Eliza Newlin Carney: In the wake of a midterm that saw surging turnout by non-white, young, and urban voters—all blocs that tend to favor Democrats—a backlash in GOP state legislatures was perhaps inevitable. What troubles voting rights advocates is that Republicans have now … Continue reading
Category Archives: voter registration
Brian Miller and Miles Rapoport oped in The Hill. … Continue reading
The Detroit News reports on the implementation of same-day registration and other new rules in tomorrow’s elections, taking place in 65 of 83 Michigan counties. Secretary of State (and former Election Law Prof) Jocelyn Benson says: “The May 7 election … Continue reading
Release via email: The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP, pro bono firm Hogan Lovells US LLP, Memphis-based firm Burch, Porter, & Johnson PLLC, Bromberg Law LLC, and community practitioner Daniel Ayoade Yoon filed suit today challenging Tennessee’s new … Continue reading
Jinhai Yu writes for Social Science Quarterly. From the abstract: The results of this study demonstrate that state online voter registration increases voter turnout. The difference‐in‐difference analysis shows that the states’ implementation of online voter registration increases the turnout of … Continue reading
Release: A group of civil rights organizations reached an agreement today with Texas state officials to settle a lawsuit challenging the creation and rollout of a flawed voter purge list that discriminated against naturalized citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union of … Continue reading
Brennan Center: Automatic voter registration has led to a spike in average registration rates in every state where it’s been implemented, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. In the first study of its … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: The U.S. House’s main investigative committee has opened an inquiry into the Texas secretary of state’s review of the voter rolls for supposed noncitizens.In letters sent to top Texas officials on Thursday, U.S. Reps. Elijah Cummings, the Democratic … Continue reading
Tierney Sneed reports for TPM. … Continue reading
The Houston Chronicle reports. … Continue reading
Politico reports. … Continue reading
AP: A federal appeals court will hear arguments Monday over the constitutionality of a struck-down Kansas law that required people to provide documents proving their U.S. citizenship before they could register to vote.In a case with national implications for voting … Continue reading
Michael McDonald and Brian Miller USA Today oped: Political engagement in America is surging. More than 118 million people participated in the November elections, marking the first time more than 100 million Americans voted in any midterm. Raw numbers can be misleading in … Continue reading
ProPublica: n 2018, Facebook and Twitter decided to play a role in helping people register to vote in what promised to be a momentous midterm election. To do so, the social media platforms directed users almost exclusively to a website … Continue reading
The NY Times Editorial Board calls HR 1 the “Merrick Garland of reform legislation.” … Continue reading
APNPR CBSCNNFoxNBC New York TimesWashington Post USA TodayWall St. JournalHuffPostMother JonesTPMVoxThe Hill (and here, and here) Roll CallThe GuardianTampa Bay Times (bonus: zombies!) … Continue reading
Final vote: 234-193. UPDATE: The text of the whole thing [will be] here. (As of 7:30pm ET on 3/8/19, the only text appears to be from an earlier version: the version actually considered is a combination of this, this, and … Continue reading
The House Oversight Committee asked Georgia Governor Brian Kemp today for a set of documents related to voters’ difficulties in Georgia in 2018. So far, it’s just a request. And Kemp appears unimpressed. … Continue reading
The reporting continues with respect to employees in the Kentucky Secretary of State’s office, looking up names in the voter registration rolls, potentially to assess political affiliation. The SOS’s office claims that “all searches were performed at the request of … Continue reading
San Antonio Express News: Texas Secretary of State David Whitley will tell Texas counties they may continue to look into the citizenship statuses of voters on his list of suspected noncitizens, according to an advisory approved by a federal judge … Continue reading
Texas Tribune: In reality, the voter citizenship review was flawed in two major ways.For one, officials from the Texas secretary of state’s office based their review on data DPS had warned would not be up-to-date. In addition, miscommunication between different … Continue reading
Governing: Expressing concerns about security, a majority of states have taken steps in recent years that restrict voting in one way or another, including photo identification requirements, cutbacks to early voting and policies designed to make it more difficult for … Continue reading
San Antonio Express-News: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is blaming the Texas Department of Public Safety and its director for a flawed effort to purge non-citizens from the state voter rolls. “The Secretary of State [David Whitley] was hamstrung by faulty … Continue reading
In collaboration with Take Care, Election Law Blog is pleased to present a series of posts offering thoughts on legislation to reform the U.S. electoral process. Election reform is back on Congress’s agenda. Having won control of the U.S. House, Democratic leaders have said that … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
