Wichita Eagle: Kansas will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on a state law championed by former secretary of state Kris Kobach — struck down by lower courts— that requires residents to prove their citizenship when registering to vote.The … Continue reading
Category Archives: NVRA (motor voter)
New Brennan Center resource. … Continue reading
In a major ruling, a 10th Circuit panel (consisting of 2 judges, as a third judge on the panel had passed away), a Tenth Circuit panel has held that a Kansas anti-voting law championed by former Secretary of State Kris … Continue reading
The latest from the Marc Elias litigation machine is a challenge in Texas to the rejection of voter registration forms with digital pictures of signatures. The complaint notes that, among other things, when voters register to vote along with getting … Continue reading
In Arizona, litigants settled an NVRA compliance case over alleged failures in the process of updating voter registration addresses when people change their address during motor-vehicle transactions. The settlement itself is here. … Continue reading
Sam Levine, from his new post at the Guardian, with a report. … Continue reading
On Friday, the federal court rejected a preliminary injunction seeking to reinstate about 98,000 registration entries who had not responded to notices or contacted election officials since January 1, 2012 – declining (under Pennhurst) to issue a federal order enforcing … Continue reading
The lede from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: “The Wisconsin Elections Commission deadlocked Monday over whether to remove the voter registrations of more than 200,000 people in response to a judge’s order. The commission’s inability to reach a consensus means the voters … Continue reading
NPR’s Pam Fessler. … Continue reading
Detroit Free Press: A public interest group has sued the city of Detroit in federal court, claiming it has thousands of dead people on its voter lists and even more duplicate names of registered voters — problems the group fears could lead to … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: A conservative group is seeking to quickly remove thousands of people from the voting rolls who election officials believe have moved.The question over how to treat as many as 234,000 voters comes as Wisconsin emerges as one of the … Continue reading
Lexington Herald-Leader: The Kentucky Democratic Party sued the State Board of Elections Thursday, claiming it unlawfully placed 175,000 registered voters on an “inactive” list that might infringe on their right to vote.The lawsuit filed in Franklin Circuit Court followed unsuccessful discussions between … Continue reading
Opinion in Bellitto v. American Civil Rights Union: The National Voter Registration Act requires state election officials to make a reasonable effort to remove certain ineligible registrants from the voter rolls. The American Civil Rights Union (“ACRU”) claims that Brenda … Continue reading
Specifically, Rensselaer apparently indicates that they’re going to share the list of people registering through the DMV, ostensibly to combat illegal immigration (the only relevant list ICE would have, I believe, pertains to individuals overstaying visas). I’m not sure how … Continue reading
Demos on the 26th anniversary of the NVRA. … Continue reading
You can listen to the oral argument here. With the caveat that one never knows how to read oral argument, and judges can change their minds before issuing an opinion, here are some thoughts: The judges seemed to believe that … Continue reading
Wash. Times: Los Angeles County has agreed to conduct a purge of its voting rolls, in a move that could strip perhaps 1.5 million inactive voters from the lists of those eligible to cast ballots. The county made the deal … Continue reading
Release via email: Today, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and its partners filed a major lawsuit against Secretary of State Brian Kemp over the state of Georgia’s discriminatory and unlawful “exact match” voter suppression scheme. The suit alleges … Continue reading
Press release via email: The League of Women Voters of Arizona joined voting rights organizations in a lawsuit filed against Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan Monday, nine months after notifying her office of significant federal voting rights violations. The … Continue reading
Neil Makhija on Husted at the Regulatory Review. … Continue reading
AP: A federal judge invalidated part of North Carolina elections law that allows one voter to challenge another’s residency, a provision that activist groups used to scrub thousands of names from rolls ahead of the 2016 elections. U.S. District Judge … Continue reading
Celia Llopis-Jepsen reports for Kansas News Service. … Continue reading
Listen at Slate’s Amicus. … Continue reading
Patt Morrison talks to Dan Tokaji about the Husted voter purge case. … Continue reading
Eliza Newlin Carney for TAP. … Continue reading
Chiraag Bains oped for WaPo. … Continue reading
Imani Gandy for Rewire. … Continue reading
Dale Ho NYT oped: States should also be encouraged to adopt Election Day registration programs allowing eligible voters — including those who have been knocked off the rolls — to register at the polls. Fifteen states and the District of … Continue reading
Dan Smith and Michael Herron NYDN oped: More fundamentally, do we have a right not to vote? Should infrequent voters be removed from the rolls merely for not exercising their franchise? Is the right to vote only protected when it is used? … Continue reading
Justin Levitt for ACS on the Husted decision. … Continue reading
Dahlia Lithwick for Slate. … Continue reading
Smart Garrett Epps in the Atlantic. … Continue reading
You can find it here. And see my earlier Slate piece, “Sonia Sotomayor’s Dissent in the Big Voter Purge Case Points to How the Law Might Still Be Struck Down” … Continue reading
Daniel Nichanian for NBC Think. … Continue reading
Nina Totenberg reports for NPR. … Continue reading
Josh Douglas for CNN Opinion. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a controversial Ohio voter purge law which allows the state to begin the process of removing voters from the rolls based upon their failure to vote in … Continue reading
You can find the 5-4 decision, breaking down along party/ideological lines, here. [Update: My thoughts on this case are over at Slate.] … Continue reading
From the court’s decision preliminarily enjoining Indiana’s purge system as violating the NVRA: Regarding the likelihood of success on the merits, the Court determines that Common Cause has a high likelihood of success on the merits of its claim that … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: Told it was breaking the law and asked to propose a fix, Texas seems to have mostly declined in a new filing the state’s legal adversaries have called “bad faith foot-dragging.” Following a ruling last month that Texas was violating … Continue reading
Press release. … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: Handing the state another voting rights loss, a federal judge has sided with a civil rights groups that claimed the state violated federal law by failing to register Texans to vote when they updated their drivers’ license information … Continue reading
The district court had dismissed Common Cause’s claim that Georgia’s voter purge law violated the NVRA and the First Amendment. Today, the Eleventh Circuit, in a brief, unpublished opinion, sent the case back and told the trial court to reconsider … Continue reading
Sam Levine for HuffPo. … Continue reading
Release: In a change of course, effective February 21, 2018, the Texas Workforce Commission (“TWC”) will begin the process of implementing voter registration services to those served by its Vocational Rehabilitation program. The change comes after the agency received a notice from … Continue reading
David Becker: So again, Justice Breyer’s question reflects what states have been going through with regard to list maintenance. Despite the false choice often presented by partisans, states don’t want a list maintenance procedure that’s overbroad, leading to false positives … Continue reading
Howard’s got it. … Continue reading
Nina Totenberg’s report on yesterday’s oral argument begins with this: JON HUSTED: We believe our state is one where we make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. We make every effort possible to try to reach out to … Continue reading
Today the voting wars reached the Supreme Court, which heard oral argument in Husted v. A Philip Randolph Institute, a case which concerns an Ohio law which makes it relatively easy to remove voters from the rolls. While there might … Continue reading
It is posted here. … Continue reading