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
Category Archives: voter registration
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Secretary of State (2004-11) and NASS president (2009-10), a Republican, offers his thoughts: “We can all agree that outdated voter rolls are a problem that must be addressed to safeguard the integrity of our elections.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
The Fix on ranked-choice voting, automatic registration, and other possible reforms. … Continue reading
Think Progress. … Continue reading
Think Progress: A few weeks ago, a federal court declared Ohio’s purge of Harmon and more than one million other inactive voters illegal. Since then, the state and voting rights groups have been negotiating a settlement to allow most of … Continue reading
NYT: A federal judge has extended Florida’s voter registration deadline to Oct. 18, agreeing with voting rights advocates and the state Democratic Party that damage from Hurricane Matthew threatened to deprive some residents of their right to cast a ballot. … Continue reading
The CS Monitor reports. … Continue reading
Heath Brown for The Monkey Cage: On Oct. 3, Latino Decisions released results of a poll of Latino voters, with fairly predictable results. Most respondents – 67 percent – rate Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton favorably, while 77 percent hold a … Continue reading
The complaint states that failure to extend in the face of a hurricane violates rights to equal protection and the right to vote, with displaced voters being treated worse than others, as well as a Voting Rights Act claim: Because of … Continue reading
Jon Ralston: Nevada Democrats have notified the secretary of state that Saturday’s voter registration deadline violates federal law because it falls outside of a mandated 30-day window before the election. If the SOS does not extend the deadline to Tuesday, … Continue reading
The following is a guest post from Doug Chapin (and huge thanks to Doug for putting this together so quickly): Over at the Election Academy blog – where I usually get my electiongeek on – I often refer to something I … Continue reading
Ari Berman writes for The Nation. … Continue reading
IndyStar: Indiana State Police investigators on Tuesday searched a voter registration agency on Indianapolis’ north side as they look into a voter fraud case that spans nine counties. The investigation began in late August when police learned of the filing of fraudulent voter registration forms in Marion and … Continue reading
That’s the lead story in this week’s Electionline Weekly. … Continue reading
Here.[corrected] Although Think Progress criticizes the ruling, I tentatively think it is right on the merits for reasons I expressed in When is Uniformity of People, Not Counties, Appropriate in Election Administration? The Cases of Early and Sunday Voting”, 2015 University of … Continue reading
Patrick Marley: ‘.@NRA is sending voter registration packets to WI voters but telling them to send them to wrong place — the state instead of local clerks” More: “So far, the state has received 24 @NRA voter registration applications that … Continue reading
San Antonio-Express News: It’s a little-known, openly violated state election law that gets no real enforcement. If not for the latter, Texas school principals would be in big trouble for not offering eligible high school students opportunities to register to … Continue reading
This is interesting: However, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Hinojosa appeared confused as to why the attorney general’s office had gotten involved and said it was the Texas Secretary of State that should be held responsible…. The National Voter Registration Act, … Continue reading
Guardian: Donald Trump’s campaign chief has moved his voter registration to the home of one his website’s writers, after the Guardian disclosed that he was previously registered at an empty house in Florida where he did not live. Stephen Bannon … Continue reading
Details to come. Update: Here’s AP. … Continue reading
Reuters: A group aligned with a conservative Illinois think tank sued the state in federal court on Thursday, challenging a recent law allowing Election Day voter registration at polling places in the state’s most populous counties. The statute in question, … Continue reading
Cincinnati Enquirer: The three 6th Circuit judges quizzed both sides about the case Wednesday, but they could take weeks to make a decision. Judges Eugene Siler Jr. and Julia Smith Gibbons were appointed by presidents George H.W. Bush and George … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
Ari Berman writes for The Nation. … Continue reading
Eric McGhee and Mindy Romero in The Monkey Cage: California recently passed the New Motor Voter Act, a law designed to register eligible residents to vote by default when they use the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), unless they decline. … Continue reading