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
Category Archives: voter registration
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
HuffPost: Civil rights groups sued Tennessee on Thursday over a controversial new law that will subject voter registration groups to potential fines and criminal penalties, saying the measure is unconstitutional, vague and will intimidate people from helping others sign up to vote. … Continue reading
The Fulcrum: The chairwoman of the Election Assistance Commission told the nation’s state legislators last week that she’s opposed to automatic voter registration.Adding qualified citizens to the rolls whenever they do business with a state agency, unless they choose to … Continue reading
Florida gonna Florida. … Continue reading
The AP on the nuts and bolts of trying to figure out the right amount of space to upgrade election technology in an unending election environment. … 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
HuffPost follows up on yesterday’s announced settlement. … Continue reading
Well, one lawsuit, really, over publishing identifying information of individuals incorrectly accused of committing voter fraud. But you’d never know it was the same suit from reading the press releases. Plaintiffs here, defendants here. (Disclosure: I helped one of the … Continue reading
The Civics Center has been particularly active in encouraging eligible high school students to register and vote. A post today discusses the path forward after legislation failed in Maryland, following on a post a few weeks ago discussing a pending … Continue reading
An important story in Washington State about the integration of county registration systems into a newer statewide system. It’s not important because it’s particularly new or surprising (it’s neither), but just as a reminder of the details to be ironed … Continue reading
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
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