Electionline Weekly September-10-2026

Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking

Brownsburg, Indiana: The Brownsburg Town Council advanced a proposal Aug. 27 that would move the town’s municipal elections from odd-numbered years to even-numbered general election years, a change supporters say could save taxpayers money and increase voter participation. The council voted 4-1 on first reading, with Council Member Cindy Hohman voting against it. The ordinance will receive further consideration before becoming final. Under the proposal, Brownsburg’s municipal election cycle would be aligned with even-numbered general elections conducted by the state and county. The change also would align the town’s elections with school board elections. Council Member Travis Tschaenn, who introduced the proposal, said the primary goals are reducing election costs and increasing efficiency by combining the town’s elections with elections already being conducted. “There will no longer be a cost to taxpayers for an election,” Tschaenn said, explaining that Brownsburg currently pays a share of the cost of conducting municipal elections held in odd-numbered years.

North Carolina Rulemaking: A new directive to North Carolina county boards of election puts more ballots in jeopardy of being discarded, though voters will have the chance to fill out another. Absentee ballots that arrive in the wrong envelope, or that arrive unsealed in the correct envelope, will no longer automatically count but will be rejected and new ballots issued, the state Board of Elections decided in a Friday party-line vote. The absentee ballot package comes with two envelopes — an inner envelope for the ballot and an outer envelope to mail it back in. Mailed ballots that are not sealed in the inner envelope will be discarded and the ballots reissued, according to the new guidelines. Ballots will also be discarded if their inner envelopes have been opened and resealed. The board adopted this new directive for counties on September 4, when the first absentee ballots were being mailed to voters who requested them. The board also revised a directive on in-person delivery of absentee ballots. If a county board has specific, first-hand information that a ballot was hand-delivered by an unauthorized person, the ballot will be discarded and a new ballot issued.

Legal Updates

U.S. Supreme Court: The Trump administration went to the U.S. Supreme Court on Sunday, September 6, asking the justices to pause a ruling by a federal judge in Massachusetts that bars the government from implementing parts of a U.S. Postal Service rule on mail-in ballots. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court that Friday’s order by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani “nullif[ies] the Postal Service’s efforts to address the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud—a particularly pernicious species of fraud that dilutes the votes of lawful voters, prevents election results from reflecting the will of the American people, and undermines ‘public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.’” Sunday’s filing was the third time in less than six weeks, and the second time since Thursday, that the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court seeking to clear the way to implement restrictions on mail-in voting. California, joined by a group of 22 states and the District of Columbia, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to leave in place a ruling by a federal judge in Boston that prohibits the Trump administration from implementing parts of a U.S. Postal Service rule on mail-in ballots. Ian Fein, California’s deputy solicitor general, told the justices that “USPS’ unprecedented experiment with our Nation’s most cherished franchise—the right to vote—is unlawful.” The 40-page filing was the latest chapter in an ongoing battle over the Trump administration’s efforts to put restrictions on mail-in voting in place before the November elections. Georgia election leaders joined a national coalition Wednesday asking the Supreme Court to freeze new federal Postal Service rules before the upcoming general election. Seven Republicans who are the chief election officials of their states were among dozens of local and state election officials who filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, advising justices of the knottiness of implementing the U.S. Postal Service’s rule on mail voting in time for the upcoming election. The signatories of the brief did not take a side on the merits of the rule itself, and instead “suggest only this: that the November 3, 2026 general election be conducted under the rules that were in place when the election’s administration began” — in other words, prior to the USPS rule.

