (D. Mass.).

Legal Updates

Alabama: In a 25-page filing, Alabama asked the U.S. Supreme Court to clear the way for it to use a congressional map that it had adopted in 2023, which has one majority-Black district, rather than a court-ordered map that has two such districts. Alabama Solicitor General A. Barrett Bowdre told the justices that otherwise the state would have to “hold elections under a map that was erroneously ordered at best and unconstitutional at worst. Nothing requires that result,” Bowdre concluded. “Americans, no less in Alabama, deserve a republic free of racial sorting now, and state officials deserve an opportunity to give it to them.” The filing is the latest chapter in a long-running dispute over Alabama’s congressional map. In 2021, in Allen v. Milligan, a divided Supreme Court agreed that the congressional map that the state had adopted in 2021 violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of Black voters – specifically, by packing many of the state’s Black voters into a single district in central Alabama and then dispersing other Black voters in the region, known as the “Black Belt,” into several other districts, where they did not make up a majority. After the court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan, Alabama adopted a new map. But a federal district court then blocked the use of the 2023 map, which had only one majority-Black district, holding that it discriminated against Black voters. The court ordered the state to use a map with a second majority-Black district. Alabama contends that its “case mirrors Louisiana’s, and they should end the same way: with this year’s elections run with districts based on lawful policy goals, not race.” When it drew the 2023 map, Alabama said, it sought to “achiev[e] the State’s neutral goals (like protecting incumbents) and refus[ed] to let race predominate.” As a practical matter, it asserts, it “compl[ied] with Callais before Callais,” prompting the lower court to strike down the 2023 map. Now, Alabama explains, the state’s Legislature has held a special session and is ready to pass a bill that would reinstate the 2023 map. It should have the chance to do so, just as Louisiana has, the state concludes. On May 11, the Court overturned the 2023 ruling which could open the way for Alabama to use new district lines this year. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in the order, joined by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, saying there is no reason to reconsider Alabama’s case. “In addition to holding that Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan violates [Section] 2, the district court held, in one of the three cases before this Court, that Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama,” Sotomayor wrote. “That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais.”

Colorado: A last-minute lawsuit filed by three Republican candidates for office in Colorado claims allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in the GOP’s upcoming primary election violates their constitutional rights. The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the state’s semi-open primaries violate the 1st and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the Colorado Constitution. The plaintiffs want the court to issue an order prohibiting unaffiliated voters from participating in the June 2026 primary election. The new lawsuit comes shortly after a federal judge shot down a similar request from the Colorado Republican Party to block unaffiliated voters from participating in its primary. Plaintiffs in the Denver lawsuit say the federal court did not issue a ruling related to candidate-specific injury. A hearing in the case is scheduled for May 14. County clerks are able to begin giving mail ballots to eligible voters who request one from their office starting on May 16.

Louisiana: The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated its ruling that the maps of Louisiana’s legislative districts violate the Voting Rights Act following a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that took an axe to the law. The 5th Circuit was considering a rehearing in Nairne v. Landry, a lawsuit challenging the state House and Senate district boundaries the legislature adopted in 2022. The appellate court paused the case pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which challenged the U.S. House district maps state lawmakers approved in 2024. Justices ruled on Callais last week, finding legislators had relied too heavily on the race of voters to draw the district lines. In the eyes of suffrage advocates, the Callais decision imploded Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in election laws and practices involving a person’s race, color or language group. “While the Supreme Court didn’t declare Section 2 unconstitutional and left it in place, it modified what you have to do to win a Section 2 case in ways that will make it much harder or impossible for voters of color to use,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights organization.

Michigan: State election officials must provide unredacted, electronic versions of voter registration lists to the federal government to comply with the Civil Rights Act and maintain election integrity, the federal government argued this week at the Sixth Circuit. According to officials at the Department of Justice, several “irregularities” — including lower than average voter removal and inadequate voter confirmation numbers — raised concerns Michigan might not be in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson handed over the public version of the registration list but denied the government an unredacted copy based on her interpretation of both federal laws. A federal lawsuit followed, and Chief U.S. District Judge Hala Jarbou, a Donald Trump appointee, sided with Benson. Jarbou determined the unredacted, electronic version of the voter registration list “was neither a record nor paper that came into the possession of Benson,” which excluded it from disclosure. The case hinges on the interpretation of the phrase “comes into possession of,” found in the Civil Rights Act, and which Jarbou decided does not cover documents created by state election officials. Attorney David Goldman from the U.S. Department of Justice argued Wednesday before the appeals court and told the panel Jarbou “created a carve-out for state-generated records that has no basis in the act.” “So are the words ‘come into’ surplus?” asked Senior U.S. Circuit Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., a Bill Clinton appointee. “What about common sense?” asked U.S. Circuit Judge John Nalbandian, a Trump appointee. “If you say you baked a cake, you don’t say you ‘came into possession’ of a cake.” Assistant Michigan Attorney General Heather Meingast argued on behalf of Benson and criticized the federal government’s overreach. “The Department of Justice seeks the private information of over 8 million registered voters, a request that is unprecedented and unsupported by the law,” she told the panel. The state’s attorney emphasized language in the Civil Rights Act that requires election officials to retain only those documents related to specific elections, not an evolving and updated document like the voter list. No timetable has been set for the court’s decision.

