The latest from the Civics Center. … Continue reading
Category Archives: voter registration
Opinion. [corrected link] The majority panel is made up of two Democratic-appointed judges; Judge Bybee is a Bush appointee. I was shocked when this remedy was granted on the eve of the registration deadline, and given the signals sent from … Continue reading
The court found that the burden on the state in keeping the system going outweighed the risk of disenfranchisement. The court’s order concludes: The state could have extended the registration deadline until midnight on October 6th, which would have given … Continue reading
Politico: Florida extended the deadline for voter registration after the state’s online portal crashed under the weight of heavy traffic hours before the Oct. 5 deadline.Registration will be open for an additional seven hours, from noon to 7 p.m. on … Continue reading
Politico: Florida’s online voter portal crashed on the final day of registration, prompting Democrats to accuse Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican state officials of trying to suppress the vote less than a month before Election Day.Details: Secretary of State … Continue reading
Arizona Capitol Times: Saying the pandemic interfered with the process, two groups want more time to sign up voters for this election.Legal papers filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix claim the current deadline of October 5 to register does … Continue reading
David Wasserman: In the last few weeks, Joe Biden has led President Donald Trump by a fairly consistent 8-point average in national polls and has maintained leads in more than enough battleground states to win the Electoral College, including Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin … Continue reading
Politico: Republicans have closed the traditional voter registration gap with Democrats to an historically small margin in Florida, triggering a wave of Democratic apprehension in the nation’s biggest swing state.Top Florida Democrats and longtime activists have increasingly groused in private … Continue reading
New report. … Continue reading
Just wow. … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: A persistent Texas voter, twice thwarted when he tried registering to vote while renewing his driver’s license online, has for the second time convinced a federal judge that the state is violating federal law.In a 68-page ruling Friday, U.S. … Continue reading
Center for Election Innovation and Research: Seven jurisdictions CEIR was able to review (Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia) each reported lower registration rates for May 2020 than May 2016. Since June of this year, … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
Civics Center: Voter registration rates in April and May of 2020 have plummeted in relation to the rates in the same months in 2016. Declines in voter registration rates have been as significant as 75% in some states. This decrease is … Continue reading
Politico: It was a flicker of hope for Donald Trump in an otherwise dismal summer.Late last month, the Democratic data firm TargetSmart found that while new voter registrations had plummeted amid the coronavirus pandemic, those who were registering in competitive states tended … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: The Wisconsin Supreme Court announced Tuesday it would hear arguments over who should remain on the state’s voter rolls in late September at the earliest — the latest sign the court won’t decide the case until after the presidential … Continue reading
WSJ: The protests continuing around the country are historic displays of social action. For political operatives, the mass gatherings are also a unique opportunity to harvest data on potential voters.Advocacy and voter-registration groups are gathering a trove of data from … Continue reading
USA Today: The registration of new voters dropped dramatically in the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic, challenging efforts of both major political parties to enlist new supporters in battleground states ahead of the 2020 election.The number of new voters registered across 11 states in April … Continue reading
CNBC: Voter registrations, volunteer activity and donations for groups linked to Democratic causes are surging in the midst of protests following the death of George Floyd, according to voting advocacy groups.This surge in registrations could end up being one of … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
New report by Eric McGhee and Mindy Romero. From the summary: Automatic voter registration (AVR) laws take advantage of transactions at government agencies where applicant information can be captured and repurposed to register citizens to vote. Implementation varies, but the … Continue reading
Release. … Continue reading
In normal times, I think of absentee voting as an essential option, but I’ve not (yet?) bought into 100% vote-by-mail. The postal service is an astonishingly great institution, but there are some communities it serves less well than others, including … Continue reading
AP: A Wisconsin appeals court on Friday overturned a ruling that ordered the removal of up to 209,000 people from the state’s voter rolls, handing Democrats a victory in a case they said was intended to make it more difficult … Continue reading
Steve Chamraz of TMJ4: ERIC is a service shared by 29 states and the District of Columbia to keep voter registration files up to date by comparing voter data with other public records like vehicle registrations.In October, the Wisconsin Elections … Continue reading
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. Update: The Court of Appeals opinion explaining its putting the purge on hold is here. (h/t Sam Levine) … Continue reading
Press release. … Continue reading
Fortune: Millions of Americans have been purged from the voter rolls in recent years, as state governments seek to remove the names of individuals who have died, relocated, or have otherwise become ineligible to vote.But such purges have been widely … Continue reading
Journal Sentinel: An appeals court ordered the state to keep more than 200,000 people on its voter rolls Tuesday, a day after an Ozaukee County judge found election officials in contempt of court for not following his December decision to … Continue reading
ABC News, on the collaboration with Stacey Abrams’ group Fair Fight 2020: ” Texas Democrats, fueled by the party’s nearly quarter-century-held dream of turning Texas blue, are mounting an aggressive ground-game operation with the largest voter registration program in the state’s history, … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: A group of Democratic state lawmakers has proposed automatically registering all Ohio high-school students to vote once they reach voting age.The bill, introduced in the Ohio House on Monday, also requires the state BMV to offer Ohioans the chance … Continue reading
From AP, the latest on the Wisconsin purge: The state Justice Department asked [Ozaukee County Judge Paul] Malloy to stay his order of contempt pending an appeal of his ruling, but the judge denied the request. Malloy held in contempt … Continue reading
SacBee: ” Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, is echoing inaccurate sentiments spread within conservative circles across the state that California elected officials are purposefully disenfranchising Republican voters by switching them to no party preference without consent.” … Continue reading
A helpful rundown of the administrative and legal proceedings so far, involving the possible removal of over 200,000 voters from the rolls. … Continue reading
AP reports on the yesterday’s ruling: A state appeals court will stay out of a closely watched Wisconsin case over the purging of up to 209,000 registered voters in the battleground state.The District 4 appeals court in Madison said in … 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
The Salt Lake Tribune runs a story about potential improper registration in Colorado City (which, despite the name, is half of a community that straddles the Utah-Arizona boder). There are real problems of unlawful behavior in Colorado City. But some … Continue reading
Looks like Judicial Watch released another tranch of NVRA demand letters. Also looks like they’re still identifying allegedly non-compliant jurisdictions at least in part by comparing point-estimate registration data on legal domicile to trend-estimate ACS data on physical CVAP presence. … Continue reading
The latest on this saga is a motion seeking to hold the members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission in contempt for failing to remove 200,000 voter registrations pending an appeal of a state trial court’s order. More 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
AJC: The Georgia secretary of state’s office announced Thursday that it would reinstate about 22,000 voters that it had removed from the rolls earlier this week.The announcement came two hours before state attorneys returned to federal court to defend the … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: An Ozaukee County judge on Friday ordered the state to remove hundreds of thousands of people from Wisconsin’s voter rolls because they may have moved. The case is being closely watched because of the state’s critical role in next … Continue reading
Civics Center: Almost every member of the Class of 2020 in California high schools will be old enough to vote next November. But will they be registered? Governor Gavin Newsom just vetoed AB 773, which would have required public high … Continue reading
APM Reports: Georgia is one of a handful of states that removes people from the voter rolls for not turning out to vote in recent elections. Democrats and voting rights advocates have argued that just because someone chooses not to … Continue reading
APM Reports/WBAE. … 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