The Trump administration on September 8 asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a federal citizenship database to help spot invalid voters ahead of the midterm elections. The administration is currently blocked from rolling out the tool, which the administration proposed using as part of a larger effort by President Trump to enact additional screening of voters ahead of November. If the justices allow the administration to proceed, states could use the Department of Homeland Security database to check voter information against federal citizenship and Social Security records. The emergency application to the justices marks the latest in a dizzying series of legal developments in the fight over the Trump administration’s push to upend voting procedures. The administration has also sought permission from the Supreme Court to change mail-in voting rules even as some states begin sending out ballots. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that the order by U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan “makes it harder to detect ineligible voters, undermining the integrity of federal elections and public confidence in the results of those elections.”The Supreme Court gave the challengers until September 15 to respond to the Trump administration request regarding the citizenship database. The League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center brought a lawsuit in federal court in Washington challenging the changes to the SAVE system. In a ruling on June 22, Sooknanan agreed that the modified system violates federal privacy laws, the Social Security Act, and the federal laws governing administrative agencies, and she barred the government from using the modified system. Sooknanan wrote that “the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.” Moreover, she continued, “states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.” A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit turned down the government’s request to put Sooknanan’s order on hold while the appeal moves forward, but it said that the case should be fast-tracked.

Federal Litigation: On September 4 U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani extended her prohibition against the U.S. Postal Service implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to limit mail voting during the midterms, putting another major obstacle in the way of the administration as the first states begin sending out mail ballots. The preliminary injunction from Talwani replaces a temporary order she granted blocking the Postal Service’s plan. Talwani, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, pointed to the tight timeline in her ruling. “Plaintiff States are required under state law to mail millions of ballots to voters on a prescribed timeframe. As detailed below, they are unable to pivot this late in the election cycle, nearly guaranteeing significant disenfranchisement for eligible voters,” she wrote. The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The order allows states to voluntarily use the new Postal Service system. To date, not a single state has announced that it will do so.

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged five individuals in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and New Jersey with voting-related crimes. The department contends that four noncitizens voted illegally in the 2022 and 2024 elections and charged one U.S. citizen with allegedly participating in his wife’s illegal voting. According to the department, a federal grand jury indicted Thomas Holtzman, 68, and his wife Marisol Guzman, 50, both of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in connection with Guzman, a non-U.S. citizen, allegedly voting in the 2024 election. Guzman was charged with illegal voting, and Holtzman, a U.S. citizen, was charged with one count of making a false statement of citizenship and with aiding and abetting another to make a false statement of citizenship, as well as one count of submitting a false voter registration and with aiding and abetting another to submit a false voter registration. A third Pennsylvania resident, Katya Rodriguez, 30, of Harrisburg, whom the Justice Department said is not a U.S. citizen, was charged with making a false statement of citizenship in order to vote, fraudulent registration, and illegally voting in the 2024 election. In Wisconsin, Jesus Javier Jurado Garcia, 25, was charged with illegally voting in the November 2022 election. According to the department, Garcia is a noncitizen residing in Beloit. Finally, the department also charged Mercedes Alexandra Cardoso, of Union County, New Jersey, for allegedly voting in the June 2024 presidential primary at a time when she was living in the U.S. on a B-2 visa.

California: The UCLA Voting Rights Project sued the Trump administration to block it from using federal databases to allegedly target naturalized citizens who are registered to vote in California. The Project filed the lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that the federal government is interfering with free and fair elections by using unreliable federal records to identify noncitizens who are registered to vote. The VRP claimed that outdated information and inconsistent records could lead the federal government to misidentify naturalized citizens as noncitizens. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security requested that California identify noncitizens who are registered to vote in a July 16 letter to Secretary of State Shirley Weber, according to the lawsuit. State officials in New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania also received the letter. The plaintiffs are also asking the court to direct Mullin to rescind his letter demanding the reviews. Subsequent social media posts from DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin that threatened to arrest and deport noncitizens on voter rolls prompted the VRP to file the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, said Matt Barreto, the project’s faculty director. “This created a lot of fear and confusion, and we started hearing from a lot of folks in the community,” said Barreto, a professor in the political science and Chicana/o and Central American studies department.