Missouri: Jason Underwood, a former candidate, who narrowly lost the 2024 Adair County sheriff’s race, is now suing the person in charge of that election. Underwood filed a civil suit this week against Adair County Clerk Sandy Collop, accusing her of multiple violations of Missouri’s Open Records Law, commonly known as the Sunshine Law. After a recount of the ballots in 2024, Underwood lost to current Adair County Sheriff Jason Lene by just two votes. According to court documents, Underwood sent multiple Sunshine Requests to Collop seeking access to and copies of all provisional ballot envelopes submitted during the August 2024 primary election for sheriff. The suit claims Collop knowingly and purposefully violated the Sunshine Law by failing to provide Underwood the requested public records. “I had 30 days to contest the election. She (Collop) basically denied me that right,” Underwood told KTVO. The suit seeks to impose a $30,000 civil penalty against Collop and seeks reimbursement for Underwood’s costs and attorney fees incurred while pursuing this litigation.

Montana: District Court Judge Adam Larsen has ordered a temporary halt on a new law aimed at restricting Election Day voter registration and tightening the hours voters can register in the days leading up to it, while upholding a new voter identification law. In a 22-page order Larsen granted a preliminary injunction against Senate Bill 490, a bill sponsored by Sen. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka. With the ruling, the state’s existing rules stay in place, allowing voters to register to vote on Election Day as long as they are in line by the close of voting hours. Cuffe’s bill had tightened the deadline for voters to register to vote to noon on the day of the election, and eliminated registration on the Monday before an election, but opened it up on the prior Saturday. Cuffe also sponsored Senate Bill 276, which implemented voter ID laws. Under existing law, anyone in line at the ballot box by 8 p.m. on Election Day could register to vote, which in 2024 led to long lines at some precincts, including voters who waited until after midnight to register and cast their ballots in Gallatin County. Montana Federation of Public Employees sued, pointing to a Montana Supreme Court decision from 2024 that struck down a law passed in 2021 eliminating Election Day voter registration. Larsen cited that decision in his order, writing that “For nearly two decades prior to the enactment of SB 490, Montana voters have utilized election day registration throughout the entirety of Election Day,” and it has become “wildly popular,” and its use has grown over time. “The Supreme Court also found that the number of voters late registering on Election Day is nearly equal to the number of voters who late register during the preceding 29 days combined,” Larsen wrote in his order. “Election Day Registration serves as a critical safeguard for Montana voters who encounter issues with their voter registration.” Larsen also wrote the law as written only applies to voters registering for federal elections, but allows registration for state elections for all of Election Day, creating a “bifurcated system,” which would impose additional burdens on election officials. He also said that some Montana precincts do not open until noon on Election Day, which means voters in those areas would be wholly deprived of same-day registration. Senate Bill 490 would “disproportionately impact certain groups of voters, including Native American voters and young voters,” the order states.

North Carolina: Two Black voters challenging two N.C. Senate districts have dismissed their federal lawsuit in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that further weakened the Voting Rights Act. State Rep. Rodney Pierce (D-Halifax) and Moses Matthews were suing Republican legislators over their decision in 2023 to redraw districts in the eastern and northeastern part of the state, saying they diluted Black voting power in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The lawsuit contended that Republican legislators broke up “Black Belt” counties. The new map prevents Black voters from electing candidates of their choice in Senate District 1 and Senate District 2, the lawsuit said. Pierce and Matthews appealed to the 4th Circuit Court after U.S. District Judge James Dever ruled in legislators’ favor last year. Dever had earlier denied a request to block the use of the districts in the 2024 election. Lawyers for Pierce and Matthews filed a notice of dismissal Monday. In a statement, Pierce said the U.S. Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act decision left “no path open to us to protect the voting rights of Black citizens in my part of the state.”