Josh Douglas and Adam Eichen in WaPo urging that newspapers follow the Ithaca Times‘ example by printing voter registration forms on their front page on National Voter Registration Day next week. … Continue reading
Looks like the North Carolina US Attorney’s Office also subpoenaed the state DMV. The subpoena is here. Among the other information sought: DMV voter registration documents (including from citizens) for individuals not born in the US and documents (including from … Continue reading
Politico: “Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday that hackers within Russia’s GRU military intelligence service targeted state and local election boards, infiltrated a Florida-based company that supplies software for voting machines across the country, and broke into a state … Continue reading
The Hill reports that a different version was passed by the state house last month, and that legislators hope to hammer out a version that would take effect by 2020, if signed by the state’s Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican. State … Continue reading
AP: “Republican Gov. Chris Sununu reversed course Friday and signed a bill imposing residency requirements on out-of-state college students who vote in New Hampshire. Current law allows students and others who consider the state their domicile to vote without being … Continue reading
AP on the state’s action in response to a demand letter from the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights on behalf of the NAACP: Mississippi is updating a voter registration deadline to meet a requirement of a 1993 federal law, giving people a … Continue reading
Cleveland.com reports on directives (2018-19, 2018-20, 2018-21 and 2018-22) that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted issued today. They restart Ohio’s supplemental process for removing voters from the rolls, upheld by the Supreme Court in Husted v. APRI, while providing that no voters … Continue reading
The former Kentucky Secretary of State (2004-11) and NASS president (2009-10), a Republican, offers his thoughts: “We can all agree that outdated voter rolls are a problem that must be addressed to safeguard the integrity of our elections. Automated Voter Registration … Continue reading
WBUR: The requirement that Massachusetts voters register at least 20 days before the election in which they hope to cast a ballot does not violate the state’s constitution, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled Monday. Supporters of voting reforms, including Election … Continue reading
ACS Issue Brief by Mimi Marziani and Robert Landicho. … 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
An update out of south Florida: a federal court just rejected a claim by the ACRU that Broward County has a legal responsibility to purge voters more aggressively. There’s plenty of detail in the opinion about what Broward does and does … Continue reading
Gilad Edelman and Paul Glastris WaPo oped. … Continue reading
Mic: National groups, in search of voting rights laws that could be pursued in Republican-controlled states, have taken notice of the potential for city-by-city reforms. The Center for Popular Democracy, a national progressive group connected to advocacy organizations in 38 … Continue reading
A tour through regular list maintenance in Florida. … Continue reading
Governing explores how the impact may be surprising. … Continue reading
The following is a guest post from Laura Brill: Orange County set a participation record in the last presidential election, with more than 80% of registered voters casting ballots, the highest percentage in 40 years. High schools in the OC, … Continue reading
LAT: California’s top elections officer and 11 county registrars have been asked to hand over detailed voter registration records or face a federal lawsuit, a request that centers on new accusations that the records are inaccurate. The effort by the … Continue reading
Doug Chapin: Last year, I wrote about a federal court challenge to Illinois’ same-day registration law that resulted in an injunction because of concerns it would result in voters in larger counties having more opportunities to vote than those in smaller counties. … Continue reading
Boston Globe: Voting on Election Day usually entails some pre-planning, with registration required several days, if not weeks, ahead of time in most places. But now, following a court decision last week, Massachusetts is under pressure to join more than … Continue reading
The Nation: Recently, policy-makers have begun examining automatic voter registration (AVR). It has generated a lot of excitement, and rightly so. New research from Demos examines the effects of Oregon’s recent adoption of AVR on the level and composition of turnout in … Continue reading
Boston Globe: The ruling is a significant one and could influence election law in other states, according to Justin Levitt, a professor of election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “The rationale is thought out in great detail,” … Continue reading
The opinion is not yet available, but according to the ACLU’s Dale Ho: “Decision means state cannot require ppl to register 20 days before election bc violates state constitution.” More: “No remedy ordered yet – could mean Election Day Reg; … Continue reading
Sam Levine for HuffPo: Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) intends to sign legislation supported by both chambers of the Illinois legislature that will automatically register people to vote when they interact with state drivers’ facilities and other state agencies. The … Continue reading
A ChapinBlog. … Continue reading