Colorado: Denver District Judge Adam J. Espinosa ruled that the state’s Libertarian Party can put another secretary of state candidate on November’s ballot after the party’s original candidate dropped out a day after the deadline to replace him. The Libertarian Party of Colorado rushed to name Sean Vadney as their replacement candidate in the days after Alex Astley bowed out. Astley dropped out of the race Aug. 26, 69 days before the election. Election rules require minor party candidates to drop out no later than 70 days ahead of the Nov. 3 election in order to be replaced. Another rule says minor parties have until 64 days before the election to ask for a replacement candidate. The Libertarian Party met that second deadline but its request Monday to put Vadney on the ballot was denied by the Secretary of State’s Office because Astley had missed the other deadline. Both the Libertarians and the Secretary of State’s Office asked a judge to decide whether Vadney could appear on the ballot. spinosa ruled that the party had substantially complied with election rules and found that adding Vadney now would not prevent the Secretary of State’s Office from preparing the ballot. Friday is the deadline for the ballot’s lineup to be finalized.

Delaware: The Delaware Court of Chancery has upheld the state’s permanent absentee voting law, rejecting a constitutional challenge brought by two candidates seeking election to the Delaware State Senate. On September 4 it was determined that Delaware’s permanent absentee voting statute does not violate the Delaware Constitution because it does not expand the circumstances under which a voter may cast an absentee ballot. The lawsuit was brought by state Sen. Gerald Hocker and Steven Washington, both candidates for the Delaware State Senate in the 2026 general election. They challenged Delaware code that allows certain voters to obtain permanent absentee status. Under the law, the Delaware Department of Elections automatically sends absentee ballots to people with permanent absentee status for elections in which they are entitled to vote. Hocker and Washington argued in the complaint that the system effectively gives voters indefinite absentee voting privileges, including in later elections when the reason that originally qualified them to vote absentee may no longer apply. Vice Chancellor Bonnie David rejected that argument, pointing to provisions requiring people with permanent absentee status to notify the Department of Elections when the reason they qualified for absentee voting changes. The department is also required to cancel permanent absentee status when it receives written notice that the qualifying reason is no longer valid.

Hawai’i: The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court found that no candidate was validly nominated in the House District 43 primary after the tie between two Republican candidates was broken by a drawing from a lauhala basket in August. The two candidates will be placed on the general election ballot in November. Candidates for House District 43, Kristen “Kanani” and Sheila Medeiros, both Republicans, tied in the August primary. Medeiros was named representative elect after election officials drew her name from a lauhala basket on Aug. 15. Souza challenged Hawaiʻi Chief Election Officer Scott Nago, Acting Honolulu City Clerk Chadd Kadota and Honolulu Elections Administrator Rex Quidilla and justices ruled in her favor. According to testimony on Wednesday, two District 40, precinct three voters were mistakenly given ballots to vote in District 43, precinct 3 on election day at Kapolei Hale. That created two overages for House District 43-03 and two underages at House District 40-03 in which there was a discrepancy between envelopes received and the ballots counted. In two opinions issued September 4, justices invalidated the House District 43 primary results. Medeiros and Souza will be on the general election ballot under a section identified for “Republican Party Voters Only.” Associate Justice Todd Eddins, joined by Associate Justice Sabrina McKenna, wrote that the “primary is not pau” and the choice returns to the voters. “The right to vote means little if the result cannot be trusted. Here it could not. So the voters will settle it,” the justices wrote.

Indiana: The Indiana Supreme Court is stopping the distribution of election ballots in six counties while it considers legal arguments over the Republican primary recount that determined challenger Paula Copenhaver defeated state Sen. Spencer Deery by a three-vote margin. The court’s order grants a request from Deery’s attorneys that no general election ballots go out while the Indiana Recount Commission’s actions remain under appeal. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Sept. 10 — a little more than a week before the Sept. 19 deadline in state law for county election offices to have started mailing out absentee ballots. Early in-person voting starts Oct. 6. The order, supported by all five justices, prevents “the issuance, transmission, distribution, or use of general-election ballots for Indiana State Senate District 23 before a decision is issued in this appeal.”