Oregon: A years-old lawsuit accusing Oregon of failing to proactively remove people from the state’s voter rolls is over after state elections officials signaled they would update their practices and agreed to regularly share information with a conservative activist group. Under a settlement finalized last week, Secretary of State Tobias Read committed to send data annually for five years to the plaintiffs of the lawsuit: the national group Judicial Watch, the Constitution Party of Oregon and two individual plaintiffs. In exchange, the parties have dropped their suit. The data that Read has agreed to share largely concern how county election officials deal with voters they suspect may have moved, but who have not confirmed as much. Such voters are labeled “inactive” in the state’s voter database and don’t receive ballots. But under federal law, elections officials are required to cancel them from state voter rolls if they don’t respond to a notice that they have been switched to inactive status, and don’t vote in two subsequent federal elections. The lawsuit pointed to a 2023 report that showed 19 of Oregon’s 36 counties had not removed any voters from November 2020 to November 2022, and that 10 other counties had removed 11 or fewer people in that time.

South Carolina: The South Carolina Republican Party announced plans to file a federal lawsuit seeking partisan voter registration in South Carolina, arguing the change is needed to protect Republican primary elections. The party said the lawsuit follows years of unsuccessful legislative efforts to change South Carolina’s open primary system. According to the SCGOP, the party has supported partisan voter registration through legislation, party resolutions and its official platform. Party leaders also said Republican primary voters have consistently backed the proposal in internal party polling. South Carolina currently operates under an open primary system, which allows voters to participate in either party’s primary without formally registering with a political party. “The United States Supreme Court has been clear that political parties have a First Amendment right to freedom of association, and that constitutional right should mean something,” SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick said. “Since the legislature has refused to act, we are now taking this fight to federal court to protect the integrity of South Carolina’s Republican Primary.”

Tennessee: The NAACP’s Tennessee chapter filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the state’s new congressional map, redrawn so a majority-Black voting district was eliminated. NAACP Tennessee President Gloria Sweet-Love filed an emergency petition to stop the map from going into effect in Davidson County Chancery Court. The lawsuit was filed less than three hours after Gov. Bill Lee signed the new map into law. The Tennessee Legislature’s Republican supermajority passed the map — carving up a historic Democratic-held district in Shelby County — during a whirlwind special session called at President Donald Trump’s behest days after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key section of the Voting Rights Act. Protesters opposing the redistricting flooded the Capitol for the three-day session’s entirety. When Lee called the special session, the lawsuit argues, he did not specifically state that its purpose included repealing or suspending a Tennessee law prohibiting mid-decade redistricting. The General Assembly passed a bill nullifying that law during the session, and Lee signed it into law shortly before the final vote on the new map. The Tennessee Constitution stipulates that the General Assembly “shall enter no legislative business except that for which they were specifically called together,” and the map therefore violates “clear and unambiguous Tennessee statutory law and the mandates of the Tennessee Constitution,” the lawsuit states. The suit also challenges a provision that suspends residency requirements for candidates in the newly drawn districts.

Virginia: Virginia Democrats asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive the voter-approved redistricting amendment struck down last week by the Supreme Court of Virginia, escalating the fight over the state’s congressional map to the nation’s highest court with the 2026 midterms inching closer. In an emergency application filed with Chief Justice John Roberts, attorneys representing House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and the commonwealth of Virginia asked the court to pause the state ruling while the appeal moves forward. “The irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision is profound and immediate,” the lawmakers’ filing reads. “By forcing the Commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a constitutional amendment the people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia has deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.” The filing comes three days after Virginia’s high court ruled 4-3 that the constitutional amendment authorizing mid-decade redistricting violated procedural requirements in the Virginia Constitution and therefore could not take effect, despite being approved by voters April 21.

Wisconsin: A Wisconsin appeals panel affirmed the conviction of a former high-ranking Milwaukee elections official who fraudulently requested absentee ballots to highlight what she saw as flaws in the statewide system. A jury convicted Kimberly Zapata, 49, in March 2024 of misconduct in public office and making false statements to obtain or vote an absentee ballot after she requested three military absentee ballots using made up names and directed them to the home of Janel Brandtjen — a Republican member of the Wisconsin Assembly who frequently made false assertions of fraud in the 2020 election. Her attorney framed her during oral arguments in March as a whistleblower looking to draw attention away from election conspiracy theories and shine a spotlight instead on very real flaws in the absentee system. The appellate panel affirmed her conviction and found there is no constructive difference between having the fake ballots delivered to her own home or someone else’s. The panel interpreted “obtain” broadly to include actual and constructive obtainment. Zapata didn’t have to physically hold the false ballots in order to have illegally obtained them. “The evidence demonstrates that by requesting the ballots, Zapata set off a series of actions she knew the ballots would be subjected to,” Judge Sara Geenen wrote for the panel. “In other words, Zapata controlled both the names under which the ballots would be generated and the destination to which those ballots would be sent. In our view, directing the creation and designation of the false ballots is exercising control over them.”










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