Maryland: A proposed ballot question that could set new standards for the way congressional maps are drawn in Maryland will go to voters in November, the Supreme Court of Maryland ruled. The order from a divided high court overturned two lower courts that had sided with state Republicans who challenged the proposed amendment to the Maryland Constitution. The Thursday evening order came as an end-of-the-day deadline to finalize the ballot for printing approached. The decision was anything but a full-throated victory for legislative Democrats who muscled the bill and a legally faulty question through a two-day special session. Even so, the end result is voters will be asked to weigh in on the proposed change this fall. In an eight-page order written for the majority, Chief Justice Matthew J. Fader agreed with judges in Anne Arundel and Dorchester counties who ruled that the ballot question as written by the Maryland General Assembly “is misleading and therefore violates due process requirements.” In particular, Fader said the majority found fault with the question’s reference to “applicable federal laws” as the criteria for determining congressional boundaries. Despite that, Fader wrote that judges in both cases were wrong to have issued injunctions last week blocking the question. “An available remedy in this case that is appropriately respectful of the General Assembly’s constitutional authority to propose constitutional amendments to the voters of this State is to substitute the purpose paragraph … for the text of the question,” the majority opinion states. In a three-page dissent, Justice Steven B. Gould, writing for himself and Senior Justice Glenn T. Harrell, said he would have affirmed the decisions of both lower courts and issued a scathing rebuke of the ballot question as passed by the Democratic legislative majority.

Michigan: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh declined an application from Americans for Citizen Voting-Michigan seeking to appeal a deadlocked decision by the Michigan Board of State Canvassers that left a citizens-only voting proposal off the November general election ballot due to a lack of valid petition signatures. The decision was posted without a filing or opinion on the court’s docket September 3, the day before the November ballot must be finalized. Later that evening, the Michigan Supreme Court also declined to take up the case on an expedited basis, ruling that Americans for Citizen voting were not entitled to mandamus relief — or rather, a ruling that would have compelled the Board of State Canvassers to approve the petition. Sponsors of the ballot measure filed the application to the U.S. Supreme Court Monday, requesting an emergency injunction from the nation’s highest court. They argued that the due process rights of Michiganders who signed the petition were violated when the Board of State Canvassers determined that affidavits validating nine rejected signatures were submitted too late and as such could not be used to validate those signatures, which would have put the petition over the required threshold. However, in the state’s response to the application, filed on Wednesday, lawyers argued that the relief requested by the sponsors — an injunction that would force the state to place the referendum on the November general election ballot — would be granting the applicants “all the relief they could ever recover for their claims.” The state argued that the application does “little to justify such an unusual request, other than to repeat the number of signatures they gathered—without acknowledging or contending with the high number of signatures that were found to be invalid.”

Minnesota: Whether Oak Grove can reject electronic voter books and return to paper rosters for the upcoming election came before the Minnesota Supreme Court this week. At issue is whether individual municipalities like Oak Grove retain statutory authority to choose their poll book formats for statewide elections, or whether county and state attempts at electronic uniformity override local decisions. Oak Grove contends that, because cities bear the primary responsibility for operating polling places in their precincts, they hold final say over voter roster formats, while state and county officials argue authority goes to the county auditor for federal, state and countywide elections. “For city elections where voters are drawn from a single city, then Oak Grove is right,” Assistant Anoka County Attorney Jason Stover said. “In a statewide election, where voters are drawn from the entire county, it’s the county head elections official who makes those decisions.” The justices struggled to see where the Legislature identified that. “Why wouldn’t the Legislature have made it more clear that the head election official and the person who got to make the call in statewide federal elections was the county auditor?” Justice Theodora Gaïtas asked, to which state officials only said the statute’s structure implies it. The justices noted the case’s urgency as the general election nears, saying the court would issue a ruling as quickly as possible.

Missouri: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh blocked Missouri from using a new congressional map, intended to give Republicans an additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, in the November elections. In a brief order sent to reporters on September 8, Kavanaugh – who handles emergency appeals from the 8th Circuit, which includes Missouri – turned down a request from the state’s top election official to pause a ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court that bars the state from deploying the new map. Although the order came on the Supreme Court’s interim docket, the court’s ruling likely settles the issue of the maps for the 2026 election, restoring the map that the state adopted in 2022 in the wake of the 2020 census. In December 2025, opponents of the state’s new map submitted more than 300,000 signatures in support of a petition to put a statewide referendum on the new maps on the ballot in the November 2026 elections. The state’s top election official, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, rejected the petition on Aug. 4, 2026, the last day on which he could make that determination as well as the day of the state’s primary election. In Hoskins’ view, Missouri’s constitution “does not authorize a referendum on congressional redistricting plans passed by the General Assembly.” Just a few hours later plaintiffs filed a lawsuit, asking a state court to reverse Hoskins’ decision and bar Missouri from using the new map. In a unanimous ruling on Sept. 3, the Missouri Supreme Court granted the request. The state supreme court wrote that “the plain language of … the Missouri Constitution authorizes a referendum as to ‘any act of the general assembly’ and no exception applies.” Because the referendum petition “was legal, sufficient, and timely,” the court concluded, the new map was never in effect and will not go into effect “unless and until approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election.” The state supreme court deemed “wholly unpersuasive” Hoskins’ argument that, if the state cannot use the new map, it will lead to “confusion, expense, and practical difficulties.” “[T]hese arguments are particularly misplaced given the secretary’s delay created” the problems about which he is now complaining, the court wrote. Hoskins came to the Supreme Court on September 4, where he told the justices that “[a] federal-election-administration disaster is unfolding in Missouri” and that the state was “genuinely unsure whether it can switch its governing congressional map in time to run a timely federal election.” He argued that the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling violates the U.S. Constitution in several ways. Among other things, he contended, it runs afoul of the elections clause, which in his view gives state legislatures – rather than the voters who sign a petition – the power to prescribe the “Times, Places, and Manner” of federal elections. The Supreme Court, he wrote, “has never held that just 3.3% of a State’s voters can unilaterally suspend a disfavored congressional map by submitting a referendum petition.” Just one day after Justice Kavanaugh left in place the Missouri Supreme Court opponents of that map returned to the Supreme Court. In a 25-page filing on September 9, Richard von Glahn and a group known as People Not Politicians asked the court to block a subsequent ruling by a federal judge that would require the state to use the new map. Abha Khanna, the lawyer representing the opponents of the map, told the justices that the order by Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark “has been in place for mere hours, but the chaos it guarantees has already taken root.”

Nebraska: The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the city of Lincoln must place three proposed charter amendments that aim to make changes to city elections on the 2026 general election ballot. In an opinion released September 9, the Nebraska Supreme Court granted Attorney General Mike Hilgers’s petition and issued a peremptory writ of mandamus requiring the city to place the three charter amendments on the Nov. 3, 2026, ballot. The Nebraska Supreme Court stated that the city of Lincoln does not have the authority to apply local administrative rules and procedures to delay placing a certified petition on the ballot of the next general election. Justices also defined “next general election,” saying that the next statewide general election meant November 2026 rather than the next city general election in May 2027 because the statewide election is the next regular, automatically recurring election. City Attorney Yohance Christie issued a statement, saying, “The Nebraska Supreme Court has spoken, and we will comply with their order. We are disappointed that the review and approval timeline has been shortened due to alleged fraud in the Good Government ballot initiative process.”

Oregon: U.S. District Judge Michael Simon has denied a request from supporters of a Portland police staffing initiative to mandate a full recount of signatures gathered for their petition, rebuffing their last-ditch effort to appear on November ballots. Simon wrote flatly in his opinion that there was “no likelihood of success on the merits or even serious questions going to the merits,” and denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. Chief petitioners Bob Simril and Juanita Swartwood filed the complaint late last month, joined by two other supporters. They alleged that the signature verification process for the petition, as performed by city of Portland and Multnomah County elections staff, was “arbitrary and standardless,” “riddled with errors and inconsistencies.” “Oregon’s rules specify when a circulator’s certification may be considered complete and sufficient,” Simon continued. “The rules do not provide an exception or ‘catch-all’ allowance, separate from the signature matching and date requirements. Put differently, Oregon’s laws and rules do not allow the City to exercise discretion to consider other evidence or indicia of validity not expressly permitted.” “The City and County also consulted the Secretary of State’s Office about how to best correct this error,” Simon wrote. “Following the consensus reached by the City, County, and Secretary of State’s Office, the proposed correction was presented to the Chief Petitioners, who voiced no objection. The correction was implemented, and that ended the matter.”










NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker